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October 17, 2000
The Daily Star.
The world's first woman prime minister died just
minutes after casting her ballot in national elections. She was survived by her
daughter, who is president, and her son, an opposition leader, reports AP.
Sirimavo Bandaranaike's death at 84 came also on the 60th anniversary of her
marriage to another former prime minister, murdered decades earlier.
In South Asia, political leadership has long been a family affair, with
dynasties often dominated by women thrust into power upon the slaying of their
husbands or fathers.
Women in the subcontinent for the most part are still treated as second-class
citizens who are sold into marriage, banished if they fail to produce sons, and
consigned to spend their lives serving men.
Yet the daughters and wives of many politicians in this region take over
countries when their husbands or fathers fall, even though they have little
political or professional experience.
"The people feel that the wife is the best to carry on,"
Bandaranaike told The Associated Press in an interview in 1988. "They trust
the wife to carry on the husband's policies more than anyone else."
Bandaranaike added: "There is a certain amount of sympathy for the
widow. You can't deny that also helps."
Bandaranaike was transformed from shy housewife into a political dynamo after
her husband, Prime Minister Solomon Dias Bandaranaike was killed by a deranged
Buddhist monk in 1959.
She campaigned for her husband's party and was elected the world's first
woman prime minister on July 20, 1960. It was six years before Indira Gandhi
became India's first woman leader; nine years before Golda Meir took over in
Israel, and 19 years before Margaret Thatcher began her three-term premiership
of Britain.
Bandaranaike went on to serve as prime minister in this island nation off the
southern tip of India for three terms until she stepped down in August. Her
daughter, Chandrika Kumaratunga, is Sri Lanka's president.
"People trust women from Dynastic families. They have a certain
charisma," said Kumari Jayawardena of the Social Scientists Association in
Colombo.
Indira Gandhi, daughter of India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru,
was known as the Mother of India. She was loved, hated, feared, respected. She
abolished the princely estates of the maharajahs, intervened in Pakistan's civil
war to create the new nation of Bangladesh in 1971 and led India into the
nuclear age.
Indira was installed as prime minister in 1966 by men who thought she would
be pliable. She soon proved them wrong and stayed in office for 11 years, but
governed with heavyhanded emergency powers for the last 20 months. When
democracy was restored voters threw her out, but she rebounded in 1980 to serve
four more years as prime minister until Sikh bodyguards assassinated her.
In neighbouring Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia both came to power
following family murders.
Hasina's father was the country's first president, Sheikh Mujibur
Rahman,
assassinated in 1975. Her archrival Khaleda sought a role in politics only after
her husband, President Ziaur Rahman, was killed.
Both women were installed by male politicians in need of party leaders who
could unite the ranks by invoking memories of once-popular presidents. But their bitter rivalry is often blamed for the legislative deadlocks and
strikes that paralyze one of the world's poorest countries.
Sunila
Abeysekera, director of INFORM, a human rights centre in Colombo, said
women are often thrust into power as figureheads for male power brokers behind
the scenes. "In order to salve the male egos, selecting the widow or daughter of the
assassinated leader becomes the way of defusing tension within the party,"
Abeysekera said.
She doesn't like it.
"Politics in South Asia is quite feudal and the political power still
lies in the hands of families," Abeysekera said. "The work of
individuals is still not recognised. That's a terrible thing."
Benazir of Pakistan became the first woman leader of a modern Muslim nation
when she won office in 1988. Twice elected prime minister, she now lives in
Britain and ha been convicted in absentia of corruption. Her male successor,
Nawaz Sharif, is also accused of corruption.
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