50-50 elections campaign will be non-partisan—Kaliya
NGO Gender Coordination Network (GCN) chairperson Emma Kaliya says the organisation’s current campaign to ensure a 50-50 gender representation in next year’s parliamentary and local government elections will be politically unbiased.
Kaliya made the observation in Blantyre last week during a media orientation meeting where she urged for more exposure of women aspirants for positions in next year’s tripartite elections in the media.
“We have made a commitment that we will not be partisan in the way we are going to do the 50-50 campaign. We will not favour female aspirants of any particular political party. Journalists should help us report on this campaign in a fair way,” said Kaliya.
She said they have made several arrangements to help female aspirants win next year’s elections, including capacity building meetings and campaign support.
“We would like to engage different stakeholders including the media so that the 50-50 campaign goes forward. I am confident that we can achieve the 50 percent target,” said Kaliya.
Chancellor College senior lecturer and researcher Ngeyi Kanyongolo said female aspirants face various challenges such as limited access to media platforms, limited visibility and ignorance on effective strategies to engage the media.
NGO-GCN network coordinator Victor Maulidi said their previous 50-50 campaign only achieved 22 percent female representation in Parliament in 2009, saying the network is now geared to take the figure up to 50 percent with support from development partners, especially Norway.
He said they have engaged different NGOs including Civil Liberties Committee (Cilic) to implement the campaign across the country.
During the recent 50-50 campaign launch, Norwegian Ambassador Asbjørn Eidhammer said there is hope that increased female representation will lead to better politics that represents the plight and views of the common man.
I am a male feminist. I support women causes as much as I can. 50-50 gender equality start too late when women are old. Gender issues is not not part child upbringing even among people who are drumming for it Gender nonsense run by people because are paid by white people to do it. Tell us one Western country with 50-50 $hit? This is a system to weaken African administration. They African women have been behind for ages.
The gender groups are partisan because they are after positions only they dont care about women’s livelihood.
The gender group must send equal number of girls to schools and study science, management, economics, medicine and politics to make them ready. The high school I study we had 30 boys and 10 girls per class. Has this changed now in Malawi? We have one dump woman in charge and look at the worst results. Women must avoid this instead of promoting it. She was against owning a private jet. Now she hires one. Doing far worse than men. Election is to choose on merit because the moment you force women in then it becomes partisan. Let’s build our women not destroy them. Ntila is a rotten merchandise not worth emulated by young girls. Is this what we want. A president goes to Nigeria for further studies in Corruption, Vote rigging and White collar crime in the name of prayer and meditation.
The nation must raise girls as future leaders not in specifically politics which no proper education just like running an NGO in Malawi,
When girl are young you tell them to have sex, abort, prostitute and be lesbians as human rights. When they become old now they should lead? No