NPP and Women’s Parliamentary Representation

Photo courtesy of Himalmag

“Now here you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere you must run at least twice as fast as that.” Advice by the Red Queen to Alice in Alice in Wonderland  

Leading political parties, mostly in the Sinhala speaking south, are known to loudly proclaim the need to elect more women to parliament. The reality has not caught up with that political rhetoric. Sri Lanka has the lowest percentage of women in parliament among South Asian countries. The last parliament had only 12 women, a mere 5.8 % of the total and a few of them, including Dr. Harini Amarasuriya, the current prime minister, came from the national list. In the recent presidential election, there was not a single woman candidate among the 38 candidates.

Since entering parliament in 2020 as a member of the NPP list Dr. Amarasuriya hit the road running taking the lead in organizing, energizing and mobilizing women around issues such as soaring cost of living, corruption among politicians who fatten themselves at the expense of the poor and the vulnerable, dwindling resources for education and myriad other concerns that are central to women’s lives. At the largely attended NPP women’s rally in Matara in December 2023, she said that women should take the lead to convince the larger society about the value of women’s contributions to work including foreign currency earnings, family and society. History, she said, is not written by women and urged women to come forward to write their own history. The call is not merely to be the foot soldiers who rally, campaign and vote at an election but to be at the frontlines of political decision making in the parliament as well. On October 20, at a largely attended parliamentary election rally in Katunayake, the prime minister stated that the NPP would nominate a large number of women. If the NPP vision for women’s active inclusion in representative politics is to be a reality then the party should create the space for women’s voices to be heard in the 225-seat parliament.

The parliamentary election is not a one man/woman race. Hundreds of candidates are vying to enter parliament as a candidate of a political party or of an independent group. Spread across the country among 22 electoral districts, the parliament seats 196 elected members with 29 additional seats set aside for the national list. The Election Commission has announced the number of seats for each district (See table below). Allocation of seats in the parliament for any district would be proportional to the percentage of votes polled by the party/group in that district. In the national list, parliamentary seats are allocated proportional to the national percentages of votes polled by each party. Registered voters exercise two preferences, one for the party/group and a maximum of three for three candidates of their choice selected from the same party/group. The candidate lists announced by political parties or independent groups are ranked. A voter may ignore the rankings in the nomination list altogether and vote for any candidate or a set of candidates of the party/group of her/his choice.

District nominations for parliamentary elections: NPP and women’s share

Among 262 candidates fielded by the NPP there are only 34 women, which accounts for only 12.9 percent of the total. The highest number of females nominated by the NPP for any district is for Colombo at five (23.8 percent). Aside from Colombo, the districts of Kurunegala and Gampaha, which have relatively high seat allocations, the percentage of female nominations in the NPP is less than 15 percent of the NPP nominations for the districts. Five electoral districts have got only two women candidates each including Kurunegala. Ten districts get only one NPP woman candidate each. Jaffna district has not a single woman in the NPP list.[1]

The NPP has asked its voters to vote for the party and not to use their preferences for the three candidates of their choice, which would effectively take away a mandate from the people. A recent editorial of the Island newspaper noted that in the event that only the party gets the vote, then the party chief can handpick the candidates. It is also argued that the attempt to withhold the voters’ right to the three preferences could have a negative effect on the chances of women candidates.

On the plus side Dr. Amarasuriya, a relative newcomer to the NPP politics at the time, was selected to its national list by the party leadership over a few prominent, longstanding male party members. This selection was a strategic move that demonstrated that the party is serious about giving space to women’s voices in the party and in the parliament. But the dynamics of the general election are different. It is competitive and the 34 female candidates are vying with 228 male candidates to win a seat within the limited number of seats proportionately allocated to the party in each district. Overall if NPP gets 42.4 percent of the national vote as it did at the presidential election, it should claim around 108 seats in the new parliament.[2] Unless all 34 women candidates get elected, which is extremely unlikely, the proportion of NPP women in the next parliament will be woefully low. Depending on the percentage of votes it gets nationally, it will be interesting to see whether the party will select all three female candidates nominated in the NPP national list.

