<SOLVED>os.system needs a string in quotes

[Fred Barclay]

G'day! I've written an extension for Caja (the default file manager in MATE) that wipes files/folders using the srm command. The source code is here: https://github.com/Fred-Barclay/Caja-Wipe in src/caja-wipe.py.
(Note: if you don't have Caja but are familiar with Nemo/Nautilus: the python actions are identical, just with "caja" in place of "nemo" or "nautilus").

Here is the relevant code I'm having trouble with:

# Aaaannnnnndddddd....... ACTION!
    def wipe_file(self, menu, file):
        for filename in filelist:
            path = pwd+"/"+filename
            path = str(path)
            if not os.access(path, os.W_OK):
                print("You do not have permission to wipe this file") # Debugging
                return
            # print(filelist) # Debugging
            # print(filename) # Debugging
            print(path) # Debugging
            cmd = "srm -rv "+path # -v is good for debugging
            os.system(cmd)

If I try to delete a file/folder with a special character in its name, such as whitespace or a parentheses, the shell called by os.system throws out an error. Say I'm deleting a folder with a parentheses. Here's what I'll see:

Error:
/home/fred/Git/test (folder)
sh: 1: Syntax error: "(" unexpected

Now of course, if I were running srm -rv /home/fred/Git/test (folder) in the shell itself, rather than in python, I would surround it with quotes: srm -rf "/home/fred/Git/test (folder)", and I'd be able to wipe the folder without any issue. But since I'm calling this command from within Python, I can't figure out how to surround it with quotes.

I've tried mostly variations on

path = str(path)

on line 5, but I haven't had any luck with that. I've also tried such oddities as

path = "%s" % path

but to no avail. :wall:

One thing I have noticed (tipped off by "path = "%s" % path") is that path seems to already be a string, albeit without quotes. Not sure exactly how that happens, but I have a feeling that is to blame.

So...
how can I get path inside quotes so that I can successfully delete files and folders with special characters?

Thanks!
Fred

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Some additional info I should have included in the original post (oops!):
OS: LMDE 2 "Betsy" MATE 64-bit
Python version: 3.4.2