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Country Profile:

Pakistan

Description of government structure:

  • Chief of State: President Asif Ali ZARDARI
  • Head of Government: Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz ASHRAF
  • Assembly: Pakistan has a bicameral Parliament (Majlis-e-Shoora) consisting of the Senate with 100 seats and the National Assembly with 342 seats.

Description of electoral system:

  • The President is elected by an electoral college to serve a 5-year term. The Electoral College consists of members of the Senate, National Assembly and the Provincial Assemblies.
  • The Prime Minister is elected by parliament.
  • In the Senate 100 members are elected by indirect vote to serve 6-year terms*. In the National Assembly, 272 members are elected by plurality vote in single-member constituencies to serve 5-year terms, 60 members are reserved for women to serve 5-year terms and 10 members are reserved for minorities to serve 5-year terms.**

* Senate members are indirectly elected by the provincial assemblies and the territories' representatives through a proportional representation singe transferable vote. Members serve six-year terms with one half elected every three years.

** The 70 reserved seats are elected by proportional representation with a 5 percent threshold. Breakdown of National Assembly seats by Province: Punjab (148 seats); Sindh (61 seats), the North West Frontier Province (NWFP, 35 seats), Balochistan (14 seats), the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA, 12 seats), and the Federal Capital (2 seats).

Population:

  • Population: 184,404,791 (July 2010 est.)

Past elections

Last Updated on 11/27/2012

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