Eqypt – ECWR Report: Women in 2005 Parliamentary Election
Author: Womens UN Report Network
Date: March 12, 2006
A
ttachments: EGYPT-ECWR Report-2005 Election-FINAL.doc
Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights
Rising on Women’s
Bodies
Report
on
Women
in the 2005
Parliamentary
Election
Advancing women’s rights can only be achieved if all
issues at stake are taken into account, including freedom of speech and the
right to vote. It is difficult to conceive of achieving tangible advances
without putting these at the forefront of the women’s rights agenda along with
the issues of poverty and illiteracy, other impediments to women’s equality
making them easy targets during the parliamentary elections of
2005.
Soa’ad Tea’alp, the first woman martyr in the
parliamentary election, died at the beginning of the election as she was
run over by a car. Her attitude was reported as the
reason.
Introduction
Throughout the last century, women’s right to vote has
remained impaired during parliamentary elections. Women were denied the right to
vote during the revolution era, although they actively participated in the
struggle and were among the martyrs. Furthermore, women’s participation was
barely acknowledged during the codification of political rights during the
revolution. In other words, women’s political participation was rare and for the
most part they were absent from the political arena.
Women
didn’t obtain their right to vote until after the Revolution through the
constitutional amendments of 1956. However, this change remained minimal since
the amendments did not include concerted efforts to increase women’s
participation in the electoral process at all levels.
During
the decolonization and civic movements, women’s participation was always
necessary and considered as an important factor. Women were asked to participate
in the struggle for independence and they showed a strong spirit of
self-sacrifice. Many were among the victims in the struggle for liberation, but
once the goal was achieved, they had to face an extremely harsh situation in
their fight to secure the political rights of their people and family, due to
the unemployment that followed. So the victory did not translate into anything
for women and they became overshadowed by other issues. Today’s political
marginalization of women comes from the original institutions which failed to
include them in the decision making processes and severely restricted their
representation.
Women’s
representation in the legislature has ranged from 0.5% to 2.4% since women were
first granted their political rights in the 1956 constitution which allowed them
seats in the parliament until the last legislative elections in the year 2000.
The only exception was during the first half of the 1980s, when female
representation rose to the unprecedented level of 9% in the 1979 council
election, due to Law 21 (1979) that reserved a minimum of 30 seats for
women.
Although Law 21 was later abolished by Law 188 (1986),
female representation remained high because of the use of a party list system.
When resolution 201 (1990) was passed, the party lists were abolished and
replaced by individual elections, restricting women’s access to the parliament
by forcing them to directly compete with their male
counterparts.
The
parliamentary elections of 2005 seemed very different; they happened in the
midst of national political reforms that gave hope for a revitalization of
Egyptian political life and fair elections. One feature was the participation of
21 political parties. And for the first time the religious factions revealed
their true colors through representative of Brotherhood Muslim Party.
Another
feature of these elections is that the civil and human rights organizations
insisted on monitoring of the elections. This had been granted ten years earlier
during the struggles that stemmed from the 1995 elections
Another
familiar aspect that was recorded during these elections was the use of
transparent ballot boxes, finger ink, judicial supervision, use of identity
cards for voting and neglecting statements made by witnesses. This widespread
optimism that the elections generated was short-lived and many insist upon
calling the next parliamentary elections the ‘future
elections.’
Nonetheless, this fostered optimistic reactions among
women, particularly when the media repeatedly approached the issue of their
involvement in the process. In turn, it led to a law proposal, guarantying an
additional 26 seats for women (one per governorate) in the parliament. This bill
was submitted to the Ministry of Justice for review. Although this proposal does
not tally women’s votes, which reached 40%, it fails to representatively express
what this number stands for on the population percentage. This number may, at
least, correspond to the minimal level of women’s participation without the
endorsement of the law.
Furthermore, the National Democratic Party pledged to
nominate 26 women and support their political participation, emphasized their
role during the presidential elections and promoted the women’s movement and the
National Council for Women.
The
political parties committed themselves, during a meeting held last year by the
ECWR along with the Arab Alliance for Women, to promote women’s participation by
appointing a representative proportional to the number of women on the lists.
They also vowed to work with the women representatives that represent 25% of the
El Tagamoa’a party list Master Hussein AbdEl Razek to ensure safe electoral
processes shortly before the election, at a conference held by the National
Council for Women.