Numbers do matter. Despite its campaign promise to increase the number of female candidates and open new spaces for a critical mass of female representations in parliament, the NPP has fallen far short of its rhetoric. However, we should keep in mind that it will be practically impossible to expect women’s electoral representations to increase dramatically from one election cycle to another in a matter of five years unless interventionist strategy such as a quota system for female representation is introduced. While several women’s organizations have advocated a female quota system in parliament, the NPP has not. Instead, it is more focused on rallying women to strive for gender equality in all aspects of society including electoral politics. Would that effort have the potential to inspire women to move from voters to candidates for elected office in the future?

Since the 1960s, all major political parties in Sri Lanka had “women’s wings”. During the past few years Hirunika Premachandra, who headed the Samagi Vanitha Balvegaya of the SJB did organize women around party politics and actively pushed for redress on issues such as gender based violence. The NPP women’s political campaign was somewhat different. Largely due to the vision and action of a few educated and motivated millennial women led by Dr.  Amarasuriya, the NPP women’s movement seemed to have worked persuasively to establish it as an important section of the party. In anticipation of the presidential election, they started early to mobilize women at the village level as active campaigners for the NPP. Its organizational structure was more comprehensive and widespread at the grass roots level, mainly in the Sinhala speaking areas. A significant feature of the NPP women’s campaign was the active participation of younger, educated women who had taken a page from the youth activism of the aragalaya agitating for a system change. NPP women campaigners worked mostly behind the scenes canvassing votes for the presidential candidate, carrying the NPP political vision to homes, friends and relatives and facilitating their presence at important rallies.

In 2021 the NPP women’s organization presented Anura Kumara Dissanayke, the NPP’s presidential candidate, its freshly prepared women’s charter/policy paper draft in which the women were asking for 50 percent of nominations for women candidates. After all women account for 52.6 percent of the population in Sri Lanka and 56 percent of registered voters. Agreeing to this demand, the party leader asked the organization to work on fulfilling it. However, as Dr. Amarasuriya stated in an interview, a large number of women who were motivated political activists, enthusiastic campaigners and tireless canvassers in the presidential election were not ready to become candidates in a highly competitive field of electoral politics. When the parliamentary election was called within a few weeks of the presidential run, the time frame available was not favorable to activate the needed women’s transitions from mostly anonymous, behind the scenes activists into a set of individual candidates competing for a seat in parliament. When Dr. Amarasuriya was asked whether this new wave of young women’s mobilization seen with the NPP was just a flash in the pan, she replied that since they have now come into the open in political participation, they would not be pushed back. However, it is still a big leap for motivated female political campaigners agitating for a system change to enter the political arena as candidates. They have to sweep aside patriarchal push backs, misogynistic and family pressures, especially for younger women, while also competing with male members of the party to enter the public sphere of political representations.

While the experience of the NPP women’s movement does not seem to result in a noticeable increase in women’s numbers in parliament, it is not a zero sum game either. The emergence of young, educated women in a mass movement has established a structure that would enable the creation of spaces for women’s voices to be heard. The NPP organizational structure to incorporate women in its political campaign is not matched by the other leading political parties. If the NPP takes the lead in electing and selecting at least 10 percent of women (including from the national list), the other parties are sure to follow if not for the next parliament but hopefully in the future.

As shown in other parts of the world, especially in the Scandinavian countries, a critical mass of women in parliament would lessen the patriarchal dominance of the political agenda. It is a paradox that while women in Sri Lanka bring to the country a large proportion of foreign currency earnings, dominate in the fields of education and nursing, record high percentages in the medical and legal professions, they still have such an abysmally low voice in the decision making body of the legislature. They seem to be largely “hewers of wood and drawers of water”. But the efforts of millennial women as evidenced by the women’s organization of the NPP demonstrates a promising start.  If the momentum can be sustained beyond the general elections, it may encourage more women, especially younger women, to engage in competitive electoral politics and become more visible and effective in the political decision making arenas in the country.

[1] Among 29 candidates nominated for the national seats by the NPP, there are only 3 women.

[2] NPP may win more than 108 seats or less at the November 14 elections.