Rs 3,000
While the world increasingly embraces democracy as a preferred system of governance, twenty-first century has seen the emergence of a paradox termed the “Democracy Paradox” by Political theorists. It deals with the contrast between the high expectations from a democracy and what comes about from it. It is widely recognized that Parliaments today have a key role in addressing this paradox. The Parliament as the central institution of a democracy should perform towards fulfilling the expectation from it. It is responsible for effectively legislating over matters relevant to the people. Furthermore, it should oversee matters of the Government and ensure its accountability. In summary, the Parliament faces enormous challenges. Given the peculiar political trajectory of Pakistan, these challenges become all the more important for Pakistan’s Parliament. From 2002 onwards, PILDAT has consistently looked at the performance of the Pakistan’s Parliament, reviewing it from the citizens’ perspective. Its annual reports have helped highlight critical areas of performance as well as that of required reform in the Parliament of Pakistan over the years. The Citizens Report of the Performance of the 13 National Assembly of Pakistan: the 3 Year covers the period of March 17, 2010 to March 16, 2011. In keeping with the PILDAT tradition of compiling and disseminating National Assembly’s performance on a periodic basis since 2002, the current report also looks at some of the main categories of legislative performance at the completion of the 3 year of the 13 National Assembly’s term. The report shows that as compared to the Assembly’s first and second year, the third year has seen a downward trend. However, the average performance of the three (3) years of the 13 National Assembly has shown considerable improvement from the average performance of the 12 National Assembly.
