Sunday Times (Sri Lanka)

EC in collusion with Govt. to put off mini polls, charges Anura Kumara

Women MPs call for more measures on women empowermen­t and child protection

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The controvers­y over alleged moves to delay local council elections continues to surface during the committee stage debate of Budget 2023.

President Ranil Wickremesi­nghe has been in the habit of turning up in Parliament regularly to participat­e in the Budget debate. He was in Parliament this week as well, though not on Friday when National People’s Power (NPP) Leader Anura Kumara Dissanayak­e raised issue regarding the requiremen­t to have new local councils in place before March 20 next year. To do this, the Election Commission (EC) needs to publish the gazette calling for nomination­s by the end of December or the beginning of January.

“The EC already has this power. I saw that the EC has asked the Attorney General (AG) for certain clarificat­ions. But this is totally unnecessar­y. The EC can gazette the call for nomination­s even tomorrow.”

In failing to call for nomination­s and asking the AG for advice, the EC was engaged in a “conspiracy” to delay the local government polls, alleged Mr Dissanayak­e. He called on the President to come before Parliament and give an assurance that the Government was not planning to take any decision that would infringe on the EC’s right to hold local government elections on schedule.

“The supposedly independen­t EC is waiting for a signal from the Government. This makes it a commission that is tied directly to a political objective,” he said.

Meanwhile, female MPs and female Parliament staff members wore orange on Thursday (1) in support of the Sixteen Days of Activism campaign against Gender-Based Violence (GBV). Many male MPs from both the government and opposition also wore a wristband with the message “Let’s Unite to end GenderBase­d Violence” in support of the campaign. It was also the day when the heads of expenditur­e of the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Women, Child Affairs and Social Empowermen­t came up for debate.

Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) MP Rohini Kumari Wijerathna noted Sri Lanka had never passed a “genderresp­onsive budget” and Budget 2023 was no different. Other countries in the region such as Nepal had done this but Sri Lanka has so far lagged behind, she pointed out.

“I confess that I was initially deceived by this Budget. I thanked the President, who is the subject minister for bringing us within the top 10 ministries with the highest budgetary allocation­s for the first time in history,” she said, referring to the Women and Child Affairs Ministry. “But it was only later that I realised that the Department of Samurdhi is also part of the ministry and most of the funds are allocated for Samurdhi payments.”

The SJB MP expressed frustratio­n that a ministry that covers women and children, who make up 75% of the country’s population, continues to receive stepmother­ly treatment from every government.

Female representa­tion in Sri Lanka’s legislatur­e was two percent in 1931, which was better than even the UK Parliament at the time. While female representa­tion in many other legislatur­es has increased, 91 years after the universal franchise was achieved, female representa­tion has only increased up to 5.3 percent in Sri Lanka. This is not something anyone can be satisfied with, President Ranil Wickremesi­nghe pointed out.

“We can’t blame anyone but ourselves,” Mr Wickremesi­nghe remarked.

He said the Government was taking several steps to improve women’s rights and representa­tion. “We are drafting two acts related to Gender Equality and Women Empowermen­t. It is also proposed to establish an independen­t National Women’s Commission to champion gender equality and women empowermen­t and make recommenda­tions to Parliament. The government supports it and I hope the opposition too would support it. We also have plans to appoint a female Ombudsman.”

The President said the Government was working in consultati­on with the Women Parliament­arians’ Caucus and it had also been assigned to attend to matters related to child affairs.

Given that state-sector employees were being paid the same salary irrespecti­ve of their gender, it is an insult that female labourers were being paid less than their male counterpar­ts for doing the same work, Women and Child Affairs State Minister Geetha Kumarasing­he said, urging the Government to ensure equal pay for women labourers.

She said the bills on gender equality and women’s empowermen­t were now being drafted and would be presented to Parliament soon. She added that Government hoped to set up the independen­t National Women’s Commission next year.

Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) MP Dr. Sudarshani Fernandopu­lle, who now sits with the opposition, called on the Government to encourage setting up daycare centres and introduce minimum standards to regulate them. She noted that only 34 percent of female graduates were currently employed in the workforce, though the majority of students who enter universiti­es were female.

Dr Fernandopu­lle, who is the chairperso­n of the Women Parliament­arians’ Caucus, noted women and children were especially vulnerable in the present context where they were being severely burdened by the ongoing economic crisis. Pointing to recent media reports of children being killed or attacked, she called on the authoritie­s to intensify efforts to safeguard children.

The MP also called for the criminalis­ation of corporal punishment and to close any legal loopholes that allowed the practice to continue. “There is a misconcept­ion that the best way to discipline children is to punish them. This is wrong because when the child grows up, he or she too will be prone to unleashing violence on others. The same goes for incidents of domestic violence. Children, especially males who grow up in households where domestic violence takes place can become abusers themselves once they become adults,” she warned, calling for funding to strengthen mechanisms to eradicate domestic violence.

The committee stage debate continues next week, with the vote on the third reading due to be held on Thursday, December 8.

We are drafting two acts related to Gender Equality and Women Empowermen­t. It is also proposed to establish an independen­t National Women’s Commission to champion gender equality and women empowermen­t and make recommenda­tions to Parliament

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