One-third of national candidates will be women - parties agree By Patrick Denny Stabroek News May 29, 2000 The constitutional reform Oversight Committee (OSC) on Friday agreed that one third of the candidates put up by the political parties at the next elections on their national lists must be women. This agreement addresses the recommendation of the Constitution Reform Commission (CRC) that the electoral system should have gender representativeness as one of its features. The agreement was one of those reached in discussions on Friday evening on the electoral system, according to Haslyn Parris, coordinator of the work of the OSC. For these discussions the OSC has been augmented by the members of the OSC task force which had sought its assistance in designing the electoral system after it had run over its April 13 deadline for completion. Friday's meeting was held at the Office of the President and was the second informal session of the OSC. On Saturday, Parris told Stabroek News that decisions had been reached on a number of other issues. However, he said that the OSC had not returned to its discussions on the number of seats to be allocated to the regional constituencies nor the minimum seats to be set aside to each region which they had broached at the first informal session on Monday. Professor Andrew Reynolds, the electoral expert who provided options to the OSC which he said could address the recommendations of the CRC, believes that the positions of the PPP/Civic and the People's National Congress are reconcilable. The CRC recommended that the electoral system should have elements of proportionality and geographic and gender representativeness. The PPP wants 21 seats allocated to the regional constituencies; the PNC wants 30 seats to be so apportioned. Another informal session is due to be held tonight as the OSC presses on with additional urgency to let the Elections Commission know of the outline of the system to aid in its planning for the polls which are statutorily due by January 17, 2001. The agreement on women candidates was a compromise as the People's National Congress wanted the one-third representation to be reflected nationally as well as regionally; the PPP's position was that it should only be reflected at the national level. Another agreement reached is on the proportion of seats nationally and regionally a party would have to contest to be considered a legitimate contestant. It was agreed that parties would have to put up candidates for all the national seats including a presidential candidate and a proportion of the regional seats. The proportion of regional seats is to be settled at a later date. At their first meeting agreement was reached on the size of the Assembly and that the regional constituencies would be based on the ten administrative regions. The delay in settling the electoral system has affected the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) which would govern the assistance to be provided by the international donor community for the polls. This signing has been put on hold as well as the motion to be supported by the parliamentary parties indicating their support for the provisions of the MOU. The MOU sets out a 43-week schedule which when originally drafted was predicated on the Elections Commission being in place by April 15. The Commission was sworn in on May 10. Follow the goings-on in Guyana in Guyana Today