Maltese Political Parties Will Be Paid By The State To Recruit And Train Women Candidates
The Maltese state will fund political parties to recruit, promote and train female candidates as part of a plan launched by Prime Minister Joseph Muscat unveiled.
“Legal amendments are being proposed for the Financing of Political Parties Act to open the way for state funds that can be used to recruit, promote and train candidates pertaining to the under-represented sex,” the policy document reads.
“The political parties will be obliged to give a financial account of how these funds are utilised to promote equality between the sexes in politics in an annual report to the Electoral Commission.”
The documents also explained exactly how Prime Minister Joseph Muscat intends to see ‘gender quotas’ implemented in Parliament as a temporary measure to boost the number of women MPs.
A ‘gender corrective mechanism’ will be introduced, which will be similar to the electoral corrective mechanism that already exists to ensure proportional parliamentary representation between the political parties.
This new mechanism will be activated if either male or female candidates obtain less than 40% of the seats, capped at a maximum of 12 additional seats. This will therefore ensure that the most popular runners-up of the under-represented sex, almost definitely women, are elected to Parliament.
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