Minorities have demanded for introducing the direct election and joint electorate for them and not leaving them at the mercy of political parties as members selected through this process represent their respective political parties and not the minorities or the women.
The Christians of southern Punjab have endorsed the stance of J Salik, Convenor of the World Minorities Alliance and assured full co-operation in this regard. Even after five years, the reservations of minorities on the reserved seats have not been considered with minorities alleging that the government is suppressing them through 'strange' allocation of reserved seats.
They argued that the system of allocation of reserved seats for the minorities and women, introduced by the President Pervez Musharraf in 2002, does not include any ballot and fails to fulfil the required objective as members selected through this process represent their respective political parties and not the minorities or the women.
Christians raised serious questions over the system of allocation of reserved seats in the parliament and said that there is no where a large number of parliamentarians were selected. "About 70 parliamentarians are selected without any ballot," they said adding that, "it is a unique democracy." Salik said that according to the 1973 Constitution, there should be joint electorate and members of the parliament should be elected through ballot.
"We have always been saying that elections on the reserved seats should be held according to the Constitution of Pakistan." He held that an apparent example of injustice with the minorities of Pakistan was that in 2002 the number of general seats in the parliament was increased from 207 to 272, the women seats were increased from 15 to 60 but the minorities seats were kept the same ie 10.
Salik also said that in the last elections due to the process introduced by the authorities, eight extra seats were allotted to the Pakistan Muslim League (Q), which enabled them to form the government at the centre.
"Pervez Musharraf has used minorities as a decoration piece tried to get world's sympathies but has actually deprived the minorities of casting their vote for their own representatives," said Salik and added that "General Zia hit our joint electoral college and Musharraf after reinstating our joint electoral college, deprived us of electing our representatives through ballot."
Not a single member selected through the process represented five million minorities of Pakistan, said Salik, "The current system does not allow any minority member to contest elections independently on the minorities' seats", he continued saying that it was beyond one's understanding that the person elected on a particular group's seat did not represent that group.
Further, he said that he had been protesting against this cruel allocation of seats at different levels and had recently lodged a protest in front of the European Union's office in Islamabad, who had listened and agreed to his demands but the only one who was not listening to his cries was the president of Pakistan "who was responsible for depriving the minorities of their constitutional right to elect their own representatives".
He also said to had challenged the process in the Supreme Court in 2002 but due to delayed tactics, the date of hearing was fixed after the elections. "I then moved to the Federal Shariat Court but the case was not heard for three years and in 2005, I requested the court that I was no more interested in the case," said the disgruntled Salik, adding that "The application of withdrawing my case has not yet been heard even after two years."
Salik also said that his simple demand was that members of the parliament on reserved seats should be elected with the vote of their respected groups; either, minorities or women, they should be elected with a vote and not through the process of selection.
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