Over 20,000 women to run for 2009 local elections

20,458 women will run for the 2009 local elections, that is a share of 15.7% compared to only 4.8% in 2003, director of elections at the Interior Ministry, Hassan Aghmari, revealed on Monday.

   These candidates are split between ordinary electoral constituencies (5,178) and additional electoral constituencies for women (15,280), Aghmari said at a press briefing on local elections, slated for June 12th.

    The average of female candidacies at the national level is estimated at 5 candidates for each seat  (4.6%), said Aghmari, noting that this average reaches 10.6% in urban areas and 3% in rural areas.

    Women candidates under 23 years old represent 9.4% (1,437) while those under 35 years of age represent 52.2%, he said, adding that 55.6% of female candidates have secondary or higher education diplomas.

    With the new quota of 12%, women candidates will compete for more than 3,300 seats in the 2009 polls, after holding a little more than a half-percent of the country's local political positions in 2003.

    The electoral campaign for the local elections started on May 30 with thirty parties and 130,223 candidates vying for 27,795 seats in 1,503 urban and rural councils across the country.

    58% of the candidates have secondary and higher education level, Aghmari said, adding that these qualifications will contribute in developing the management of local affairs.

    The Moroccan government launched on January 5 a seven-week campaign to update voter electoral rolls. Some 1.64 million new voters were registered in the lists under this operation, while 3,630,886 persons were disenfranchised. 
 
    In this race, political parties will face the double challenge of mobilizing the 13,360,219 voters expected to cast their ballots and of selecting an elite of managers to handle the new tasks of development, a duty that now falls on locally elected officials.

MAP