Women are among the major beneficiaries of the Building Bridges Initiative report received by President Uhuru Kenyatta and ODM leader Raila Odinga on Wednesday.
Though the 47 woman representative positions have been scrapped and replaced with an equal number in the Senate, a closer analysis of the report indicates a win compared to the current set-up.
If proposals contained in the 214-page document are passed, the country could attain the elusive two-thirds gender requirement.
The Garissa Senator Yusuf Haji-led team proposes the country elects 94 senators, with each county electing one man and one woman.
The report seeks to delete Article 98 1 (a), which pegged the number of senators to 47. The team further proposes the scrapping of the seats of the 16 members nominated by political parties.
In another step to cure the gender imbalance in the National Assembly, the team is recommending a 360-member House, where 290 will be elected by the people in the constituencies and another 70 will be filled by parties.
The additional 70 seats will be allocated on the strength of actual votes cast per county and will be distributed among youths, people with disabilities and women. The women have a chance of up to 35 out of the 70 additional seats.
This will push up their numbers in the bicameral Parliament as they also stand a chance to grab a number of the 290 constituency seats elected on first-past-the-post basis.
The BBI report further proposes that in the future, governors and their deputies must be persons of the opposite sex.
Women leaders have been pushing for an alternating gender in the big elective positions in both the county and national government.
In the last election, only a handful of governors appointed deputies from the opposite gender.
They include governors Salim Mvurya (Kwale), Granton Samboja (Taita Taveta), Samuel Tunai (Narok), Paul Chepkwony (Kericho), the late Joyce Laboso (Bomet), Charity Ngilu (Kitui), Kivutha Kibwana (Makueni), Stephen Sang (Nandi), Francis Kimemia (Nyandarua) and Anne Waiguru (Kirinyaga).
Edited by A.N