The
number of women representative appointed remained very
low:
However, in the end, only six women were nominated by the
National Democratic Party (NDP) out of their 444 candidates. The national
opposition, consisting of 22 political parties and movements nominated just 7
women from 222 candidates. Three women ran under the El Ghad and El Karama
Parties, one ran for the Muslim Brotherhood, and 111 women ran as independent
candidates. Though the political parties failed to deliver on their promises,
Egyptian citizens retained hope that the election would be fair enough to
achieve a representative parliamentary election and a beginning to true
political reform. The results for women were therefore a shock when only 4 women
won seats. Women were extensively used as tools in widespread acts of electoral
fraud.
Although the political parties came back on their word,
the recent developments on the Egyptian political scene remained the first step
toward achieving a real political reform during the parliamentary elections.
However, the results shockingly remained disappointing as only 4 women were
elected. It is believed that the parties used women during the elections of 2005
to gain more votes.
ECWR
has therefore compiled this report documenting with accurate facts with a view
to become a reliable source for further research and to endeavour to change the
view of what really happened, as well as advance towards better participation of
women.
This report is divided into two
parts:
Part
One
·
Using women for their votes
·
Women candidates
·
Monitoring reports
·
Demands of the
women’s movement and its pledge
Part
Two
·
ECWR’s plan for monitoring
·
Reports from
districts in which women ran
·
Names and
electoral districts of all women candidates
Part
One
·
Using women for their
votes
·
Women
candidates
·
Monitoring reports
·
Demands of the women’s
movement and its pledge
Using women for their
votes
The 2005 referendum on article 76 of
the Egyptian constitution stipulated that the president was to be directly
elected by the people for the first time, rather than by a 2/3 majority of the
parliament, paving the way for a new electoral framework in which women were
declared to play a key role. However, it was obvious during the elections that
no monitoring mechanism was in place and many violations were reported at
polling stations. In addition, if women’s votes were so important during this
election, then why were no female candidates elected to the parliament and why
weren’t women’s issues addressed?
Clearly, the lack of women’s
substantive participation stems from the authorities’ failure to prioritize
women’s political participation or opinions. Public policies in the past have
only served to further weaken women’s position, and contribute to higher
illiteracy and impoverishment, making them vulnerable to increased
discrimination. The situation has
not changed – women’s issues are not a source of concern to politicians and
their participation in the political arena remains off the agenda. This is the
reason women became an important tool for gathering more votes during the 2005
parliamentary elections, reminding us of the Algerian experience in which women
surrendered their rights without being aware.
When they first attempted to
exercise their political empowerment to voice their opinion on changing Article
76 of the Constitution, peacefully demonstrating women were subject to sexual
harassment in front of journalist syndicate. Expressing their “new concept of
political women’s empowerment,” Farkhanda Hassan, General Secretary of The
National Council for Women, declared no responsibility because “women who
demonstrated were expressing their opinions on the general interest of this
country, not specifically on women’s rights.”
The NCW saw that women were targets
for sexual harassment while peacefully demonstrating during the referendum
campaign. Their right to expression of opinion, can obviously not be fulfilled
without women’s rights and security being addressed. The media too have been
repeating a message of women’s political empowerment, but have yet failed to
show real support when necessary, even attacking and condemning women’s
participation. And despite these atrocities and the international scandal they
provoked, the Attorney General has not yet declared the results of the
investigation, betraying the way women’s issues are handled.
In the presidential election of
September 2005, women were systematically used to gather more votes among the
different governorates. National Democratic Party (NDP) representatives carried
out the pledges of their leaders to guarantee that women would have their place
in the electoral process, as promised by the president, which ensured minimal
representation for women in the local councils through appointments.
Unfortunately, this was made into a mockery. Instead women were used for their
votes through coercion and intimidation during the parliamentary elections by
the NDP and other political groups.
Women
candidates
The political power granted to women
candidates remained very limited, not enabling them to compete effectively for
parliamentary seats and reducing their participation to a token gesture during
the elections and within other institutional structures. Although political
parties always mention women’s rights as a priority on their agenda, it remains
nonexistent in reality.
The El Wafd party had only two women
out of 40 members, representing 5% of the party; only 4.6% of the 64 members of
the General Secretariat of El Tagamoa’a were women; the Naserist party had only
two women were in the Central Committee, or 2.7%.
Of course, this meant that women did
not have a voice in the decision-making about the elections, in developing the
political campaign or in contributing to the parties’ results. Political leaders
disregarded women’s potential contributions, as well as the high number of votes
they could have gained from female constituencies. The women candidates who were
nominated were only a token, rather than true representation of women.
Only six women were
nominated by the NDP
out of their 444 candidates; the opposition of 22
political parties and movements only appointed 7 women from their 222
candidates; three women were nominated by the El Ghad and the El Karama
Parties, the Muslim Brotherhood party ‘embellished’ its lists by appointing one
woman candidate as a gesture and 111 independent candidates ran for seats
in the election. Before the parliamentary elections began, there was a sense of
optimism that the political parties would find support, and that there wouldn’t
be violent confrontations in the election districts.
