Kamal el-Shazli, General Supervisor of the National Specialized Councils, said the National Democratic Party (NDP) Policy Committee is discussing a new bill on a “more equitable representation of women in parliament,” as he put it. He told the National Council for Women yesterday that he had proposed at the party conference of last year to increase the seats in Parliament from 444 to 500, with 56 more seats for women to competing over in all provinces of Egypt. He said he did not yet determine whether the nominations would be based on an individual or group-list system, explaining that in the first case there would be two women representing each province, one white collar and one blue, maintaining a demographic balance whereby Cairo would have 6-8 seats for women. But if the current group-list system prevailed, he said the parties would not be compelled to nominate women on top of their lists, as there is no constitution for that.
He said that he also proposed to have two election papers, one for the regular constituency, and the other for women. Dr. Kamal Abul Magd, Secretary-General of the National Council for Human Rights, said the proposal might be useful, while Dr. Farkhonda Hassan objected to the word ‘minimum' seats for women, pointing out that the proposal should also be applied to the elections of the municipalities.
