Group items tagged

CAIRO | January 21, 2012 Two days before the assembly's first meeting following the thwart of Hosni Mubarak close to 1 year ago, it is apparent that the Muslim Brotherhood Islamists led by the Freedom and Justice Party emerged as the largest group in Egypt's new parliament winning 235 of the 498 elected seats in the lower house. . The new parliament, due to hold its first session on Jan. 23, "is the best celebration of the Egyptian revolution," Freedom and Justice said in a statement according to a report in Bloomberg. A breakdown of election results from party lists: 332 members of parliament Freedom and Justice - 127 Nour party - 96 Wafd party - 36 Egyptian Bloc - 33 The assembly is to select a committee that will write a new constitution, though the exact powers of parliament remain unclear. Protesters that ousted Mubarak continue to call for mass rallies on January 25, the anniversary of the beginning of the Egyptian uprising against Mubarak. And although Egyptians have had seven weeks of democratic elections, it has failed to calm tensions between activists and the military council that took power from the ousted President. The military council has said it would cede power when a president is elected in a national vote by the end of June. Due to the state of unrest and lack of tourism, Egypt's economy has seen better days. Egypt formally requested a $3.2 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund on Jan. 16 to help it support its economy.

The Committee for a World Parliament (COPAM), based in Paris, has joined the Campaign for the Establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly (CEUNPA).

Windhoek, Mar 7 (IPS) - The Southern African Development Community (SADC) Parliamentary Forum has set its sights on becoming a regional parliament with law-making powers. The body was established in 1997 to create a platform for the region's legislators t

Although there have been many studies that address the representation of women in parliament, there are few analyses that compare the current state of gender representation between democracies and non-democracies. Focusing on Africa, Central and South Ame

This paper discusses the potential contribution of parliamentary institutions and networks to the democratization of global economic governance. It places the analysis in the context of the larger debate on the democratic deficit of international economic institutions, in particular the WTO. On a theoretical level, the paper distinguishes different notions of legitimacy and democracy in order to identify which aspects of democratic legitimacy of global economic governance can be addressed through transnational parliamentarization. It is argued that national parliaments must react to the emergence of global economic governance in a multi-level system through new forms of transnational parliamentarization. In its empirical part, the paper assesses the Parliamentary Conference on the WTO (PCWTO) and the Parliamentary Network on the World Bank (PNoWB) as two examples of such transnational parliamentarization. Drawing on the theory of deliberative democracy the paper argues that the contribution of these settings to democratic global governance should not be measured on the basis of their formal decision-making power but with regard to their role as fora for transnational discourses and on their potential to empower national parliamentarians.

A collection of studies published in Argentina shows that quotas for women on electoral candidate lists have been successful in achieving a certain level of gender balance in the parliaments of many Latin American countries. However, it says that more too

"The basic issue is that just as the U.S. wants to be safe from terrorism, we don't want to see bombs and missiles falling on our villages, we want our people to be safe and we don't want blood to flow in our streets. Our Parliament is sovereign and it wo

ADDIS ABABA, May 14 (IPS) - When Margaret Mensah-Williams walked down the steps after presiding over the Namibian parliament for the first time, male parliamentarians rushed to ask her how she became so good at chairing the house.

KOLKATA, May 7 (IPS) - Mamata Bannerjee, six-time member of Parliament from West Bengal, bucks the stereotype of women political leaders in India. Neither heir to a political dynasty nor blessed with a political godfather, she has picked her way through

THE HAGUE, Apr 10 (IPS) - A delegation of seven British Labour members of parliament and 10 trade union leaders from the U.S., Canada and Britain said they were in a "state of shock" over what they heard during a week-long fact-finding mission to Colombia

"A large body of European Union (EU) law - EU administrative law - is not made by the EU's democratically elected bodies, the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament (EP). Instead, most administrative laws are made by the unelected European Commission. That, of itself, does not mean that the EU is insufficiently democratic: most democracies delegate the power to make administrative laws to unelected regulators. In those democracies, however, elected legislatures can at least change administrative laws after they are promulgated. This article contends that the EU is different: the Council and EP are effectively unable to change administrative laws. This article identifies 'design flaws' in the EU's lawmaking processes that are responsible for this democratic shortcoming. It then surveys relevant provisions of the new Lisbon Treaty in order to determine whether Lisbon will remedy that shortcoming: whether it will empower the Council and EP - or citizens directly - to change administrative laws."

MIDRAND, South Africa, May 19 (IPS) - It will remain difficult for Africa to address the effects of the global financial crisis or tackle other problems the continent faces as long as African countries try to go it alone. "The progress on the African uni