“Quota must rise” Discussion in Government on Electoral Reforms

As it is known Ararat Mirzoyan, Chair of the Electoral Legislation Reform Commission under the RA Prime Minister, on July 6^th invited women’s NGOs to debate on electoral legislation reforms. The meeting was chaired by commission secretary, chairman of the Informal Citizens Union NGO Daniel Ioannisyan.

The main topic of the discussion was the mechanisms ensuring women’s participation, in particular the Electoral Code related to the quota. Presenting his attitude to quotas, Daniel Ioannisian mentioned that the quota should be such that the society will see that women are in politics, they deal with politics, and that’s normal. But at the same time he does not think that the quota should be too high. “If we set a quota very high, there is a fear that competition between women will go down very lowly within the parties and the quality of women in the parliament may be lower than their political activities.

Preventing women’s NGOs concerns with the rating system, as it is known, hampers effective implementation of the quota stipulated in the RA Electoral Code, Ionisyan said that although some parties have again made a proposal on open lists, the electoral reform commission and the major political forces most of them are against them.

President of Promedia-Gender NGO Tamara Hovnatanyan touched upon this issue, reminding that in 2016, when the Electoral Code was amended, the demand of the women’s advocacy organizations was a quota for 30/70 proportion, whereas the political parties in the result of their discussions fixed 25/75 ratio.

Coordinator of the “Coalition to Stop Violence against Women” human rights activist Zaruhi Hovhannisyan thinks that today we have clear open the window and opportunity for breaking stereotypes because the velvet revolution is the opportunity to do so.

Full text in Armenian