POLITICS-SRI LANKA: Rural Women To Contest Upcoming Polls

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Feb 3 1999 (IPS) - In a country that boasts of the first woman prime minister in the world, it has been a hard struggle for ordinary Sri Lankan women to enter mainstream politics.

Now a group of 18 rural women have decided to enter the political arena by contesting provincial elections due in the next three months, and wrest for women a greater say in setting the political agenda.

In preparation the women are planning to hold a “massive” rally on Feb. 14, said Vimali Karunaratne, the group leader. The women are members of the Sinhala Tamil Rural Women’s Network.

“We need women in Parliament and other local government bodies who would represent causes, instead of being elected merely because they are widows,” observed Jezima Ismail, a prominent educationist. Both Sri Lanka’s president and prime minister are widows of prominent politicians.

Women constitute 4.8 percent of members of Parliament. The percentage has largely remained unchanged since Sri Lanka’s independence from British colonial rule in 1948 when 4 percent of members were women.

“Only one or two women who have contested in their own right have won seats in Parliament,” said Monica Ruwanpathirana, who works towards poverty alleviation among grassroots women.

One of the reasons is the violence and intimidation at the polling booths and in the election campaigns. Elections held last week for the northwestern provincial council were the most violent in Sri Lanka’s history.

For the first time women were enlisted as monitors for the polls on Jan. 25, and a monitor, who agreed to talk only if they were not identified, said even they were shocked by the unprecedented level of intimidation.

The ruling People’s Alliance won the provincial council election, but results have been challenged by the opposition parties who have urged the Supreme Court to order a re-election.

Last week, the Supreme Court ordered the Election Commissioner to hold council polls within three months in the western, central, north-central, Sabaragamuwa and southern provinces. The government had put off the poll last August saying security forces could not be diverted from the war for election duty.

The court decision was in response to an appeal filed by two journalists, Waruna Karunatillake and Sunanda Deshapriya, who petitioned that the postponement of the polls was a violation of their fundamental rights as voters.

Karunaratne said her group of women are concerned about the violence but determined to stand up as candidates. “We have to face the future of politics, whether violent or not, and have told all political opponents that we have every right to contest like anyone else,” she said.

“We want to create a new political culture devoid of armed rivalries and confrontation,” she added.

The Rural Women’s Network is working in Sri Lanka’s labour intensive plantation sector, in the central Nuwara Eliya district. Karunaratne’s group will raise demands for improving the life of women workers – housing, education and equal wages as men – in their campaign.

Educationist Ismail, who is a former president of the South Asian Federation of University Women, would like to see the entry of committed women in politics instead of women who have stepped into a dead husband’s shoes as has happened in Sri Lanka.

President Chandrika Kumaratunga and her mother, Prime Minister Sirima Bandaranaike joined politics after losing their husbands. Kumaratunga’s politician-husband was murdered and her father, prime minister Solomon Dias, was shot dead by a monk in 1959.

Election-related attacks on women, particularly one incident when an opposition women supporter and three male colleagues were stripped and paraded naked by members of Kumaratunga’s ruling party last month, have angered women’s groups.

“We are angered and ashamed to see these things happening when a woman is at the helm of affairs in this country,” observed Indrani Irriyagolle, president of the Sinhalese Women’s Association for the Welfare and Advancement of Women.

“At most conferences abroad, Sri Lanka comes in for praise because its leaders are women. But this unchecked violence has shattered all the hopes we had for a better life for rural women under a woman president,” she said.

Irriyagolle, a vice president of the International Alliance of

Women, said her organisation has been involved in training nearly 400 rural women for a role in politics since 1985.

“We have had extensive training courses on women’s rights, lessons on the Constitution, and civil and political rights,” she said, adding that they planned to field 100 women candidates in the general election due in 2000.

But she clarified that this would depend on President Kumaratunga taking steps to ensure the five elections due this year would be peaceful. “We cannot enter the political mainstream if violence continues unchecked,” she stated.

A political culture where women will feel safe can be created by women and other members of the family who must put pressure on the men to stop the violence, according to Ruwanpathirana, director of the Gender Resource Centre of the Participatory Institute of Development Alternatives here.

“Women cannot contest in the culture of violence. So our priority should be to ensure violence-free elections,” she added.