Gameela Ismail on Last Day of Nazra’s Political Cadres School: “Let’s nurture hope” (Mahmoud Darwish) ================================================ #مصر #سياسة #سياسيات #مصريات # أحزاب #Egypt #politicians #women Words and Questions at a Foundational Moment that Has Started and Shall Persist Good morning. I am very pleased to be with on the final day of the Political Cadres School. I hope the School has achieved its goals, benefitted you theoretically and practically, and sparked glimpses of hope along the coarse road of women’s participation in the public sphere in Egypt. The past days have witnessed extensive discussions and deliberations on women’s role in partisan and electoral politics, and their current status in relation to the legislation. Other sessions were held to review parties’ organization, leadership as well as media performance, and potential ways of working with and through political parties—both domestically and internationally—on the advocacy of women’s issues. I have come here today to follow the same pattern by shedding some light on the current political scene, in general, and the status of women, in particular. It is no secret that the public domain is now choking, thanks to anti-protest laws which curb political participation and restrict freedom of assembly. Such laws come after great hopes and aspirations which soared so high during the 25 January 2011 Revolution under the “bread, freedom, social justice” motto; when Egyptian women broke free from the shackles which have held them captive for so long, stepped boldly into the public domain, grabbed rights and raised the threshold of freedoms and liberties. Fighting back to back with men throughout the Revolution days, women have been dragged, beaten up and detained by security forces, aided the injured, and even lost their lives in defense of the right to freedom in which they believed and for which they stormed the streets. On 30 June 2013, women went to the streets again, this time to demonstrate against the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood. Thus, women have faced two mighty powers: regressive groups which maintained that women should stay at home and contentedly accept the limited participation privileges they have been offered. On the other side of the fence stand supporters of the ruling party who bullied whoever dared to enter the political arena. This brings to mind the unforgettable thug attack on hundreds of women who attempted to hold a Million Women’s March on 8 March 2011—which marks International Womens Day—to stress their role in the Revolution and their rights to wider participation, and to highlight their hopes to be on complete equal footing with men. The biggest dilemma, however, is that after the two revolutions neither men nor women obtain the rights and liberties they called and fought shoulder to shoulder for. The exact opposite happened, instead! The regime recoiled into even worse practices; arresting youths and throwing them into jail, intimidating pro-change protesters, marginalizing critical opposing voices in the media, if not distorting and muting them. More specifically speaking, acts of physical and moral violence against women have substantially increased, developed into systematic rape in Tahrir Square in 2012, then grew into a pattern of collective male abuse of women at public rallies and demonstrations. This is not new; it started in 2001 when women’s political practices were being monitored for the first time. (An account of my personal experience and the first monitoring incident in the Shura Council elections 2001) This was repeated some years later, on 25 May 2005, under the leadership of security forces along the stairway of the Journalists Syndicate, but this time the girls went with utmost courage to the Attorney General and spoke out. This is the difference between my generation and the following generations: courage and boldness. I have had my own experience with the 2010 parliament and running against symbols of the long-time ruling party for a seat in the parliament of forgery and bullying in 2011, where things developed from bullying, beatings and fraud to a stage of alliances and votes. The first post-revolution parliamentary elections were actually fair and had a remarkable turnout, but they also witnessed a struggle amid religious currents, between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis, on the one hand, and the Egyptian Bloc, on the other. Politics came out of bullying and forgery, between mosques and churches: (An account of my experience with fieldwork and alliances in 2011) Egyptian women have made great leaps in the years following the Revolution. A case in point is the revolutionary females aged 18 to 30 years who surfed through the ebbs and flows of the Revolution, and later became founders and leaders of political movements and pressure groups and participated in political parties: the Metro Girls”, “Graffiti Artists”, in addition to the “Anti-Harassment”, “No to Military Trials”, “Against Virginity Tests”, and “Detainees, Wounded, and Martyrs’ Family Care” groups. Despite all that happened in the past four years as Egyptian women took to the streets, the key challenge remained to move from public and revolutionary participation in the streets, on to institutional partisan work, integration into state-run institutions, assuming leadership positions within the various parties, having an increased female representation in the parliament, and running for presidential elections. For the parliamentary elections, it was even more difficult. One cannot talk about the status of Egyptian women in parliament without talking about the quota system which failed completely to secure an adequate female presence and to ensure that all groups are fairly represented in the Parliament. In fact, quota has been used as an instrument to occupy even more seats in the Parliament through female members of the dissolved National Democratic Party. Quota lost much of its meaning at the fraudulent 2010 Parliament as extra seats were allotted for women, which means that the decisions would represent only the interests of the National Party majority in the Parliament. Although the Egyptian Constitution (amended and approved on 18 January 2014) requires the State to ensure appropriate representation of women in the House of Representatives( ), the new House of Representatives Law reserves as many as 420 seats for independent candidates and only 120 seats to party-based candidates( ). This gives more space to the individual candidacy system which depends on connections and financial capacity and does not support a systematic partisan life, which in turn makes political parties less capable of nominating women for the seats of individual seats and leaves no chance for less empowered women to win in the parliamentary elections. For me, quota is not an entirely bad system, but it has always been abused in Egypt and most Arab States—except