Monrovia – Ahead of the 2020 Senatorial election, the Coalition of Political Parties Women in Liberia (COPPWIL) says it is time to start preparing women for election in order to have voiced in the decision making of Liberia.
The group, which is a conglomeration of women from all political parties in the country, believed that there is a need for women to be enlightened about major issues affecting them and their community or county.
Addressing a news conference, the vice chairperson for political affairs of COPPWIL, Nuwoe A.D. Scott, said having less women at the Liberian Senate is unfair to them as women, so they need to join hands to have more female representation at the legislature.
Madam Scott said the organization that was established on May 17, 2003 to empower women in politics and encourage women to join political parties is committed to addressing the needs of women during and after political period.
“We believed as an organization that women should be institutional when it comes to elections. As women in political parties, we feel is unfair to have 30 senators who are basically male and one female. So looking at this COPPWIL has decided to carry out several activities leading to the 2020 election,” the COPPWIL vice chairperson said.
COPPWIL has meanwhile appreciated President George Weah for his continuous support to women in Liberia.
She disclosed that they have started internal training every Saturday looking at the Beijing Platform on 12 critical areas, which involve women and the environment, women and politics, which is to prepare them for the 2020 and 2023 elections.
According to her, the training is intended to bring women up to speed in their communities and districts with political activities so that they can be part of the decision making and not say it is a man’s world.
“The training will include presentation on key topics, preparing women for elections, preparing women to be legislators. We don’t just want to push women to be lawmakers or legislators but we want women to be a voiced, it is not just about being a lawmaker because all my friends are lawmakers no, we want women to make a difference we need the numbers so in order to send our women there we want to do it different this time around,” Nuwoe added.
She said they will teach women the process in developing a bill, the processes it goes through in developing a bill and how it is a bill so when they get at the legislature to push female issue by contributing to the success and advancement of Liberia.
The COPPWIL Vice Chair said though Liberia is known for electing the first female president in Africa but needs to do more in empowering women in the political process.
“We are grateful that the parties were able to put out women in 2017 elections but we are not satisfied in what the parties did, because we understood that though we were successful in helping to amend the election law that talks about every political party putting up a candidate listing should put out 30 percent female but we realize that a lot of parties put out female candidates but did not support them financially and morally. We want them to be different this time around when you put up female candidates you must support them financially.”
“We want to make sure that political parties can assure us that women will be protected in the different primaries ahead of the 2020 election,” she said.
COPPWIL wants every political party’s chairlady to bring five persons to include two executive and one female youth, noting that bringing a female youth is to develop their mind to take over from the older women in politics because they are aging.
At least 165 persons are expected to attend the day-long training.