Almotamar.net - Chairman of the Progress & Advancement Forum (PAF) in Yemen Yahya Mohammed Abdullah Saleh said Sunday the initiative of President Ali Abdullah Saleh regarding empowering the women to practice their political rights through allocation of a quota amounting to 15% at the parliament is an important step. He added in case of its success and achievement it will open more spacious horizons for the society in general and the Yemeni women in particular. It will enable them exercise their tights effectively away from slogans that made this question mere decors in their political and electoral programmes.

In a symposium the PAF held Sunday in participation with other organisations with the aim of supporting the women in the upcoming elections, he affirmed the importance of drawing a dividing line between empty words and truthfulness and to associate words with action with regard to empowering the women to practice their political and social rights.

The participants in the symposium have been unanimous after detailed discussions on the call on the political parties and forces in the opposition and the authority to adopt the system of the quota regarding the allocation of 15% of election seats for the women.

The participants hope that the parties would overcome their political differences and calculations and to deal with the woman issues positively by granting her the convenient share in the electoral process in harmony with the proportion of her presence as voter.

The participants also called on all establishments and organisations of the civil society to interact seriously with this vision put forward by the Progress and Advancement Forum on the mechanism of representing the woman at the parliament.

In their closing statement the participants affirmed that the question of empowering the woman through the practice of her political and social rights is an affair that does not concern just the woman but rather the woman and the man together because it concerns the society entirely. In the light of that it is a must to establish a public opinion putting pressure on all to support this initiative and to apply it to the upcoming parliamentary elections.

The participants also hope that the woman would have a share in the election of governors that would be held soon as a first step before the upcoming elections asking the government to expand empowerment of the woman in the leading posts from the ministries to the governorates and districts.