The
women were subjected to wild campaigns which prevented certain people from
voting, the political parties and the government were unsupportive of women and
also abused the traditional tribal values and twisted them as a means to
discriminate against them, and those supporting them, there was a case of
killing like Soa’d Tealab the female candidate in El Sharkaya, and the use of
death threats and the use of acid to deform women’s faces and other forms of
violence and sexual harassment.
This
was amplified by the fact that the women nominated were not strong candidates,
which lead to more weakness in their position, just 4 female candidates won in
the parliamentary elections, this had never before happened in the Egyptian
parliament.
Women
voters:
Women
were gathered in huge numbers and used for voting, this was easy to do in light
of the economic recession, and some women viewed it as opportunity to obtain
some financial aid.
And
so they were used as tool to help fuel the election campaigns without them
gaining any real advantage, this trend towards some women giving up there voting
right is a very negative one as it will lead to women losing what little rights
they actually have at present.
Violence:
Female
thugs were widely used to sabotage the election process, and obstruct the female
supporters of competitors also sexual harassment and the spreading of fear and
terror among the female voters. This exposed the reality of the parliamentary
elections. Although these
events came as a surprise to most people, if we look more closely, we will
discover that there are still a lot of hidden facts, because of the lack of
transparency, lack of dialogue, coalitions and unlawful pacts. This reflects the
nearsightedness of all that has taken place, as the government had not been
looking to the future at all. Since the talk of political reform began, Egypt
seems to have taken on a vitality that didn’t exist before. Everyone these days
is concerned with the political reform and the new agenda of the parliamentary
elections, but the parties based their strategies on the corrupt reality of the
political scene and accordingly employed the techniques.
The
National Democratic Party “is considered a party without ideology, where all the
members are gathered for their own personal interests”:
The
members of the NDP were chosen based on criteria such as wealth and family
power, so it didn’t have much to do with the elections or party’s agenda, it
ignored the reform plans, new thought and the presidential election program, the
declaration of Mohamed Ragab “the representative of NDP in the National council
for Women conference that include nominating one woman from each governorate
total 26 women as well as the trust of women all of that were thrown in nearest
wastepaper basket. That was very clear in the NDP nominations for women, only 6
women were nominated from 444 candidates, so it reduced the nomination
approximately the half in 2000, it was nominated 11 women candidates.
The
General Secretary for Women in the NDP “Moa’amna Kamel” said “the support given
by the NDP for their candidate Hawa’a was minimal… In Cairo the NDP nominated
Fayda Kamel and Thuraya Labna… and in El Minya Fayza El Ahnawy and Eman Abdel
Hakeem …..And in Giza Dr. Amal Osman and Fayza El Zomer.” In fact we didn’t
expect this number, we expected a much bigger number, because women played a
great role in the vote on the referendum of Article 76 of the constitution.
During the presidential election around one and half million women from 6
million total voters voted and there were many women who had identity cards and
election cards. It was surprising,
that they didn’t give women a chance to enter the elections and local council!
Why didn’t they reserve seats for women to help them enter this battlefield, was there
a realistic chance for women to win? Is it reasonable that only 6 women were
nominated by the NDP from 89 women, three who spent more than 20 years in
political life two who won in the last election, and one new face? This didn’t
happen just in the NDP but with all political parties, but the shock was from
the National Democratic Party which was supposed to express and interpret the
president words and his concerns of women in the community and involved them in
the political life.
The
Opposition
Even
parties which consistently attack the NDP both openly and covertly chose to
employ the same methods, depending on the influence of money and the twisting of
tribal values to defeat women candidates. Seven women were nominated, then three
were added as representatives of the El Ghad and El Karama parties. This is a
clear difference from 22 women candidates nominated by the opposition parties in
2000, posing an important question – does the opposition agree to political
reform or to also attack women’s participation?!!!
In addition, the
opposition nominated women candidates only as gestures, without real support. We
observed that the parties nominated women in districts with strong candidates,
where it was very difficult to win.
Examples include the female candidate for El Karama, Mona Foa’ad, who ran
in Souhag governorate, and the two female candidates for El Ghad, Bothaina
Zakarya and Nagat Mohammed, who ran in Bani Swef. Two female candidate out of
four ran in Bani Swif and Asyut: Aza Ez-Eldeen and Sanaa Mohammed. El Wafd Party
nominated Hagar Ahmed in Kana governorate and Mona Abd El Moaty in The Red Sea.
