Parti Pesaka Bumiputra Bersatu (PBB) will only pick married women as election candidates if they have the support and approval of their husbands, its president Datuk Patinggi Abang Johari Openg explained today.
He said this had been one of the criteria when picking married women as election candidates since the days of Tun Abdul Taib Mahmud as party president and chief minister. “If the (married) women do not get the full understanding of their husbands, then we will not pick them,”
Abang Johari said when responding to calls from women participants at a dialogue with him before the closing of the Women Leadership Training Programme here. The women participants, among others, called on PBB and other component parties of Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS) and the state government to ensure that 30 per cent of state and federal lawmakers in Sarawak are made up of women.
They also called on the state government to fill 30 per cent of the total number of councillors of the local councils and management of state-owned agencies with women. Abang Johari, who is also the chief minister, said getting husbands’ blessing is important as PBB does not want to destroy the family institution with the involvement of women in active politics.
Such pompous patronising patriachy from the boyish CM should alert all women what to do with their votes – put them anywhere but PBB.
Who is he to seek a husband’s permission for a candidate to represent her community (no mention of checking out husbands with their wives)? By extension, these women would have to look for orders from their unelected spouses over which way to vote.
In the modern era, even apparent dinosaurs like this Boy Rider CM must notice women occupy leadership roles successfully all over (including in Malaysia and across the Muslim world) without being treated like children by their husbands.
Women are equipped to do a great deal things more than ‘breastfeeding’ the only activity that springs into the limitd mind of the Sarawak CM – and what’s more they do lots of things at the same time as well.
Women still work in fields producing the family food with babies on their backs, in many places, while their husbands snore under trees. Time for Abang Jo to go find his tree and let women show they can ride motorbikes just like him, lead countries and do anything he can do (often at the same time) and a lot more he can’t.