More women in Parliament, Access to Information and unattended motions
Parliament
Balford Henry
Sunday, March 26, 2006
Government senator Trevor Munroe says that despite the fact that Jamaica was about to swear-in its first woman prime minister, he expects little change in the limited number of women in Parliament without a change in the current first-past-the-post system of electing MPs.
Senator Munroe was making his contribution to the annual State of the Nation debate in the upper chamber on Friday. The debate closed a week ahead of next Friday's prorogation of Parliament's 2005/2006 session.
He noted that only 15 per cent of the representatives in both Houses of Parliament were women and suggested that the answer lay in introducing a system of proportional representation.He said that the UN millennium goal was 30 per cent and, therefore, Jamaica's 15 per cent was not unusual. However, he said that the "unacceptable situation", is not going to change unless a number of things are done, including combining the current first-past-the-post system with some form of proportional representation.
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