This
was an indication that all the ideals and principles were put aside for several
months until the elections ended safely. With this, the issue of marginalized
groups such as women became reduced to a mere trivial matter, or to flattering
statements on the importance of the role of women as mothers, sisters, and great
home makers.
In
the conference held by the National Council for Women with the leaders of the
political parties before the election to promise the public that a reasonable
number of women will be nominated.
And
so the parties’ representatives especially from the opposition declared the
following:
AbdEl
Ghafar Shokr: El Tagamoa’a
“To nominate 10 women”
Ahmed
El Sabahy: El Omma Party
“To nominate 10 women”
Nagy
El Shahaby: El Geil Party
“To nominate two Women”
Ahmed
AbdEl Hady: Shebab MisrParty
“To nominate
women”
AbdEl
Hakeem El Gamel: Misr Al Fata Party
“To nominate women”
Ahmed
Hasan: El Nasery Party
Refused the principle of reserving seats for politically marginalized
groups; at a time when the party was fighting to reserve half of the
parliamentary seats for labors and peasants (!)
The
circumstances and the number of available seats forced women to be set aside
just like the aforementioned ideals and principles were, opposition parties
based their programs, on unconventional views, to create the impression that
voters have diverse choices to choose from, and that by voting they would be
contributing to improving the political life in Egypt and to getting it back on
the right track, and that if they didn’t vote they would only have themselves to
blame.
Despite
this all the political parties gave in to the corrupt notion of reserving seats
and abandoning their principles. Women were naturally the first to be sacrificed
and victimized, so the nominees were weak, with even weaker results. All the
political parties (including the Muslim Brotherhood) played the election game
using sly dishonest methods.
For
these reasons voters made their choices as follows:
The
National Democratic Party: Egyptians have long suffered and endured the
consequences of their failed policies and oppression, and so they deserved a
harsh defeat, but their nominees seemed to be the better candidates in the
absence of better alternatives.
The
independents: who entered the party after the 2000 election, betrayed the
trust of the voters, because people thought that their independence meant they
were trustworthy, and so they received severe blows in spite of the good
performance of some of their candidates and the hard work directed towards
presenting services in their districts’, for example, Fayza El Tahnawy’s, good
performance was going to be worthless simply because she joined the NDP, she was
only chosen in the end because of her independence. So all candidates should
learn a lesson from this, that joining the NDP could infact hurt their chances
rather than be a short cut to parliament.
The
opposition parties: The opposition party presented a group of nearly
identical candidates, that used the same old corrupt techniques of using ethnic
tensions to his benefit, and didn’t present any different original views that
they can use to compete, instead they fought for district domination, and it was
rumored that they coordinated with the NDP, so they lost the voters’ trust,
which led voters to prefer the 50LE price for their vote instead, they thought
that taking the money was better than nothing at all.
Muslim
Brotherhood: They reaped the product of many years of patient suffering as a
result of torture, arrests, investigations and unemployment without legal
protection. The party was not allowed free movement or political participation,
but nothing was able to stop them. Their success seemed to carry feelings of
silent revenge against the National Democratic party whose economic polices had
long made the poor become poorer and women’s illiteracy more tragic. Because all
the parties were only interested in winning seats but not in improving Egypt’s
future. Issues relating to equality, justice and reserving seats for women were
abandoned. In the end, all that remained was sense of hatred on the streets
towards women, and a general feeling that women will take over public life and
exclude men one day.
The
Human Development Reports addressed the future of the region and the absence of
women from the decision making process, but it was useless because winning seats
was more important than truly caring about the future of political life in
Egypt, so the seats were lost and so were women’s rights as well.
The
Status of Women: No party supports women or is willing to spend money on
them. Except for the very few women’s organizations supporting women’s political
participation but they have limited capabilities and are under constant pressure
from the security forces.
The
National Council for Women (NCW): is considered part of the NDP, as the NDP
itself claims on its website, and its Women’s Secretariat copies international
NGO projects, but then they obstruct these projects from being truly implemented
to avoid having to truly support women or putting the government under pressure.
The NCW concentrates on supporting the NDP by issuing ID and voting cards for
many women during times when the media is focusing on women’s rights issue.
However, what is said about the advancement of women is different from what ends
up being actually implemented.
