Mutare, Zimbabwe – More than half of the 6.5 million registered voters set to cast their ballots in Zimbabwe’s hotly contested presidential, local municipality and parliamentary elections on Wednesday, are women.
Despite dominating the voter population, women have been reduced to mostly cheerleaders in the political landscape.
In June, when the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) announced 11 presidential candidates, there were no women. In 2018, there were four female candidates.
Two female presidential candidates, Elisabeth Valerio of United Zimbabwe Alliance (UZA) and Linda Masarira of the Labour, Economists and African Democrats (LEAD), were excluded by the ZEC for late submission of nomination papers and late payment of nomination fees, respectively.
Both female presidential candidates took the matter to court. Valerio won her case and the ZEC was forced to accept her nomination papers, but Masarira was not as fortunate.
In the National Assembly, there are 70 female candidates compared with 637 men across the 210 constituencies, according to the Election Resource Centre, comprising 11 percent of candidates – down from 14 percent in 2018.
‘Disappointing’
Analysts have said that the declining number of female candidates was an indication that political power structures have remained deeply patriarchal.
“It is quite disappointing that women failed to make it to the ballot after all the work and investment they had made to get into leadership over the past five years,” said Sitabile Dewa, an executive director and founder of Women’s Academy For Leadership and Political Excellence (WALPE). “It is sad that only one woman presidential candidate made it after the intervention of the courts.”
The constitution, she told Al Jazeera, clearly stipulated gender balance but political parties were not following through.
The 2013 Constitution sets aside 60 seats of the 270 seats in parliament for women through proportional representation. They are distributed to political parties based on the number of seats won in each province.
This constitutional requirement had been set to expire this year but was brought back through an amendment made to the constitution by President Emmerson Mnangagwa. Other sections of the constitution require political parties to put in place mechanisms for women to run for constituency-basedseats.
Nevertheless, analysts have said that there has been a lack of political will to bring more women into governance.
“The primary responsibility to promote gender equality lies with political parties. Lack of political will and sincerity to promote equality on the part of political parties is the main reason why the country has failed on the gender equality mark,” Dewa said.
Glanis Changachirere, a team leader at Institute for Young Women Development (IYWD), said there was a need for commitment to advance the rights of women from independent commissions like the ZEC.
“How Elisabeth Valerio landed on the ballot paper testifies how women’s political participation and representation is itself a struggle within the struggle for democracy,” she said. “The courts should be a last resort and not the starting place for women to seek the recognition of their rights.”
Changachirere worried that the lack of women on the ballot threatened to reverse the gains made over time towards gender equality and was waiting to see how many female candidates are elected when results are announced.
“The 11 percent [number of women] who made it will further decrease after voting as some of the aspiring women leaders are contesting in constituencies their parties rarely win,” Dewa said.
‘Second-class citizens’
In previous elections, many women failed to raise the funds required by the ZEC to file nomination papers.
For this election, the ZEC raised the nomination fees, making it harder for independent candidates and political parties with less funding.
Presidential candidates paid $20,000 while parliamentary candidates parted away with $1,000 and $100 for council candidates. In contrast, in 2018, presidential candidates paid $1,000, while legislators paid $50.
Masarira, one of the disqualified presidential candidates, struggled to raise the $20,000 nomination fee and told Al Jazeera that it was a barrier for anyone aspiring to get into politics.
“We need regulation of candidate nomination fees to make the fees affordable to every Zimbabwean,” she said.
When the ZEC gazetted the enormous nomination fees last year, there was a backlash from critics, particularly women, arguing that the move was grossly unreasonable.
Masarira told Al Jazeera that the increasing costs could lead to an imminent decline in women’s political participation.
“It is sad that women continue to be viewed as second-class class citizens in Zimbabwe and viewed as only good enough to cast a vote and not good enough to be a presidential or parliamentary candidate,” she said.
In March this year, the nomination fees were challenged in court, which declared the high fees to be unconstitutional.
But Parliament, through the Parliamentary Legal Committee, upheld the ZEC’s gazetted fees, arguing in their report that there were no contraventions to the constitution by the electoral body.
Changachirere said women, who are the majority of the poor, suffer financial exclusion.
“Increasing the cost of political participation and representation like that clearly further marginalises women from politics,” she said.
“ZEC was insensitive to the current economic challenges facing the country, the fees were supposed to reflect the state of the economy. Elections must not be monetised,” she said.
Changachirere said barriers, including high nomination fees, were pushing women away from constituency-based seats.
