Constitutional amendments to enhance women's rights proving problematic - Parris Stabroek News November 12, 2000 The Working People's Alliance (WPA) has expressed concern at an unconfirmed report that recommendations by the Constitution Reform Commission enhancing the rights of women would not be converted into law. It has blamed the PPP/Civic and the PNC for this development. Stabroek News has learnt that following the publication of its release, the WPA was informed that neither party had authorised that the relevant recommendations should not be converted into constitutional amendments and that those related to the electoral system would be incorporated in a draft to be presented to the parties next week. Stabroek News has spoken with Haslyn Parris, who is coordinating the work of the task force converting the recommendations into constitutional amendments. He acknowledged that the draftsmen were experiencing some difficulty with rendering some of the recommendations so that their legal interpretation would be as intended by the commission. One particular difficulty which Parris cited was related to the representation of women in the National Assembly. He explained that during its discussions on the various recommendations from the public. The commission had shied away from recommending a quota of seats in the parliament to be reserved for women. As a consequence it decided that women should comprise no less than one-third of each list of national candidates put up by individual parties contesting the elections and a similar proportion of the total number of the candidates each party put up in the regional constituencies. What was more problematical was securing their representation in Parliament in proportion to their representation in the population. A way around this, was to render this to mean the proportion of women comprising the persons registered to vote and to assign the responsibility to the Elections Commission to determine the percentage. However, Parris said that this interpretation could collide with the responsibility of a party to select its best people to represent it in the Parliament. He explained that if it was certified that women formed 51% of the persons registered and the law required that they be represented in the same proportion in the parliament, then a small party which won one seat would be obligated to name a woman. That could mean that the leader of the party--if that person was not a woman--would be unable to represent the party in the National Assembly. Alternatively, he said if the party were to win three seats, then two of the three members named would have to be women. Parris said that these were the sort of problems the legal drafters were wrestling with as they tried to complete the legislation that would allow the public a fuller picture of the electoral system being designed for the upcoming elections. In a related issue, Stabroek News understands that the authority being proposed for the President in relation to deciding on the minimum number of seats that should be allocated to the regional constituencies, did not make clear whether the President was to make this decision in his own deliberate judgement, or after consultation with the Leader of the Opposition or some other authority. Another issue still to be settled was the legal interpretation to be given to terms such as proportionality and disproportionality, which are used in the legislation in describing the system. And the desire raised in the discussions between the PPP and PNC for the regional elections to be held at the same time as the general elections as has been the practice, was yet to be resolved. With all these issues still outstanding, tabling the bill in the National Assembly next week could prove problematic. Follow the goings-on in Guyana in Guyana Today