'Not enough women candidates to reach 30 pct quota'

Penang Institute fellow Wong Chin Huat said the root cause of the unfulfilled 30 percent quota women in the Cabinet is because there are too few women candidates.

At the federal level, only 10.9 percent of candidates in the 14th general election (GE14) were women, he said, while there are 14.4 percent of women lawmakers now.

Currently, the percentage of women in the Cabinet stands at 18 percent, he added.

“If we were to reach for 30 percent (of women in the frontbenchers), we would only have six women left in the backbencher,” Wong said.

He was speaking at the launch of Bersih’s election observation report of GE14 in Kuala Lumpur today.

On a separate issue, Bersih acting chairperson Shahrul Aman Mohd Saari said it was too early to gauge whether the Sungai Kandis by-election will be handled better than the 14th general election (GE14).

But for now, he said, Bersih has seen definite improvements in the attitude of the Election Commission (EC).

“Before this, the first and last time we met with EC was back in 2010.

“Now, they invited us to be election observers (at Sungai Kandis), and when we wrote back the same day about our concerns over the terms, the very next day the EC called us up for a meeting,” Shahrul said to reporters after the launch of their GE14 report.

The Sungai Kandis state seat fell vacant following the death of the incumbent Mat Shuhaimi Shafiei from the PKR due to cancer on July 2.

The Election Commission fixed Aug 4 for polling day while nomination day is July 21. - Mkini