Gone like a shot: Why did Sri Lanka reinstate alcohol ban for women?
When Sri Lankan women won the right to buy a drink at a bar, they had barely enough time to get a round in before their president brought the ban back. What some saw as mean spirited, others saw as a cheap trick to win votes
“When the world is going one way, Sri Lanka is running a race to the bottom,” Thyagi Ruwanpathirana, a human-rights activist based in Colombo, said.
The Sri Lankan Finance Ministry announced in mid-January that it would lift a decades-old ban on women buying alcohol and serving liquor in bars and restaurants, putting the limelight on a law that few were even aware of. Indeed, in the fashionable pubs and restaurants of Colombo, it’s not unusual to see women, typically in groups, drinking freely. Yet just a few days after the announcement to lift the ban, President Maithripala Sirisena declared he wanted no part of the move, a call that was upheld by his cabinet.
Ranga Jayasuriya, a columnist for the country’s Daily Mirror blasted the move as a “cheap political trick”, saying the president was playing to supporters by making the announcement during a rally in a rural area.
“Needless to say that this arcane law is discriminatory against women – that it was never implemented may suggest that an average Sri Lankan bartender could perhaps be more enlightened than the head of state,” he wrote.