Now daggers are drawn. In a typical dog eat dog or brother eat brother style women are up in arms fighting their fellow women on the way the 50-50 women campaign is being implemented.
The fight follows the revelation and government admittance that the 50-50 Campaign will not include independent aspirants has opened a can of worms with the two coordinating offices differing on the issue while the Women Caucus in Parliament has condemned the programme callings a cheat.
The 50-50 Campaign is being coordinated by the Ministry of Women and Child Development and the NGO-Gender Network. However, in separate interviews the two bodies differed on the issue of leaving out of the independent women aspirants.
Spokesperson for the ministry Silas Jeke confirmed this week that the programme will only assist 134 women who are affiliated to political parties leaving out independent candidates, however, the Chairperson of the NGO-Gender Network Emma Kaliya said the programme will support, both materially and financially, all the 206 women aspirants.
Jeke, who is also the ministry’s deputy director of social welfare, said the 50-50 campaign was supporting only those women in political parties because the focus of the programme is to mainstream gender into decision making party machinery.
“Political parties are more unified, we can not support an independent person because she is not a party machinery and also it is like almost everybody wants to be an independent,” he said.
Jeke added: “We can not satisfy everybody’s aspirations and expectations. No organization or government can be expected to fund somebody to get a post. We are just supporting them through the contributions. It seems the women are looking for somebody to come to their rescue but they should understand that we are only contributing.”
On the different stand between his ministry and Kaliya’s NGO-Gender Network Jeke just said government was supporting the network, without elaborating further. Chairperson of the Women Caucus in Parliament Lillian Patel said it was surprising that the implementers of the campaign has made a turn not to support independent aspirants after promising that all women, regardless of who they are, would be assisted.
“As far as I am concerned and the way I understood it they were going to support everyone,” she said.
Patel also attacked the implementers of the programme for the delay to start supporting the women through media coverage and releasing funds and campaign materials saying this has affected the operations of women in their quest to go to Parliament.
“We were promised that we will get the campaign materials on the World Women’s Day but up to now nothing is happening. In addition, nobody has received any financial support as promised. Time is now running out and everybody thinks that we have all the money. Even our parties are not helping us because they think we are being helped by the 50-50 Campaign,” she said.
All women interviewed expressed disappointment that despite ‘noises’ made in the media by the co-ordinators of the campaign and also the fact that donors already released funding for the programme no single woman has benefited from the programme.
“We feel that something is not going on well. It is now only two months to go before the election, by now we could have been assisted. We feel cheated and we strongly condemn what is happening because it is more of a lip service than action,” said a member of the Women Caucus in Parliament Esther Mcheka Chilenje-Nkhoma.
Chilenje-Nkhoma who is also the first Deputy Speaker of Parliament and an independent aspirant in Nsanje said the women were also surprised that the co-ordinators were always changing tune on the support procedures.
She said initially they agreed that the women would be given K100,000 to assist them with the nomination fees to the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) but later changed that the women should pay on their own and be reimbursed later.
“With this change some women even failed to present their nominations papers. Now they are talking of giving us the funding after March 20. We are now fed up with this lip service because instead of assisting women the Campaign is actually closing the doors for the women,” Chilenje-Nkhoma said.
She said it is time that those coordinating the Campaign should stop talking on it.
“After May 20 we also don’t want someone to cerebrate and claim that the women who will win were assisted because these women are working on their own,” Chilenje-Nkhoma added.
She also condemned the move to sideline independent aspirants saying at no point did the co-ordinators say that some women will be left out of the programme.
Both Patel and Chilenje-Nkhoma said it was only Pacenet which has been going in various constituencies encouraging constituents to support and vote for women. Pacenet is not part of the NGO-Gender Network involved in the 50-50 Campaign.
Some of the NGOs in the 50-50 Campaign incude Civil Liberties Committee (Cilic), Association of Progressive Women (APW), Society of Advanced Women (SAW), National Electoral Systems Trust (NEST), Centre for Human Rights and Rehabilitation (CHRR), Women Lobby Group, and NCS Net.
National Rainbow Coalition Party candidate for Mzimba west Loveness Gondwe challenged the Ministry of Women and the NGO-Gender Network to produce a list of women the Campaign has assisted so far. She said the initial agreement was that the women will each be assisted with 1,000 T-shirts, 200 pieces of clothes, K100,000 for the nomination fees and K350,000 as seed money to fund the campaign but all these have not been given to any of the women candidates.
“They should stop using women as a tool to get money from donors because we feel this is already too late for the support,” said Gondwe, who is also standing as a presidential candidate for her party.
UDF candidate for Thyolo Thava Trifonia Dafter said the women were in the dark as to what plans the coordinators of the 50-50 Campaign have.
“It seems this programme is not for us but may be for those standing on a government ticket. The problem is that most of the women can not get assistance from other sources because everybody thinks we are already being assisted,” she said.
Eteanor Koloviko, also a UDF candidate for Blantyre north, said it was surprising that after 11 months of talking about the programme nothing is happening on the ground. She also said the decision to sideline independent candidates was discriminatory.
“We are all women whether one is an independent or is from a party,” said Koloviko.
Kaliya, however, said all the 206 women aspirants regardless of their status have been targeted for the assistance if they will be successful after MEC scrutiny.
She said the complaints from the Women Caucus of Parliament just shows that the women do not understand how the campaign was working.
Kaliya said apart from the actual money the Campaign also involved support through community mobilization, lobbying to political party leaders, training and capacity building. She said the problem was that the Campaign had a budget of K320million but so far it has managed to raise only K152 million from different donors.
“All this money was put together and some was given to all nine NGOs which are assisting us in the implementing of the programme, some of it was also given to the Ministry of Women while a small portion was given to us for administration. It was donors who did all the calculations,” said Kaliya.
She explained that out of the money K20 million has been put aside to be distributed to the candidates after March 20. Kaliya said the decision to give out the money after the nominations have been successful at MEC was done to avoid instances where some women would benefit but ending up not contesting after their nominations have been disqualified or rejected.
“This delay is not of our making,” she added.
Kaliya also dismissed the assertions that the 50-50 Campaign promised to pay the K100,000 MEC nomination fees saying the issue was never agreed upon.
On campaign material, She said the process has delayed due to procurement procedures. However, she said the process was now through and a supplier, who will be paid directly by the donors, has been identified.
The 50-50 Campaign is aimed at bringing the number of women in Parliament to at least 50 per cent. Currently the house has only 43 women out of the 193 parliamentarians.
