If you start night shifts, Sajith, you send your wife for my night shift – A Sri Lankan Marxist demands

Meanwhile the same party appoints a woman to central committee

A Marxist political party of Sri Lanka has appointed a woman for its central committee. The party is Frontline Socialist Party (FSP), a breakaway of People’s Liberation Front (JVP) and appointed Hemamali Aberathna, a women’s rights activist as a member of its 17-member central committee.

Frontline Socialist Party Central Committee

Sri Lankan left parties are traditionally extremely male dominated and no party has appointed a woman for the politburo in the history. FSP and JVP central committees are also very rarely represented by women.

JVP’s 25 member central committee is represented by two women, Chandrika Adhikarai and Samanmalee Gunasinghe.

Translations by Creative Content Consultants

None of these JVP and FSP women are prominent in their political activities.

Dimuthu Atygala was a woman leader who emerged from JVP and FSP but she appears to have quit from politics after she and FSP leader Kumar Gunaratnam were abducted and released by Rajapaksa regime in 2012.

A tiny leftist party led by Mahinda Dewage, Socialist Party of Sri Lanka, has fielded a woman, Dr. Ajantha Perera, as their presidential candidate in the upcoming election.

All the other leftist political parties have very few female members and extremely few leaders.

Meanwhile, a leading campaigner of FSP, Kanishka Chaminda Jayalath, a Sri Lankan expatriate in Australia who is visiting the country during the election time posted the below note in Facebook symbolically indicating the cause for the low participation of women in leftist politics. This post is not only sexist, it displays the attitudes of leftists regarding women and labour too.

The post criticizing United National Party presidential candidate Sajith Premadasa’s proposal to open the Presidential Secretariat round the clock, the FSP campaigner says, “My wife is a public employee. If you start night shifts, Sajith, you send your wife for my night shift.”