Pakistan has many obstacles that restrict it from moving ahead, and so for many, including myself, it simply remains a country that has a lot of potential which is not being met. One of the many problems we face is our political system. There are flaws that can be corrected by some tweaks but what I believe will help is a complete restructuring of our political system itself: the disbanding of political parties. Not having a political background, I might be blind to the cons of the restructuring I am suggesting but I will highly appreciate any criticism.
Let us start with looking at the structure of most political parties. We have the party leaders, some elected, some unelected but all very influential. Then we have some who get a ticket to contest elections from the party and others who are not that lucky. There are also the other workers who vote for the party, attend the speeches of the leaders and make up majority of the party. If you are one of those who get a ticket and are thus able to contest the elections with support from the party, you need to implicitly or explicitly vow that you will stick to the strategies designed by the party over issues in the parliament. How are these strategies made? As far as I know, the leaders plan out a strategy the party is to follow on an agenda. There might be more people involved, and there might even be a vote. This firstly means that party workers, who have not been voted by the public, may play a big role in deciding the strategy. Secondly, when the party decides what strategy to follow, an individual is liable to follow it in the parliament even if he personally has a differing opinion. This makes the system inefficient as decisions are not made according to what representatives believe is better for their people but what the party believes to be right for any odd reason, which can range from sincere efforts to help the public, through self-interest motives, to trying to malign other political parties. The intentions here are not clear. This way political parties have power to use their elected workers to play games under the veil of representation. The loyalty of politicians to their political parties is evident from the daily news and countless talk shows we are fortunate to have. What is problematic is that their loyalty to their parties outweighs their loyalty to the people (i.e. if they actually have any towards them).
Let us now move to the parliament. Suppose we have to vote on a resolution X and have 3 parties A, B and C with 30, 40 and 50 ‘elected’ members respectively. 20 of Party A’s ‘elected’ members, 25 of B’s and 45 of C’s want to vote for the resolution if asked personally. The remaining wanted to vote against X. For those weak in Maths, I will do the calculations; you have to trust me here. In total 90 wanted to vote for the resolution and 30 against, so we would say voting for the resolution would be the best decision democratically as 75% of the parliament want to vote for it. But what happens is the opposite. Party A and B each have the ‘party strategy’ to vote against and that is what all the members have to follow. So total votes become 70 against and 50 for the resolution.
The point of disbanding political parties is to remove all such obstacles from the path of an individual politician’s decision-making process. Our politicians lack an incentive to prioritize the general public that they represent over their personal gains. To make politicians act in line with the general welfare, we need a political system that gives them no alternative. If we do not have political parties, to get votes, all politicians are left with, is their performance. If they are helpful to their people, they will get voted in, if not, no one is going to save their backs (assuming that the Election Commission of Pakistan enforces maximum spending limits during elections, otherwise politicians can use financiers to ‘buy’ them votes). With all the obstructions for voting against the interest of their particular community gone, politicians will have an incentive to do what is best for the people of their constituency. If everyone does this, they will inevitably do what will be best for most constituencies and therefore most people that are part of them. Thus, decisions will be taken for the welfare of most Pakistanis. This will be of benefit to Pakistan as a country and as a Pakistani that is what we want.