Source: allAfrica.com
Juba — Female Members of Parliament (MPs) in the South Sudan National Legislative Assembly complained yesterday over underrepresentation of women in the Independent Commissions and moved a motion that the names of the Chairpersons of Anti-corruption Commission with its deputy and the Chairperson of Human Rights Commission with its Deputy should be taken back to the Office of the President such that at least a woman should be among the Chairpersons to represent the 25% constitutional posts for women.
However, in the course of voting women lost the rejection of the Chairpersons because 108 MPs voted for the approval of the names, 65 in which the majority were women voted for the rejection of the addition of women in the Commission post, while 16 abstained.
"We have respected the will of the majority who voted out our motion, but we are going to write a complaint to the President about the violation of article 142(3) in the Transitional Constitution which provides rights of women to be given 25% at all levels of Government" Nyayang Lok an MP representing Women list Jonglei State told the Citizen in a sideline statement.
She said there was no need for the MPs to vote for a law and the women would continue to complain their rights despite approval of the names because in the Constitutional post holders there must be 25% women representatives.
The MP said the women parliamentarians would cross-check all the institutions to find out whether the 25% provided in the Constitution has been respected.Meanwhile, MP Mary Nawai, said that in the Independent Commissions there are only 7 Women, 2 are Chairpersons while 5 are deputies.
"Are women there to make deputies but not Chairpersons? We need an explanation! Why women are only given deputy positions, women had struggled like others and what have been given to them must be respected," she said.Nawai further added that women MPs are there in parliament to ensure their presentation in the government.
She said qualified women are there to represent the 25% and may be men are the ones who were consulted by the President during the appointment that led to failure of women's consideration. "If we were asked to bring qualified women then we could have brought them to the President before the appointments were made," she explained.
Women MP Nyanaciek Nhial also said that what matters is not education but service delivery to the people and women can do that without failure.She said all the women and men had participated during the struggle and there is no question of who had brought the freedom. Meanwhile the Assembly yesterday approved the Appointment of John Gatwich as the Chairperson of Anti-Corruption Commission, Johnny Saverio Deputy as his deputy and the Chairperson of Human Rights Commission Lawrence Korbandy with his Deputy.
The approval of the appointment came after the Assembly's simple majority members voted for the endorsement of the four Chairpersons. There was an impediment during the appointment on the Transitional Constitution article 143 (3) which provided that the Members of the Independent Commission shall not be removed from the offices until they are approved by the National Legislative Assembly with two third majority of its members.
The Speaker of the National Legislative Assembly, James Wani Igga said there was no complication on the appointment of the Chairpersons through the Presidential decree before they are approved by the Assembly because both the President and the Assembly have rights to practice the Appointment.However, the approval for the appointment of the National Auditor General of the Audit Chamber was suspended for the second time due to contradicting titles while the attendance of MPs was insufficient for two third majorities that was required for approval of the Auditor General's appointment.
Igga called off the approval for the Appointment of the National Auditor General that the MPs were few for the Approval and the title was not yet corrected, saying that he would request the corrections of the contradicting titles from the office of the President.He said by next week hopefully the Auditor General's appointment would be approved.