THE other day I read in your newspaper that there were 267 political parties in Pakistan. Isn’t it absurd? If 25 of these parties fielded their candidate in a constituency and if most received two or three or four per cent votes, the candidate getting 10/12 per cent votes would be declared elected. Can such a person rightfully claim to be representing the constituency?

The simple solution is a dual election. Only the candidate getting 51 per cent votes should be declared winner, otherwise re-election should be held between the two highest vote-getting candidates. Such a system will also weed out unnecessarily-created parties, as most parties will merge with other parties to limit the number of political parties to a reasonably acceptable level.

We had seen this type of procedure in Nazim's election in Musharraf’s time. This system is also functioning well in France.

Whether this can be done by simple change of law or whether it would require any constitutional change, all people at the helm of authority should act at the earliest and before the new election.

A.G. HABIB         Karachi