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MOROCCO - POSITIVE MEASURES ON PARITY IN NEW LAW ON POLITICAL PARTIES: POSSIBILITIES AND CHALLENGES

 

By Sonja Lokar, during NDI organized assessment of 8 political parties from a gender prospective in Rabat, Morocco, 31 October 2013

 

1.      A Paradox

 

Democratic countries with long democratic traditions are very reluctant to regulate internal relations within political parties with a very nicely sounding excuse: democracy rests upon the freedom of political association. In some countries only there are special rules, banning political parties based on ideologies of exclusion of any specific group in the society or the ones which propagate hate and violence.  These rules are never strictly applied, especially not with regard the parties which are propagating values and traditions detrimental to the women’s enjoyment of indivisible human rights.

 

Following this approach of sanctity of the freedom of political association, internal party regulations of democratic procedures did not need to become a matter of detailed legal interference and sanctioning. So the articles dealing with internal party democratic rules are scarce, generalized, limited to a bare minimum, mostly stipulating that parties have to have statutory warranties of their inner democracy. On the top of it, there is little or no control over the implementation of party inner democracy rules and no serious sanctions for noncompliance. How the party will do it, or will not do it in practice, should be, by the theories of this understanding of the   freedom of political association, the matter which concerns only party members and party voters. The members who do not like the party inner procedures can leave the party, the voters who find that the party has a problem with internal democracy can chose not to vote for such a party and the issue is solved.  Nobody seems to be worried when the facts of malpractice of democracy rules within the parties are becoming omnipresent and neither members nor voters do not have a choice of any really democratic party and are becoming more and more cynical, disgusted, and distant from all political parties.

 

I find it is a real  paradox that political parties, even the ones which are  strongly depending on the tax payers moneys, are not legally bound, controlled and punished  if they do not  develop and respect strong rules of inner party democracy. Marginalization and exclusion from decision making of the women in the parties is just one,   telling sign – the best Litmus test- of the parties’ lack of inner democracy. So we have, all over the globe, an incredible tacit presumption that the rule of low in a nation and parliamentary democracy could be built upon political parties without legally warranted inner democracy and respect of their own internal democratic procedures and their internal rule of law.

 

2.      Moroccan Innovations in the New  Political Party Law

 

Left and green parties in Europe have at least half a century long tradition of special women party organizations and positive measures for equal women’s representation in party organs, but the praxis to enact any positive measures for all political parties, is rather new and connected to the new wave of so called “fast track” women strategies to achieve gender equality in transitions and post conflict emerging democracies.

 

After Beijing UN 4thWorld conference on Women (1995), the idea of the need of strong  positive measures for leveling the balance of power of men and women in all walks of life, including in political life and within political parties, got ground. But it took women all over the world some 15 years to discover that the parties are THE obstacle or THE tool for achieving de facto gender equality in politics. Women movements and women from political parties and trade unions started to ask for voluntary party positive   measures, especially quotas for decision making bodies and freedom of autonomous organizing in special organizations of women within the parties.  They discovered relatively quickly, especially in the emerging democracies and post conflict societies that without legal regulations of women’s representation in all branches of power, the progress towards parity will drag for centuries. So after 1995 more and more women nationwide movements succeeded with legal regulations for quotas or parity in electoral legislation. But the legislation regarding gender power balance within the parties themselves stayed out of this new process of so called gender mainstreaming.

 

After the fall of the Berlin wall, in European post socialist transition countries I do not know any case of political party law which would so explicitly regulate the obligation of the party to deal with implementation of parity, as this is the case of the new Moroccan law.

 

Slovenia was the only new post-socialist democracy which has in the mid-nineties of the former century included two very cautious articles, 19. 4 and 19.5 in its law on political parties  with the aim to encourage the parties to use positive measures only for their lists for elections outside the party.

