Parliamentary gender equality proposal will use women to 'thwart democracy', PD says

The government’s proposal to introduce a mechanism that will look to ensure more gender equality in parliament, will simply act to undermine the country’s democracy, according to the Democratic Party.

Back in March, the government announced a public consultation on the introduction of a mechanism that will come into play if the number of MPs from whichever is the underrepresented sex amounts to less than 40% of the total.

The mechanism will see up to 12 additional MPs added to the current complement. First in line will be “hanging candidates” who were last to be eliminated in the proportional representation system of electing MPs.

Wasted votes will then from the over-represented sex, who were not elected, will be utilized to elect a candidate from the under-represented sex.

“Gender equality is not present in Parliament because there is no gender equality outside Parliament,” the PD said through its MP Marlene Farrugia. Laws do not bring about equality and justice. It is the will, action and example of and from a governing body and its members that can kick-start the transition to real equality.”

The proposals were formulated by the Technical Committee for the Advancement of Representative Democracy, which was established in June last year, and have since been endorsed by 18 of Malta’s women’s rights organisations.

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Nationalist Party Secretary General Clyde Puli yesterday told MaltaToday that the PN would be accepting an invitation by the government, to nominate two individuals to the committee, which will be taking the proposals forward not that the consultation period he concluded.

“It has become this government’s established practice to ‘ form a committee’ – woven by the preferred few, made up of people who are ready to endorse a predetermined outcome – every time an issue obstinately refuses to resolve itself simply because of the same government’s under-performance in the relevant field,” the PD said in a statement.

The party said it believed that “all the executive energy should be focused on addressing the cause of gender inequality in parliament”, which it said simply reflected “gross gender inequality” across society.

“Simply addressing the effect by undermining democracy, redefining meritocracy, and severely denting the credibility of female Parliamentarians, will only provide a poor whitewash of a dire reality.”

The PD said that if parliament is “populated with men and women whose mind-set is such that they believe that equality is created by thwarting democracy and using women to do that, then gender equality in our country is going to be jeopardised even further”.

“This is not a liberal move but an impediment to democracy,” insisted the PD.  

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