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| Sunday, 5 December 2004 |
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SAPSRI to prepare 1500 females to contest elections by S. H. A. Careem To prepare at least 1500 women to contest the local government elections is one of the major plans of South Asia Partnership Sri Lanka (SAPSRI) during the next three years. This was revealed at the celebrations held at the Hatton National Bank Auditorium, Darley Road last week to mark the successful completion of South Asia People and Policy Program (SAPPP) on women and governance, which has been running for three years with the assistance of Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). Research, awareness rousing campaigns and training done by SAPSRI in conjunction with the Ministry of Women's Affairs and other NGOs played a major role in the recent Cabinet decisions to allocate 33 per cent of seats at local government level, to women at the next local general election. Governance Statistically, this would mean that 1287 women will be involved in governance at local level. To ensure this figure is achieved, SAPSRI and other interested organisations now face the challenge of finding at least 4000 women to contest the forthcoming elections, which it sees as being a task of some magnitude. "We view this as an opportunity for donor agencies to join us to meet this challenge", states SAPSRI spokesperson. At the forum SAPSRI announced their plans for the next three years to develop at least 100 strong, self-reliant community based institutions, to resettle 300 internally displaced persons to promote awareness and emphasise commitment on the part of the public and the government to uphold and support issues of women and child protection, to advocate new laws (strengthen existing laws) and promote the proper implementation of laws concerning women and children, to empower 3000 disadvantaged women with a special emphasis on war widows and female headed households, to strengthen at least 1500 women to contest local government elections, to introduce technology based, environmentally friendly farming to support at least 100 rural farmers, to develop and strengthen 3000 rural entrepreneurs, to envision and equip rural student citizenry to become active participants in civil society and to develop a platform for open dialogue between local governing bodies and rural communities. The High Commissioner for Canada Ms. Valerie Raymond who was the Chief Guest at the SAPSRI partnership for development forum, said that Sri Lanka has made significant advances in women in development and will achieve the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of universal primary education for girls. Sri Lanka is also well positioned to exceed the MDG goal of reducing infant morality. The Canadian High Commissioner also hailed the recent Cabinet approval in Sri Lanka of a proposal by Women's Empowerment and Social Welfare Minister Sumedha G. Jayasena calling for an increase in women's representation in local government institutions. The Canadian experience shows that this is a long-term challenge and must be met with a balanced mix of policy instruments that recognise the full range of obstacles to women's participation in governance. Local government is the level closest to citizens and obstacles to women's participation can be less imposing, so this is certainly a good place to start, she said. But at the governance level, women remain seriously under-represented. Significantly, Sri Lanka has the distinction of being the first country to have had a woman Prime Minister and of course a woman President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga has served as Executive President for the past ten years. Despite having women at the apex of governance, political participation of women in Sri Lanka has not increased appreciably since independence. Representation of women in parliament is only 5 per cent, just 3 per cent in the Provincial Councils and I understand even lower in local authorities, Ms Valerie Raymond said. Speaking on the Canadian experience she said: Today, Canada has evolved to the point where we are proud to be a leader in advancing gender equality in governance. Canadian women received the right to vote in 1919 and the first woman was elected to the House of Commons in 1921, it was not until 1957 that the first female was appointed to the Federal Cabinet. Today, 21 per cent of Canada's MPs are women, 65 out of a total of 308, while the Cabinet currently has 9 women Ministers and 30 men. The proportion of women parliamentarians has steadily increased although their numbers still fall far short of full equality. Canadian women have made for greater progress in Local Government elections and are well represented in Municipal Councils, she pointed out. Dr. Padma Ratnayake, President of the SAPSRI, Mr. Rienzie Wijetilleke, Chairman HNB and several others spoke at the Forum. |
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