Re: 'Burqa voting' decision undermines electoral integrity & ballot box equality
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Posted by Dave on 09:08:56 2007/09/07
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Re: 'Burqa voting' decision undermines electoral integrity & ballot box equality posted by CIPP
This person's representation reminded me of a manoeuvre that the Wahabbis were trying to pull just months ago, at a time when they could never have imagined that our authorities would be so addled as to concede the whole shebang on face coverings. The fundamentalists' fallback position, of course, was that covered women would be pleased and good enough to reveal themselves to female officials for identification purposes.
Sorry, not good enough. This simply installs gender apartheid and its principles at the heart of our government. How? By forcing state agents and agencies to respect and enforce sharia assumptions, thereby bending governance to the convenience of radical fundamentalism.
Under this system, male assistants would be barred from performing their constitutionally-proper tasks of voter verification. They would also be disadvantaged in career terms by having their gender's utility to the system reduced. Think of the relative utility and career security and prospects of a bilingual officer, versus a unilingual officer, in a two-language milieu. Now consider the relative value of female and male officers, one group restricted by gender (and accommodationist policy) from performing "full duty" vis-à-vis their "public". Indeed, those concerned about "shariaistic" gender apartheid in public swimming facilities have long noted corresponding facility reductions in male lifeguards and other male employees and related employment from the scene.
There is also a neat question about the professional, ethical and legal standing of those female officers who would refuse, on deeply-held philosophical and Charter convictions, to participate in the contemplated state-legitimized sharia-style, gender-apartheid policy.
So any "solution" involving veiled females graciously agreeing to expose themselves only to female agents of state, is no solution; it is yet another incursion of radical fundamentalism into our very process of governance and enforcement of equality before the law. It would constitute a fraud on the system.
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