for Palestine. The representative quota system applied in Egypt allows a number of women into elected councils, but the bigger the constituency is, the less likely women are to obtain good representation in parliament. Additionally, women running for quota seats will have to bear their own campaigning and advertising expenses. Experience has it that women who make it to the Parliament are those of power and influence, who probably voice the interests of the ruling regime rather than those of women, as was the case with the Parliament of 2010 and female candidates of the dissolved National Democratic Party. The elective quota system, on the other hand, has some advantages; it creates a positive incentive for political parties to place women in higher-ranking positions within their internal structures, to seek to better empower women, and to prepare female cadres for work within the elected councils, given that the political will of parties is a key factor for activating women’s role in politics. There still persists, however, a major problem with women’s quotas, one that cannot be accepted unless as an interim measure, namely setting a threshold for women’s participation which usually does not exceed the rate stipulated in laws and constitutions. Dear colleagues, the aforementioned does not mean we are not at a moment of strength. This year, Dr. Mona Mina was appointed Secretary-General of the Doctors’ Syndicate through board elections, thus becoming the first female Secretary-General of the Syndicate since its inception in 1920. Mona Mina is the fourth woman to become a board member of the Doctors’ Syndicate. She fought many battles throughout her medical career to secure a better life for doctors and all medical workers. She is the founder of the “Doctors without Rights” advocacy group which strived to restore doctors’ lost rights and worked as its general coordinator until she won the Syndicate’s board elections in 2011. Moreover, the committee of the Ludovic Trarieux International Human Rights Prize announced that this year’s award, which annually honors a lawyer who defends human rights, has gone to Egyptian lawyer Mahienour El-Masri. Released only a few days ago, Mahienour has been imprisoned under the last three Egyptian presidents, Mubarak, Morsi and Sisi. On the partisan level, I would say that my experience at Al-Dostour Party with its youths, leaders, and Dr. Hala Shukrallah gives a true hope for the future. (An account of my experience with developing male and female youth cadres at Al-Dostour Party, and with running for Party President). Despite everything, women’s participation in the public sphere is a major gain after the 25 January 2011 Revolution, which was further emphasized on 30 June 2013. Women engaged in demonstrations, elections—as voters or candidates—, civil action, developmental and partisan political activities, social movements, and pressure groups. Those women who have joined the revolutionary surge and founded and ran organized movements and strong-voiced pressure groups are capable of so much more. Women are coming to the following parliaments. The upcoming parliament is only a step along the road, a battle that we are destined to fight in order to pave the way for ourselves and for future generations. It is an accumulative quest for what is best, and a set of phases that we have to go through. Access to the parliament, as an idea, is definitely more important than just the next seat. Now, let us do some brainstorming to try to come up with answers to some questions at this extended foundational moment: Why is Egypt’s democratic transition always on the rocks? How can we instill the concepts of change and peaceful transfer of power into people’s hearts and minds, superimpose them on resisting powers? Do they actually believe that tyranny is their fate and that electoral integrity is only meant for formality talks or show off at international conventions? Are we destined to live in a State where we see no influence of revolutionary change attempts? Is it our fate and destiny to live with an incomplete revolution as well as incomplete institutions, parties and parliaments? Are elections necessary, and do they bring about people who really represent the different groups? *** Here are some questions to revisit the suppositions which we have developed to counter already established presuppositions … How can we deal with attempts to “expel” women from the public domain? By maintaining the quota system? Or by trying to “overlook” the extensive brain-stuffing process against women’s going out of their family homes, at a time when it is no longer possible to bring them back to the house? Are we supposed to ignore this? Or work to deactivate those ideas which develop into sanctities by mainstream culture. Those ideas, in my opinion, draw purportedly destined lines for the magnitude of women’s participation, hence making it nominal and limited, or a mere decoration in the political life. Such ideas drive a woman to go out only in absence of her man, or as a formality to complete the image internationally. Now, should women’s ‘forced’ or ‘show-offish’ going out be considered a gain that we must keep and build upon? Or do we have to change that way of thinking and acting so as to further expand the political sphere and end the monopoly of the one model or one elite? Suffocating the political space would lead to the marginalization of various groups of different religions, cultures and social backgrounds. This turns the political participation of women as well as religious, sectarian and urban (such as Bedouins and Nubia) minorities into a marginal and specific representation which is controlled by the “dominant model” through centralized repulsive social engineering. Should we insist on being treated as minorities living on the margins of society? Is it an awareness problem? Or is it the need for a new movement or development of our present performance? I do not have the answers … I have questions which I hope you consider in order to address not only the prevailing suppositions, but also suppositions which control our attempts for change … The road ahead is hard but it is not impossible. It urges us all to work diligently together, and to leave no room for despair. “Let’s nurture hope”, once said the great Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish .. We receive international awards while behind prison bars, we protest against the unjust laws that prohibit demonstrations, we go on hunger strikes for detainees whom we know and whom we do not know, we win presidency elections of unions and political parties, and we can—amidst all that—dream of you as graduates of this School and as great feminist cadres and leaders along the journey of change. “Perhaps if it were not for that wall, we would not have known the value of light!” (Egyptian poet Amal Donqol)
Posted on: Mon, 13 Oct 2014 14:54:32 +0000
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