You want more women in the national assembly? Here you are! Handpicked in a calculated way, one is tempted to believe, to put all the women of this country off any such claims in the future. This is the impression one gets when one hears some of the female candidates fielded by the two main alliances open their mouths. 

And enough of those clichés which have become like a broken record that while incompetent women get a lot of flak, nobody questions the competence of men. Of course we do and we come down very hard on them every time we feel they have not been up to the mark. Of course we scrutinise and criticise every act which is reprehensible. And most of them take it on the chin. Those who don’t, who cares? What they don’t do is run and hide behind their kind and make every act they are responsible for acceptable just because they are men and every justified criticism which ensues from it an attack on mankind. 

When it comes to women, they first get where they are on the basis that we need more women to fight for the rights of others. And we really nurture high hopes every time that when women are given more opportunities, they can do politics differently – which would reflect well on other women and open more opportunities for them too. 

From the track record of many of the women in parliament today and those who hope to make it there, the only thing they have managed to prove is that they can equal and at times surpass men in lack of ethics, uncouthness and moral bankruptcy. Who can forget the ease with which both Mireille Martin and Pratibha Bholah crossed the floor without blinking? Who doesn’t remember how they both moaned about harassment from the Labour Party members, hotfooted their way to the press to denounce these acts of ‘harassment’ before jumping on the ministerial and the PPS seats and holding on to them for dear life?

The latest figure of ridicule, however, is Sandhya Boygah, MSM candidate for the coming election. ‘You are my God’, ‘I pray to you’ and ‘I will always be loyal to you’ – she writes. Nothing wrong, until you find out she is addressing – not the God we know but the prime minister! When the latter discloses the contents of the letter – something we have equally condemned but that’s a debate for another day – she feels that it is an insult to womankind! Really? How many women would condone the worshipping of politicians?

But worse, when Paul Bérenger dares mention the colour of her sari – it could just as easily have been a dress, a shirt or a sirwal Kameez – suggesting that when she was courting the Labour Party, her sari was red and that it suddenly turned purple when she wanted to switch to the MMM before it became orange in her later days – she spins a communal story about the sari and how Bérenger’s attack is not on the opportunists who switch sides at the slightest whiff of profit or even on women but on all the Hindu women! What kind of skewed brain can make that jump?

One thing is for sure: many of the women lining up to enter our national assembly may not have shone for their morals, but they certainly are fast learners! And don’t you dare criticise them as you may turn into a racist misogynistic rogue! We are masters at the game!