Without real agency, reserved-seat MPs cannot serve the public

The primary goal of reserving seats in Bangladesh’s parliament was to ensure women’s representation and voice in parliament. But this plan failed miserably by disenfranchising citizens from choosing their preferred woman representatives.

A research study titled “Legitimacy and Leadership: Strengthening Women’s Political Representation Through Electoral Reform in Bangladesh,” by the BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD), found that since women are not elected to reserved seats by direct vote, there is a lack of public accountability which weakens their legitimacy to influence political affairs. Rather, this system promotes nepotism and becomes a tool for rewarding party loyalty.

Historically, most of the nominees for reserved seats were loyal party members or relatives of senior party leaders. They proved to be solely a symbolic representation of women in parliament, with no intention of safeguarding women’s rights.

One respondent participating in the BIGD study said, “We haven’t seen who they [reserved-seat MPs] are, and they did not even come here to see us. How do they become members of parliament? If they were elected, they could have a mandate to speak on our behalf.”

Moreover, there is always a conflict of interest between the elected representative and the reserved-seat members. Elected representatives have always sidelined the selected women MPs in decision-making and allocating budgets for their constituencies. Despite their genuine intentions, these women MPs are unlikely to be able to contribute effectively to public welfare, even when they are highly educated, as would be the case in the 13th parliament. A former reserved seat MP from Chandpur told BIGD, “It is just an ornamental position! When I was elected, we did not have any selected constituencies to work on.” She said designating a specific region or locality for reserved-seat MPs to work on would have been better. Without such a provision, ambiguity arises, exacerbating tensions between elected MPs and reserved-seat MPs over who is responsible for what in their associated constituencies.

Following the July uprising, the constitution and election reform commissions formed by the interim government, as well as some parties, had proposed the direct election of women MPs to the reserved seats. The Women’s Affairs Reform Commission proposed a dual representation system in parliament along with direct vote for reserved seats. But proposals failed to address conflicts of interest among party members at the grassroots level and in parliament. However, people from diverse age groups, occupations, classes, and genders expressed a strong desire to elect their female representatives through voting—something political parties seem unaware of or uninterested in. An elderly research participant from Savar noted that the public has to bear the expenditures of the reserved seats, although the corresponding MPs are not required to maintain public engagement.

Under the circumstances, the recently formed parliament should focus on the strategic distribution of reserved seats that reflect women’s agency by establishing parameters for selecting female representatives based on their past performance in upholding women’s voices in parliament.

According to the Jatiya Sangsad (Reserved Women Seats) Election Act, 2004, parties should nominate potential women candidates for reserved seats and later elect them through the MPs of respective parties. In practice, the parties decided to stick to the conventional selection process—bypassing the significant step of voting—to sustain control over nominations. Although this provision doesn’t address the lack of public mandate, skipping the voting process reinforces the prioritisation of party loyalty over any other qualification.

However, this time, parties have tried to maintain a relatively inclusive approach by nominating women beyond party members. Nominated individuals include civil society representatives, minority group members, and representatives from the survivors of the July uprising. However, existing challenges such as lack of agency and party dominance remain unaddressed. Most of the nominated candidates have—both in the ruling party and opposition—some connections to party members or some wings of the party. BNP has nominated 36 candidates, while the Jamaat-e-Islami-led alliances have nominated candidates for 13 reserved seats. Unfortunately, both have bypassed the election process and submitted the list of candidates for the exact number of proportional reserved seats they have won.

When asked about the selection process, a senior leader from the ruling party mentioned organisational capability, contributions to street politics, and expertise in parliamentary debates as screening criteria. While these qualities are expected of all members of parliament, there is still no clear distinction in the qualifications required for reserved seats. The selected women MPs must be capable of performing their duties; otherwise, the price that both the citizens and the reserved-seat MPs have been paying for this ornamental arrangement is too high to be continuously ignored.

Rabeena Sultana Ananna is research associate at BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD), BRAC University.
Md. Abrar Hasan is program associate at BIGD, BRAC University.

Views expressed in this article are the author's own. 

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