Editorial
Women's representation
National aspirations unmet
The Jatiya Sangsad's enactment of a law on women's reserved seats in parliament has three elements. First, the quota has been raised from 30 to 45; secondly, without marking any break with the past, the reserved berths will be as usual filled out through indirect election; and thirdly, the selection or nomination of the women members to the reserved quota will be proportionate to the respective strengths of the political parties in parliament. In other words, the principle of proportional representation has come to replace what used to be a winner-take-it-all clean sweep of the women seats by the ruling party or coalition. This is a new feature, apart from the raised number of women parliamentarians.All this is a slight improvement upon the past dispensation, which is essentially subjective, cosmetic and apologetic in nature having nothing to do with any objective improvement of the women's political representation at the highest possible level. This is virtually maintaining status quo. As a matter of fact, in terms of the expectations raised in the backdrop of an opportunity presenting itself for legislating an entirely new dispensation, this is a big disappointment. We have been consistently in favour of direct election to the women's seats. Unfortunately, a disingenuous argument to the effect that it involved a fresh exercise in delimitation of constituencies for women stood in the way of adopting the direct election method. The continuation of the old system, even with a slender embellishment, means that the women members would be handpicked by political parties as opposed to being elected by people. The nominated women MPs had virtually no role to play except for helping in government formation, or raising the decibel of the ruling party's voice in the parliament as yes persons. It neither gave dignity nor power to the women. The 14th amendment has failed to meet the aspirations of women for political empowerment which has been so persistently and legitimately articulated by women activist groups and endorsed by civil society leaders including the independent media. Sooner a further amendment to the law is made the better.
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