Georgia ruling party to cancels gender quotas at parliament
- 3 April, 17:38
Ruling Georgian Dream party is set to support the initiative to abort the gender equality law in the parliament. The party announced this at the meeting of the Bureau of the Parliament on Monday.
Introduced by the ruling party in 2020, the gender quotas stipulate that each party's electoral list must ensure that every fourth candidate is of a different gender compared to the preceding three candidates. Based on the existing law on gender quotas, at least every 4th candidate in the party list should be of a different gender. The party announced they will support a proposal from Girchi, a libertarian party to amend the electoral code. Girchi proposed eliminating all references to gender from Georgia's legislation, especially in light of Georgian Dream's recent initiative to amend the constitution to prohibit LGBTQ+ 'propaganda' and gender transitioning.
Georgian Dream and Girchi announced that they had come to an agreement on the matter. Both parties characterized the agreement as a product of political negotiation: in exchange, Girchi committed to backing Georgian Dream's controversial amendments to electoral legislation, which were recently rejected by President Salome Zurabishvili. Girchi's proposed legislation is anticipated to undergo expedited discussion in parliament this week.
The opposition Lelo and Strategy Aghmashenebeli parties have said they will oppose the move.