This
reflects Dr. Farkhanda Hassan’s standpoint as the General Secretary of the
National Council for Women and the Chief of the local development committee in
El Shoura Council, when she expressed her shock towards the political party
leaders whom decided to remove women from their nomination lists for the
parliamentary elections. Dr. Hassan
responded to the accusations of the National Council for Women by saying that
the NCW had a role in raising awareness about political participation for women,
it held 106 meetings and seminars, 447 women participated from different
political parties and movements, not only women from the National Democratic
party participated like some people imagined because the Council for Egyptian
Women also hoped that the constitutional amendment for parliament during the
upcoming period would entail reserving seats for women in parliament. This
change wasn’t just in Egypt but 81 other countries applied it as well. If Egypt
applies it, it will lead to the effective participation of women in the
political and social life in Egypt.
“Role
exchange” can describe how those who are concerned with the political
participation of women function, The National Council for Women role is to
influence and group together the main players in the women’s movement and
coordinate their efforts, but they get side tracked with administrative work to
hold trainings and to prepare women for political participation, but this isn’t
really its role, this is the role of women’s organizations.
Although
women’s organization are limited and are subjected to pressure from state
security, they realized they had to work with the political parties and hold
meetings with them and establish communication with them, and present
suggestions for new laws.
Only
4 women won in the parliamentary elections, they were among those who competed,
bought voices and won in the smoke and Tear Gas
fights.
Monitoring
reports
ECWR
monitored all of the women’s districts in the parliamentary elections during the
three phases in the 86 election districts, and the 127 female candidates, there
were 13 female candidates nominated by the political parties and one female
candidate by the Muslim brotherhood, and 114 independent female candidates as
the following:
First
Phase: There were 28 districts
that had female candidates in 8 governorates: Cairo, Giza, Bani-Swif, Asuwt,
Marsa Matrouh, El Minya, The New Village, and El Monfaya. There were 6 women
nominated from the NDP, 7 from the National Group for Change from different
political parties and movements, and the independent female candidates.
Second
Phase: There were 33 districts that had females in 10 governorates:
Alexandria, El Behara, El Gharbaya, El Esmalya, Suez, Pour Said, Qena, El
Aqsour, El Qalybaya, El Fayom. There were 50 female candidates running in the
elections, one from El Wafd Party and one from El Oma’a party and the rest were
independents.
Third
Phase: There were 25 districts that had female candidates in 7 governorates:
Souhag, the Red Sea, Kafewr El Shakh, El Dakahlaya, El Sharkaya, North Sinai,
Domyat. 35 female candidates ran, one from El Wafd Party and one from El Karama
party and the rest as independents.
ECWR
monitored the election in the female candidates’ districts, from all angles
under the framework of ECWR’s vision with respect to monitoring which includes
the social and political environment and the general political climate
surrounding the elections, the ECWR’s monitors addressed gender issues and the
importance of observing the women’s participation in the voting process, the
experience of female candidates, problems or obstacles they met and if the
elections had negative and positive effects on women’s participation?
ECWR
found the following results from their observations:
Emulation
of political reform: Democratic progress in return for reserving seats in
parliament and the continued marginalization of certain groups especially women.
Use
of tribal values against the female candidates by harassing and attacking
election campaign representatives and assistants, as well as voters, for
supporting women instead of men and accusing them of disintegrating traditional
values, so as to obstruct the support of female candidates.
Using
violence and death threats and the deforming of women’s faces: Terrorizing
and spreading fear among the female candidates and using violence as well as
death threats, in other words they were forcing female candidates and their
supporters and steering them towards nomination of the NDP candidates.
Use
of different forms of sexual harassment, for removing women either by
deforming them or through sexual harassment in front of the polling stations.
Exploiting the poverty of female voters, by paying bribes to the female voters in exchange
for their votes especially the votes of poor women, house-wives and illiterate
women, they concentrated their efforts on these women because their voting price
was cheaper than men, the price of voting for women was 20 LE, while for men 150
LE.
Use
of female thugs, to cause problems and start fights to terrorize and scare
the voters and make the judges close the polling stations. Money, bribes and
corruption was used in gathering the voters for specific candidates whether from
the National Democratic Party or other opposition parties or independent
candidates. There were mistakes in the election lists of voter’s names, there
were similarities in names and there were other miscellaneous mistakes
concerning the names in addition to having voters vote more than once which was
possible because of the many similar names.
The
administrative interventions: use of
public funds and government employees for presenting services to NDP candidates.
The
negative role of the security forces in the first phase and the dangerous abuses
in the second and third phases, neutrality was transcended and reached the
point of anarchy in some polling places, as the security forces failed to
protect both the voters and the candidates. The security did not face the threat
against female candidates and one woman was even shot, they didn’t protect
female voters from being assaulted and sexually harassed during the first
phase. While in the third phase,
the security interfered to stop the election process and prevent the voters from
entering the poll stations.
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