“The continued decline of women who contest on the constituency-based seats, with many relying on the proportional representation seats, shows how hard and uneven the playing field is for women across all levels of governance,” she said.
In 2018, election observers from the 16-member Southern African Development Community (SADC) called for political parties to make the political climate more favourable to women’s participation in politics.
But leading political parties, including the governing ZANU-PF and CCC, have yet to implement the recommendations of the election observers.
Human rights lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa said Zimbabwean society is strongly masculine and very few women get support from those around them, given the generally negative attitudes associated with women in politics.
“Our highly violent, personalised, dirty and dangerous political environment is not for the faint-hearted and this discourages women from participating in politics,” she told Al Jazeera.
The New Democrats have declared a federal byelection victory in their Winnipeg stronghold riding of Elmwood—Transcona.
The NDP candidate Leila Dance told supporters in a tearful speech that even though the final results weren’t in, she expected she would see them in Ottawa.
With several polls still to be counted, Conservative candidate Colin Reynolds conceded defeat and told his volunteers that they should be proud of what the Conservatives accomplished in the campaign.
Political watchers had a keen eye on the results to see if the Tories could sway traditionally NDP voters on issues related to labour and affordability.
Meanwhile in the byelection race in the Montreal riding of LaSalle—Émard—Verdun the NDP, Liberals and Bloc Québécois remained locked in an extremely tight three-way race as the results trickled in slowly.
The Liberal stronghold riding had a record 91 names on the ballot, and the results aren’t expected until the early hours of the morning.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
VANCOUVER – An incumbent BC United legislative member has reversed her decision not to seek re-election and has announced she’ll run as an Independent in the riding of West Vancouver-Capilano in the upcoming British Columbia election.
Karin Kirkpatrick has been a vocal critic of BC United Leader Kevin Falcon’s decision last month to suspend the party’s campaign and throw support behind the B.C. Conservatives under John Rustad.
Kirkpatrick announced her retirement this year, but said Monday that her decision to re-enter the race comes as a direct result of Falcon’s actions, which would force middle-of-the-road voters to “swing to the left” to the NDP or to move further right to the Conservatives.
“I did hear from a lot of constituents and a lot of people who were emailing me from across B.C. … that they didn’t have anybody to vote for,” she said. “And so, I looked even at myself, and I looked at my riding, and I said, ‘Well, I no longer have anybody to vote for in my own riding.’ It was clearly an issue of this missing middle for the more moderate voter.”
She said voters who reached out “don’t want to vote for an NDP government but felt deeply uncomfortable” supporting the provincial Conservatives, citing Rustad’s tolerance of what she calls “extreme views and conspiracy theorists.”
Kirkpatrick joins four other incumbent Opposition MLAs running as Independents, including Peace River South’s Mike Bernier, Peace River North’s Dan Davies, Prince George-Cariboo’s Coralee Oakes and Tom Shypitka in Kootenay-Rockies.
“To be honest, we talk just about every day,” Kirkpatrick said about her fellow BC United incumbents now running as Independents. “We’re all feeling the same way. We all need to kind of hold each other up and make sure we’re doing the right thing.”
She added that a number of first-time candidates formerly on the BC United ticket are contacting the group of incumbents running for election, and the group is working together “as good moderates who respect each other and lift each other up.”
But Kirkpatrick said it’s also too early to talk about the future of BC United or the possibility of forming a new party.
“The first thing we need to do is to get these Independent MLAs elected into the legislature,” she said, noting a strong group could play a power-broker role if a minority government is elected. “Once we’re there then we’re all going to come together and we’re going to figure out, is there something left in BC United, BC Liberals that we can resurrect, or do we need to start a new party that’s in the centre?”
She said there’s a big gap left in the political spectrum in the province.
“So, we just have to do it in a mindful way, to make sure it’s representing the broadest base of people in B.C.”
Among the supporters at Kirkpatrick’s announcement Monday was former longtime MLA Ralph Sultan, who held West Vancouver-Capilano for almost two decades before retiring in 2020.
The Metro Vancouver riding has been a stronghold for the BC Liberals — the former BC United — since its formation in 1991, with more than half of the votes going to the centre-right party in every contest.
However, Kirkpatrick’s winning margin of 53.6 per cent to the NDP’s 30.1 per cent and the Green’s 15.4 per cent in the 2020 election shows a rising trend for left-leaning voters in the district.
Mike McDonald, chief strategy officer with Kirk and Co. Consulting, and a former campaign director for the BC Liberals and chief of staff under former Premier Christy Clark, said Independent candidates historically face an uphill battle and the biggest impact may be splitting votes in areas where the NDP could emerge victorious.
