Daily Star - Lebanese Women And The Municipal Elections

First personMay AklAs the municipal election-mania swept across Lebanon, posters and billboards decorating the streets featured a small – yet significant – number of elegantly dressed ladies ready to enter the battlefield. This participation of women in the local polls seemed to be a key feature of progress in the country’s public life. Unofficial figures issued by the National Democratic Institute quantifying women’s representation in municipal councils following the first round of elections (i.e. Mount Lebanon) bring the percentage from 2 percent in 2004 to nearly 5.8 percent. This is certainly progress, although I am not quite sure how to describe this progress or the effect it will have on the performance of municipal councils, most of which are plagued with corruption and sleaze, to say the least. Yet one reality is certain: those women who ran for the local polls are heroes. Involving at the same time family affiliations and feuds, political belonging and religious and sectarian beliefs, the campaign for municipal polls was no less than a minefield, and the elections themselves no less than a real battlefield in which all weapons seem to be allowed. In a more pragmatic approach, it seems that issues related to women’s participation in these elections have a wide variety of origins and fall on everybody’s responsibility, including the women themselves. While political parties are usually the first to be blamed for not encouraging and not involving women in their structure and any democratic process, what these elections have revealed is that more than one component underlying Lebanon’s social fabric needs to be addressed and one core issue needs to be tackled. Here are a few observations drawn from the experience of the Free Patriotic Movement and of independent women candidates during the first round of elections, the ones held in Mount Lebanon, an area I would describe as the most liberal in terms of women rights and issues: 1. Women interested in participating in the local elections were minimal to begin with, despite repetitive pleas by the head of the party through internal memos and public appearances. The quest for women candidates was a very hard task that was eventually left for representatives of the various areas and towns. 2. Outside the scope of the party, some women who had the courage to take the initiative and express their will to participate or to actually run for the elections were ill-prepared for the battle: they failed to be part of the local negotiation efforts and expected to be advocated for during their absence which obviously did not happen in elections where each person – man or woman – fights for their own interests. 3. Another category of women who ran took part in the negotiation efforts were mostly fought by other women! As such, gender solidarity proved to be a scarce commodity and spearheading fights against women were other women … 4. Another category of women includes those who were courageous enough to take part in the battle, but who failed to engage in the political tug of war that is inevitable in such circumstances arguing that only gender is to be taken into account, regardless of the political realities on the ground. Accused of being out of touch with these political realities, these women candidates lost their credibility. 5. Another category of women are the ones who made it to the municipal councils because they were viewed as a factor of compromise, and not of consensus and strength. As such they form a weak and non-threatening representation with no real decision making and that different groups would reluctantly consent to in a ridiculous form of waiving one’s right. 6. The myth that Lebanon should get rid of its patriarchal system should be addressed in a more rational and realistic approach: turning the patriarchal society into one that supports the woman and acknowledges her role. The equation is very simple: in fierce battles such as the ones we just had, no women can survive without the support of their families. 7. Finally, you have those women who have the natural ability to negotiate, the boldness to be part of the decision making, the immunity to face defamation in a society that has no pity over merely a rumor about a woman, the courage to bear defeat, to hail victory with no compromise, and the audacity to be treated “as a man” and be a woman in every sense of the word. These women are the promise of the future in Lebanon’s public scene. The elections certainly left women unhappy and disappointed with their communities, their families, and their political parties. They also left many of them happy to be part of the 5.8 percent represented in the municipal councils. Yet it is not over. It is the duty of local and international non-governmental organizations, as well as political parties to train these women on municipal work and to turn this potential compromising and non-threatening factor into a real engine for positive change. Politics, negotiation skills, confidence-building, fighting corruption are only a few of the tasks that ought to be offered to those women now in power. In various areas of the local work, such as environment, social work, health, education, women should be given the tools they need to effect change and progress. Finally, one main lesson is to be learned from these elections: it lies in the fact that the most critical factor underlying our political loyalties, our religious beliefs, our family affiliations and concerns is education. It is the education we feed our children with, the education we make them live by, the principles we foster and the moral values we make them cherish. The need to rethink our whole educational system has become more pressing than ever and it’s only when this education starts giving the role of women the attention and significance it deserves, only then can we claim to have gone a long way in the participation of women in our country’s public life. May Akl is a Free Patriotic Movement activist.