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Dear Editor,
Judging from indicators such as the convening of party congresses, the two major political parties, the Pakistan Peoples Party/Peoples Congress and the Pakistan National Council/Revolutionary Party, have begun their campaign for the 2025 general and regional elections, although no party has yet made an official statement in this regard.
Both the main opposition party, the Palestinian National Council/Revolution (PNC/R), and the smaller opposition party, the AFC, have internal problems that threaten their survival, and if these are not resolved quickly, they will not consider other pressing issues, such as the embarrassing situation in the Representation of the People Law (ROPA) regarding candidate list representation.
Unlike Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo, who is the representative of the PPP/C list and Dr. Irfaan Ali is his deputy, who can nominate or remove MPs, the current Leader of the Opposition in Parliament, Mr. Aubrey Norton, does not have the power to remove or appoint any member of his party list as a MP. This power belongs to Mr. David Granger, who is the representative of the APNU+AFC list and his deputy is Mr. Khemraj Ramrattan.
However, if the list representative and alternate representative become incapacitated for any reason, a majority of the list members can nominate one person to serve as the list representative and submit their name to GECOM for approval. Well, that’s the theory; in practice, it’s unlikely that this will happen with the APNU+AFC list in this election cycle. Why?
Neither Mr. Granger, who represents the list, nor Mr. Ramjattan, his deputy, have shown any willingness to abandon their respective positions on the list for the remainder of this election cycle. As a result, most of the candidates on the list have not had the opportunity to designate a representative. Mr. Granger still has the power to decide who is nominated or removed as an opposition MP.
Mr Ramjattan will not relinquish the position as he needs to protect the tenure of nine AFC MPs. Critics point out that the 2020 elections will provide the AFC with the equivalent of one seat (N=7,082). It will be recalled that the AFC performed well in the 2011 elections. However, in the 2020 elections, their electoral support plummeted.
The nine AFC parliamentary seats allotted to them in 2020 would equate to about 63,738 votes. Even in 2011, their best election year (for which data is available), their estimated turnout was only about 35,000. Critics speculated that the AFC did better in 2015 than in 2011, and anecdotal evidence from the 2nd, 5th, and 6th districts seemed to support their view. In 2020, however, the story is very different: the AFC’s electoral strength has all but evaporated!
Supporters of the revised Cummingsburg Agreement argue that the AFC’s seat allocation has more to do with the agreement between the PNC/R and the AFC and was largely influenced by the AFC’s past poll strength in 2011. Nonetheless, the reality is that eight PNC/R candidates on the 2020 list were denied parliamentary seats because they had to make way for AFC candidates.
While the Representation of the People (Amendment) Act 2022 closes most of the loopholes in the electoral system following the 2020 election fiasco, as mentioned earlier, there is an anomaly (lack of succession process) with the list representatives and deputy representatives. It is therefore recommended that if the designated representative and deputy representative of the list become incapacitated for any reason, two replacements may be identified to perform the duties and their names submitted to GECOM for approval. Alternatively, the new leadership of any political party should be given the opportunity to identify its own representatives and deputy representatives and provide at least two replacements.
Mr. Norton does not have at his disposal one of the most powerful tools to make MPs toe the party line, whereas Dr. Bharat Jagdeo, leader of the BJP/Parliamentary Group, has it.
Sincerely
Dr. Tara Singh
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