Democrat female and male candidates to get 'equal chance to be on party-list'
A former woman MP of the Democrat Party claimed on Thursday that the oldest party of Thailand provided equal opportunities to both male and female candidates to be on the party’s list of 100 proportional election candidates.
Deputy government spokeswoman Ratchada Thanadirek, one of 11 Democrat female MPs in the 2019 election, said her party was now giving equal opportunities to both male and female members to be selected for the party’s list of proportional election candidates. The party won 52 House seats in the 2019 election.
Ratchada said the selection would be based on the members’ performance, not on gender quota as in the past.
Ratchada said the Democrats earlier used a formula by which there would be one female candidate for every five candidates on the party’s list, so female candidates would on the fifth, 10th, 15th ranks and so on.
The party used that formula because there were not many female politicians in the past.
Now, she said, there were many female politicians in the party so they would no longer be restricted to one spot for every five candidates.
Instead, the Democrat would consider the party’s list based on performance of both male and female politicians, Ratchada said.
She added that women are no longer decorative props in the House of Representative because they have proved their performance to the public.
