The issue: A woman’s right to drink the wine of equality
Why can’t a woman buy like a man a legally sold product or work like a man in any legally approved establishment?
Last Wednesday, January 10, Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera used his broom to do a spot of spring cleaning and to clear the Lankan household of the cobwebs that had long clogged the nation’s march to becoming a modern state.
Boldly he used the powers at his command to brush away the tangled web of hypocrisy and deceit that had been weaved for long and which had taken over the unused rooms of the law and also had ruled unchallenged in the unused attic of the Lankan mind.
The issue was the right of the Lankan woman not merely to buy a drink but more importantly her untrammeled right to drink the wine of equality as guaranteed in the Constitution. Not forgetting, of course, her right to work at a place which manufactures or sells liquor.
With one swish of his brush and with one stroke of his pen he sentenced to oblivion the archaic law which placed restrictions on a woman’s right to purchase a legally sold product irrespective in what tavern it was sold at or work in a place where it is brewed or sold – a right all men of Lanka have had throughout the years.
Obviously the archaic law conflicts, does it not, with Article 12( 1) of the Constitution which states that ‘all persons are equal before the law, and are entitled to the equal protection of the law’. And also with Article 12(2) which states that ‘no citizen shall be discriminated against on the grounds of sex.
Samaraweera used his power to revoke Gazette 666 which owes its origins to a law in 1979 which in turn owes its origins to a law in 1955 which in turn seems to stem from a law in 1911 and which obviously owes its final origins to the prudish era of Britain’s Victoria where Victorian England frowned on the naked legs of grand pianos and ordered it to be covered up in frills lest it showed too much of leg for the puritans to bear.
But Mangala’s refreshing breath of liberal air vigorously blown to cleanse Lanka of her hypocritical mustiness was as short lived as was the cheer of those who raised their glasses to toast him for his efforts to give women equal rights as enshrined in the constitution. Like those who raised a toast had to gulp down their wine in a hurry bottoms up in one swig before the doors closed on the equality rights, so was Mangala forced to revoke the Gazette notification when this Tuesday the President ordered him to revoke his revoking order and obtained cabinet approval for his decision.
But human rights activists have demonstrated they are not willing to swallow it lying down and plans are already afoot to petition the Supreme Court to give its determination whether the revoking order on Mangala’s original revoking order giving women the equal right to buy, sell, drink their favourite tipple or work in a place that manufactures or sells liquor conflicts with Article 12 of the constitution.
The question the Supreme Court will have to decide is whether a woman has a right to order an alcoholic drink or buy a bottle or whether she has to have a man by her side to order one for her? Whether a woman has the right to work at a place that manufactures alcohol or sells it even though a man has no prohibition whatsoever to work or sell in such a legally established place. And consider the fundamental right of the women of Lanka to equality of the sexes is abso- lute or whether it’s a qualified right, even though the present Excise Commissioner is a woman and a Supreme Court precedent exists which has established the right of a woman to own a liquor licence.
And two questions the people will have to ask themselves are:
1. Whether the President has once again been wrongly advised to order revocation of Mangala’s revoking Gazette even as the President was evidently led up the garden by his surrounding advisers when last week, ill advised, he sought an opinion from the Supreme Court as to whether he can serve one year more as President only to receive last Sunday supreme egg on his face when told by the five- judge bench that he could not, that his term was five years and not six: and
2. Even as the nation readies itself to celebrate in two week’s time the 70th year of independence on February 4, whether this country has only succeeded in shuffling off the yoke of colonialism but still remains shackled to Victorian England’s prudish, puritanical, hypocritical mentality where preaching virtues and denouncing sin are considered the most practical and easiest way to qualify for sainthood in the eyes of one’s fellowmen and fellow women?