Annas [Archives:2003/627/Press Review]

10 March 2003
Main headlines:
– JMP aspires for majority
– PM expresses GPC's readiness to give 100 parliamentary seat to women
– New details on Sheikh Mouayad's life in imprisonment in Germany
Columnist Ali Serari says in his article I think it is impolite to accuse Yemen of hypocrisy and to turn all beautiful values into instruments to be used for false campaigns. It is also so disgraceful to deface great achievements by changing them into meaningless and hollow ones. If the country is really tainted with hypocrisy, thus it would lose its credibility and a lot of meaningful senses would be on the edge. The final stage of the electoral process is almost over, and preparations are underway for electing new candidates on 27 April 2003. Tongues wagging about the role of women, as voter and candidate in elections, were too much in the recent days. Parties should have hard willingness to spur the issue of women's participation forward in political and man dominated public fields. Al-lowing women enter electoral races means we let the door open for the half of the society to practice its role effectively and contribute to add something significant to the society. Yet this means that we women their role to play to build democratic societies. Therefore, a string of international organizations and agencies usually hold several symposiums on this matter, and launch a variety of awareness campaigns to expand women's involvement in political life.
Promises were given as a method to promote women's role. The ruling party, the GPC, as well as other parties promised to nominate a substantial number of female candidates within 301 constituencies across the homeland. These promises almost indicate that the issue of women's issue was about to go into a new tunnel that may result in a qualitative turn.
Gradually, this campaign would become clear. We will discover, later on, that women were irresponsibly exploited. As the world's nations pay great attention to women's issue, we regrettably notice here in Yemen that the case is absolutely different. It seems there are no real actions at all. It is just a deceptive mechanism to gain female votes as well as to mislead the public across the globe, which encourage women to enroll in political activities, and provide a lot of assistance, and always promise to do much in this respect.
Undoubtedly, women candidates are few, so it is impossible to have a next parliament with high female representation. Still, I am skeptic that there would a single woman candidate.
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