Call made for 30% reserved seats for women in Parliament through electoral reform submission

A call is being made to support a submission by the Fiji Women’s Rights Movement (FWRM) and Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre (FWCC) to have temporary special measures for 30 percent reserved seats for women in parliament.

Imrana Jalal, who is a founding member of the FWRM, is calling on NGOs and civil society organisations to support the submission titled “Reforming our Electoral Legislation for Gender Equality in Fiji’s Parliament” by the FWRM and FWCC to the Fiji Electoral Law Reform Commission.

Jalal says the submission calls for temporary special measures to reserve 30 percent of seats in Parliament for women, to be contested only by women, but open to votes from all voters, not just women.

She says they ask for either extra seats for women or a proportion of existing seats.

The renowned lawyer says they believe that this is a temporary solution to create a level playing field between men and women until women can compete fairly with men in normal seats.

She says their submission contains a plethora of evidence in support where they also ask for other improvements which they believe will create a better representative democracy such as a geographical constituency representative model where people can go to their MP for accountability.

Jalal says they also ask for scrapping of the current system which glorifies the ‘Big Man’ autocratic patriarchal concept and allows MPs with minuscule votes to be in Parliament and Cabinet.

They also ask for better protection for female candidates and MPs against online and offline sexual harassment, bullying, intimidation and threats of violence.

They are also making submission for better leadership accountability and safeguards against corruption and making parties more transparent and accountable.

She says they will be making their submission at Bhawani Dayal Memorial Primary School tomorrow evening and is calling on women’s and human rights organisations to endorse it.