SUDAN: South Sudan's Female legislators fight for committee seats

Parliament – Juba Female members of Southern Sudan Legislative Assembly are up in arms against an alleged women under-representation in the distribution of chairs of the assembly's 17 Standing Specialized committees.

A motion tabled before the House by Morobo County Women representative, Aya Janet Alex, required the assembly to amend a one-month old Conduct of Business Regulation 2010, to provide for the eighteenth Standing Specialized Committee to accommodate women to reach the 25% obligated by the Interim Constitution of Southern Sudan, 2005.

The female legislators, who were able to stand up for a debate in their first ever large numbers, argued that as mothers they are peace makers, and thereby could not provoke more chaos by unseating any of the chairpersons they could replace.

Under the current assembly leadership, women occupy 4 of the 17 Standing Specialized committee top seats and 6 seats of deputy chairpersons in addition to a pending seat of the House Second Deputy Speaker.

“We have been encouraged by our late leader John Garang when he recognized the contribution of women and in 1994, said the least representation of women should be at least 25%”, Independent Mary Kiden Kimbo stressed.

If established, the chairperson and the deputy of the needed committee will all be women, who claimed they were organised beyond doubt to sort out who among them would take over the posts.

“What we are discussing is a constitutional matter and this House must be the last to abrogate the constitution”, said Peter Bashir Gbandi, the head of the SPLA legislative caucus.

Daniel Deng Monydit had demanded that a committee should be established to first find out whether the constitution has been abrogated as women claimed before amending the Assembly Business Conduct 2010.

“If you add up leadership positions, starting from Second Deputy Speaker, already we have met the 25%”, he said. “So there is no reason to amend it. It is a law and for how long are we going to amend these laws”, he added.

The Interim Constitution of Southern Sudan is awaiting amendment to provide for the post-election position of Second Deputy Speaker. The Assembly Business Conduct Regulation was amended last month to provide for the newly created Standing Specialized Committees.

However, Deng Monydit, who moved a counter motion against the amendment of the regulation, withdrew, loosely confirming success of the startling women' bid.

His withdrawal followed Speaker's plea that the counter argument was “creating problem to solve another problem”. Speaker of the House James Wani Igga said his desk was filled of complaints for posts and that stalling the creation of the new committee would rest new problems on his shoulders.

“We are solving problems with my deputy but some of these are simply too big to be swallowed”, he stated, impliedly saying that it was the same motive behind expansion of the government ministries and increment of the number of Presidential Advisors after elections.

Committee of Animal Resources, Co-operatives and Water was approved by the House and according to the Assembly Business Conduct Regulation 2010; a new bill seeking amendment of the regulation to provide for the new women' committee shall be tabled before the House within a week.