“The ratio of women’s quota in the past was 20/80. We planned the ratio of 25/75 for these elections, and the quota for the elections in 2022 will be 30/70,” Davit Harutyunyan, Minister-Chief of Staff of the Government said speaking about the provisions on making changes and amendments in the new Draft Election Code of the RA.
He noted that as a result of the political consensus there was a proposal to introduce the change from the elections in 2021. “Of course the Parliamentary elections are supposed to be held in 2022, but in 2021, we shall have elections to the local self government in two major cities: in Gyumri and in Vanadzor and it would be desirable that the cities have more rigid quota – 30/70,” he concluded.
It is worth stressing that the Armenian Lawyers’ Association has always been raising this idea. In particular, the NGO proposed to review the proportion of men and women in Article 84 (Part 3 of 9) of the new draft Electoral Code making it 30/70 instead of specified 20/80.
According to current regulation the number of women representatives shall be in each integer group of five candidates starting from the second number (2-6, 2-11, and subsequently till the end of the list). In order to ensure 70 percent representation of women, it is proposed to apply the integer group of 3 instead of the integer group of 5.