 

These two articles reads like as follows:

 

“The party statute must precise

Article 19.4 : The procedure and the organ which will nominate the candidates for elections for the male or female president of the republic, male and female candidates for the members of State Assembly, and male and female candidates for the elections of the organs of local communities;

 

and

 

Article 19.5 : The way how the party  will ensure equal chances  of both sexes while nominating the  candidates for the elections from the article 19.4

 

No state organ was designated to control the implementation of this article, neither were there the sanctions for noncompliance.   The practice showed that the parties even if they established voluntary party quotas for electoral lists and sometimes for their party organs, never respected these measures to the full.  So women movements in the South end Eastern Europe were fiercely advocating and succeeded to enact firm quota rules for all levels of legislative elections. But the disproportion of political power of women within the parties stayed intact.

 

From this point of view Moroccan Party law articles, stipulating that every party needs to establish its Parity and equality commission which will be tasked to “work on parity” and has to have at least 30% of women in the membership of all party decision making bodies, is an institutional innovation and a huge step forward in the improving of the legal standards of democratic procedures within political parties. All Moroccan political parties were bound to adjust their party Statutes to this law, and to send their newly amended bylaws to the relevant ministry for approval. Helas, Moroccan new law on political parties also does not stipulate any state organ which will control if this article is respected by the parties also in practice, neither foresees whatsoever penalties for the noncompliance.

 

Older secular parties in Morocco have decades’ long tradition of internal party women organizations, and some of them also of the quotas for their party decision making bodies, Party of progress and Socialism even already had a party commission on equality of women and men, but the new law on political parties now expects of all party leaderships to take over the responsibility  for the implementation of parity which has been included as a new democratic principle in the country new Constitution.

 

Like any legal innovation which has to be applied in “one fits all style” to different political parties with different history, ideological background and political culture, it would take women in political parties time, energy and learning from mistakes, to figure out how to effectively use this legal novelty.

Party activists for women human rights and parity are aware that party women organizations that they have developed in the past, stayed weak and marginalized in the parties but were really instrumental in the progress towards parity and gender equality in the society only when Moroccan women activists find the way to build a nationwide consensus of all active, progressive women from all walks of life and create pressure strong enough on all political parties from the  civil society.

 

3.      The Challenge

 

What is the dilemma of women party fighters for gender equality in Morocco now?

 

Should they close down their special party women organizations and replace them by new Party Parity Commissions, or it would be wiser just to add this new gender mainstreaming mechanism to the party women organization?

 

If they go for the first solution, what to do to prevent very possible development that party gender mainstreaming will become gender “male streaming”, and there will be no  party women organization  any more where women party activists can come together independently, analyze their situation only from women’s point of view  and prepare the solutions for further discussions and negotiations with male party leaders and male party members, but also strategize for their cooperation with women across all lines of other political divisions.

 

If they decide to go for the second solution, to have both, Party Parity Commission and Party Women Organization, what to do to avoid potential organizational  mess and trigger a power fight between two party bodies, which will block and finally ruin  their capacity to deal with party gender equality strategy all together? 

 

From my long experience in party and civil society work on gender equality, there could be no gender mainstreaming in the parties, without the stream. No real gender equality party policies if there is no genuine, autonomous, strong party women organization. But also vice versa, there could be no gender mainstreaming if the party does not have a formal structure where male and female party members can openly discuss gender equality and party gender equality priorities and policies in order to find consensually feasible solutions.  One would think that party most important decision making bodies should play this role, but it became clear in practice, that this was never the case. It was too difficult to make party executive not to listen, but to really hear. So there is an opportunity that Party Parity Commission with its mixed membership, if properly designed, can become the forum where a real political dialogue between men and women party members could be organized and become effective.

Like in the past, everything will depend on the ability of women human rights activists within the parties to persuade party leaderships to make this commission important, to define a clear cut mandates and democratic ways of cooperation between Party Parity Commission, Party Women Organization and party executive leadership. This one will be tough, especially in the political culture of the parties in all new and emerging democracies which is predominantly leaning towards  autocratic party leadership,  where party leader’s ability to master the methodology of “divide et impera”, insures his longevity  on the top.  

But who would have bet on the possibility of Moroccan women to get parity in their new Constitution, to jump from 0.5 % of women in parliament in 2007 to 17% of today?

 

Everything good seems impossible until it is done!

 

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Sonia Lokar, Executive Director

CEE Network for Gender Issues

Ljubljana, Slovenia Office