Parliamen Digital’s Alicia Nicholle said that nominations are still open until tomorrow (June 14) and that she hopes to see more female applicants.
“As of midnight, we have 5,775 applicants across the board.
“That is in the twin categories: the people who were applying as representatives or nominating other people as representatives as well as observers. So, at present, we have 1,327 applying to be representatives,” she told an online press conference.
“Nineteen per cent of them are currently female, and we are still trying to make an effort to increase the percentage of a minimum 30 per cent representation for women,” she added.
“We also have representatives from the OKU (different abilities persons), Orang Asli and other minority groups and stateless people as well,” she said.
“The top three concerns of the youth are education, employment and economy,” she added.
Another Parliamen Digital representative, Aisya Mohamed said the July 4 and 5 meeting will run for four hours in a session where two Bills touching on the response to the handling of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic will be tabled, debated and discussed.
She said that the Parliamen Digital representatives will also be divided into special committee or caucuses to discuss related topics
“We will try to simulate as much as we can, we will also try to get the speaker and the deputy speaker for the sitting,” she said.
Meanwhile, Eshaan Menon from Parliamen Digital said the team will then produce a document and procedure of parliamentary sitting that will be handed over to the prime minister, the Dewan Rakyat speaker, the office of the chief administrative officer of Parliament and all the leaders of the political party.
“(We will also) produce a policy response document on Covid-19 that addresses the perspective and needs of Malaysian youth and encourage participation through parliamentary simulations and raise awareness of the process among the youth,” he said.
Parliamen Digital is a youth-led initiative which will host a simulation of a virtual Parliament sitting on July 4 and 5, and it will include voting and the passing of Bills.
The initiative aims to gather 222 representatives nationwide aged between 15 to 35 to engage in virtual Parliamentary debates on policy recommendations and to test the feasibility of virtual Parliamentary democracy. – MALAY MAIL ONLINE
