Cut Cabinet size and boost women’s representation, CRC told

Fiji should reduce the size of Cabinet and introduce constitutional measures to increase women’s representation in Parliament, lawyer Barbara Malimali told the Constitutional Review Commission committee yesterday.

Ms Malimali said the current Cabinet was unnecessarily large for a country of less than one million people. She proposed limiting Cabinet to no more than 15 ministers.

“We’re a small country of about 937,000 people. Why do we need 20 ministers and assistant ministers?”

She said reducing the number of ministers would save taxpayers’ money that could instead be invested in essential public services.

“We can use that money to build hospitals.”

Ms Malimali also urged the commission to include temporary special measures in the Constitution to improve the number of women elected to Parliament.

She said women made up about half of Fiji’s population but remained significantly underrepresented in Parliament.

“We’ve got 400,000 women in this country but only five women in Parliament. This is not proportional.”

She argued that constitutional provisions for reserved seats or other temporary measures would help correct the imbalance.

Ms Malimali said international research showed legislatures with greater female representation tended to have lower corruption levels and stronger transparency.

She also supported retaining Fiji’s proportional representation electoral system but recommended introducing fixed election dates for both general and local government elections.

She said having constitutionally prescribed election dates would improve certainty, accountability and public confidence in the electoral process.