On a recent visit to Jaffna Cat’s Eye met with three women contesting the Jaffna Municipal Council elections to be held on 8 August 2009. The first is a Grama Sevaka Niladari working closely with poor communities in her area including Samurdhi recipients. Many poor women encouraged her to contest so that she could work for them through the Jaffna Municipal Council. She said she was well supported by her political party and was contesting from the TULF.

The second is the leader of a Widows Society which has around 50 members. She told us she was standing because she felt more women must come into politics and that women’s rights and in particular the rights of widows must be ensured. The third is a fisherwoman from the coast who decided to contest in the elections so that poor coastal fishing communities could be represented in the Jaffna MC. She strongly believes that it is only through such representation that the fishing community can win equal rights. She said the community asked her to contest and backs her strongly. She also has support from her husband and family and campaigns until late in the evening because of this.

Ground Realities

All the women candidates were very confident and looked forward to this first venture into representative politics with optimism and hope. We were told there are eight women candidates running despite the hastily called Jaffna Municipal Council election, projected as a means of bringing back ‘normalcy’ to the area. The women are from the following parties: TNA 4, UNP 3, TULF/EPRLF/PLOTE 1, EPDP 1 and 1 Independent.

A total number of 174 candidates are running for 23 seats in the Jaffna MC elections from four political parties and two independent groups. Women account for about 4% of the total nominations. However, this is significant given that Municipal elections are being held after a lapse of more than 11 years in a heavily militarized area where the potential for violence is extremely high.

The nominations statistics from Jaffna is in stunning contrast to the nominations of women in the Uva Provincial Council elections which will be held on the same day. In Uva 23 political parties and seven independent groups have fielded approximately 600 candidates. Cat’s Eye is appalled to note that neither the UNP nor the JVP have fielded a single woman candidate and the UPFA only nominated former Minister of Women’s Affairs, Hema Ratnayake as a contestant from Badulla. The current Minister for Women’s Affairs, Sumedha Jayasena, who hails from Monaragala, it seems, could not ensure that even one woman got nomination from the UPFA list in Monaragala.

In Badulla it is alleged that at least two women who were promised nominations were removed from the final list by the UPFA, while in Monaragala, women only managed to get to the interview stage where they were asked what their credentials were, and told they could have been considered if they were ‘political widows’! We are not sure if the UNP or the JVP considered any women at all. All the mainstream political parties which promised increased representation for women in their election manifestos appear to have side-stepped women’s claims to political representation.

The Availability of Women

Over the years, women’s groups from Badulla and Monaragala have canvassed political parties to increase the number of women candidates in the Uva province. They point out that women are engaged in a wide range of community level activities, have a deep political understanding of the needs of the Uva, and have been active within their own parties to address community issues. But these committed political party activists have again been overlooked. In both Badulla and Monaragala districts a number of contestants, very new to politics, have been fielded and women feel they continue to be overlooked in favour of male candidates with political favour and family connections.

The complaint of these women is very different to what we keep hearing from political parties which state that they cannot find women candidates. While less women than men maybe interested in politics we still believe that there are enough women out there who are ready and willing to contest elections but are not getting nominations from their political parties. Even high levels of violence and election malpractices are not deterrents to some women. In Jaffna none of the women that we met seemed particularly deterred by violence or the threat of it in the future. This is brave given that the memory of the assassination of elected Mayor of Jaffna Sarojini Yogeswaran in 1998, and a few months later, that of Ponnuthurai Sivapalan, her replacement, has not been forgotten.

This is not to deny that in an already overtly militarized zone, the threat of violence which becomes particularly heightened at election time looms. A woman candidate for the TNA, for instance, had been cautioned about standing on the TNA ticket because there was a general belief that TNA candidates could be vulnerable to violence. She said ‘this was the very reason that I wanted to contest because I felt that Jaffna needed to challenge this fear psychosis.’ She said ‘we die only once and I am not afraid to face death if I have to but I must do something worthwhile while I am alive’. She said she entered the race because she felt women must come into politics. If elected she pledges to work to develop Jaffna town, empower widows and win the rights of Tamil people. When another woman candidate in Jaffna was asked by men if she was not afraid to contest she replied that since she works among poor people, and is from the working class herself, there was nothing to be afraid of.

Atrocious Record

Women form more than 50% of the population in this county and constitute more than half the voting population. Yet women’s exclusion from political decision making in this country is a glaring anomaly. Women are currently only 5.8 % in parliament, 5% in provincial councils and 1.8% in local government.

It is not possible to address this gross imbalance without increasing the nominations for women. This is the responsibility of political parties who are the gatekeepers to political representation and responsible for fostering political leadership. The appalling statistics fly in the face of the assertions made by the major political parties and policy makers who continue to insist that there is a level playing field and equal access to political institutions. How is it possible to talk of democracy when parties insist they don’t have enough women who can be nominated even at local level and make no attempt to redress this situation? Conversely while they fail to search for ‘competent’ women they have absolutely no qualms about nominating male relatives and friends.

Women’s Quota

This is why women’s organizations have been fighting to get a quota for women in local government at least. After numerous representations, submissions, appeals and memorandums to the Parliamentary Select Committee on Electoral Reform, the select committee finally agreed that political parties should include provisions in their policies to ensure nominations of women candidates in order to guarantee better representation of women in Parliament, Provincial Councils, and Local government bodies. We note with disappointment, however, that the two bills which were subsequently drafted to give effect to the recommendations of the parliamentary select committee and were presented to parliament on 7th December 2008 made no mention of a quota for women or any other mechanism to increase women’s representation.

Women’s groups have made inquiries about the ‘missing’ quota for women. The response has been that since the new system envisages a return to a ward system and a mixed system of elections, there is no need for a special quota for women as women will find it easier to obtain nominations and win election under the proposed new system in contrast to the present PR system. The historical record does not support this. Prior to the introduction of elections based on PR in 1989, women did not fare any better at securing nominations to contest at the local level, and there is no evidence to support the conclusion that a return to a ward system will automatically increase women’s representation at local level.

Indian Example