A group of women want the Representation of the People's Act to be reformed. They want it to reflect and encourage more female participation in politics. Now this is an ongoing issue and WIN Belize along with other partners have organized a country wide consultation to attempt to address it. The consultation began a year ago and today a meeting was held to discuss and devise a list of recommendations to both political parties.
Sheena Gentle, Program Officer, WIN Belize
"in 2014 when Belize conducted a national consultation in each district in Belize, asking women on what their thoughts were in the representation of the peoples act. Most people weren't aware what it was and the function of the act. But what it does is that it governs the political process. We wanted to ensure more women's representation in national leadership. So this would be essential for us to do some reform in order to have more women be placed in a position. Some of the recommendations that came out would be to reform campaign financing, to reform the way that we look at the whole political arena when it comes to campaigning. That means all the ads that they put out, the campaign smearing and the personal attacks because it does get messy for women and most women do not want to be a part of that. So looking at these and trying to see how we can make the whole campaign process better for women or more conducive for women."
Courtney Weatherburne
"Okay looking at that point now, while it is important and while we are well aware, I think everyone on a whole, they don't readily accept or don't really like of course that political smearing. But it is a reality of the political arena or the territory. How do you guys navigate through that?"
Sheena Gentle, Program Officer, WIN Belize
"Well it's difficult to say how we navigate because it is sometimes a personal decision if it's not mandated by the political parties to stop these campaign smearing then it's something that each politician would need to address on their own. So I guess one of the things that we do need to address is the whole cultural perspective of politics and what the voters want to accept. one of the other things that was recommended is the whole culture of paying for votes and the idea that the voters do demand money for their votes. And if we could stop this, it would really help because a lot of the women want to win on merit instead of what they can offer to an individual voter."
The report including these recommendations should be finalized in June and presented to the government. The total cost of this initiative is $225,000 US dollars - and it is funded by the UN democracy fund.
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