“It really comes down to, if the NDP are in a position to get 33 per cent of the vote, they might have a chance of winning,” McDonald said of the impact of an Independent vote-split with the Conservatives in certain ridings.
He said B.C. history shows it’s very hard for an Independent to win an election and has been done only a handful of times.
“So, the odds do not favour Independents winning the seats unless there is a very unique combination of circumstances, and more likely that they play a role as a spoiler, frankly.”
The B.C. Conservatives list West Vancouver School District Trustee Lynne Block as its candidate in West Vancouver-Capilano, while the BC NDP is represented by health care professional Sara Eftekhar.
Kirkpatrick said she is confident that her re-entry to the race will not result in a vote split that allows the NDP to win the seat because the party has always had a poor showing in the riding.
“So, even if there is competition between myself and the Conservative candidate, it is highly unlikely that anything would swing over to the NDP here. And I believe that I have the ability to actually attract those NDP voters to me, as well as the Conservatives and Liberals who are feeling just lost right now.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Antony Blinken heads to Egypt on Tuesday for his 10th trip to the Middle East since the war in Gaza began nearly a year ago, this one aimed partly at refining a proposal to present to Israel and Hamas for a cease-fire deal and release of hostages.
Unlike in recent mediating missions, America’s top diplomat this time is traveling without optimistic projections from the Biden administration of an expected breakthrough in the troubled negotiations.
Also unlike the earlier missions, Blinken has no public plans to go to Israel to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on this trip. The Israeli leader’s fiery public statements — like his declaration that Israel would accept only “total victory” when Blinken was in the region in June — and some other unbudgeable demands have complicated earlier diplomacy.
Blinken is going to Egypt for talks Wednesday with Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty and others, in a trip billed as focused both on American-Egyptian relations and Gaza consultations with Egypt.
The tamped-down public approach follows months in which President Joe Biden and his officials publicly talked up an agreement to end the war in Gaza as being just within reach, hoping to build pressure on Netanyahu’s far-right government and Hamas to seal a deal.
The Biden administration now says it is working with fellow mediators Egypt and Qatar to come up with a revised final proposal to try to at least get Israel and Hamas into a six-week cease-fire that would free some of the hostages held by Hamas in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. Americans believe public attention on details of the talks now would only hurt that effort.
American, Qatari and Egyptian officials still are consulting “about what that proposal will contain, and …. we’re trying to see that it’s a proposal that can get the parties to an ultimate agreement,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Monday.
The State Department pointed to Egypt’s important role in Gaza peace efforts in announcing last week that the Biden administration planned to give the country its full $1.3 billion in military aid, overriding congressional requirements that the U.S. hold back some of the funding if Egypt fails to show adequate progress on human rights. Blinken told Congress that Egypt has made progress on human rights, including in freeing political prisoners.
Blinken’s trip comes amid the risk of a full-on new front in the Middle East, with Israel threatening increasing military action against the Hezbollah militant organization in Lebanon. Biden envoy Amos Hochstein was in Israel on Monday to try to calm tensions after a stop in Lebanon.
Hezbollah has one of the strongest militaries in the Middle East, and like Hamas and smaller groups in Syria and Iraq it is allied with Iran.
Hezbollah and Israel have exchanged strikes across Israel’s northern border with Lebanon since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas started the war in Gaza. Hezbollah says it will ease those strikes — which have uprooted tens of thousands of civilians on both sides of the border — only when there’s a cease-fire in Gaza.
Hochstein told Netanyahu and other Israeli officials that intensifying the conflict with Hezbollah would not help get Israelis back in their homes, according to a U.S. official. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private talks, said Hochstein stressed to Netanyahu that he risked sparking a broad and protracted regional conflict if he moved forward with a full-scale war in Lebanon.
Hochstein also underscored to Israeli officials that the Biden administration remained committed to finding a diplomatic solution to the tensions on Israel’s northern border in conjunction with a Gaza deal or on its own, the official said.
Netanyahu told Hochstein that it would “not be possible to return our residents without a fundamental change in the security situation in the north.” The prime minister said Israel “appreciates and respects” U.S. support but “will do what is necessary to maintain its security and return the residents of the north to their homes safely.”
Israel Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, meanwhile, warned in his meeting with Hochstein that “the only way left to ensure the return of Israel’s northern communities to their homes will be via military action,” his office said.
In Gaza, the U.S. says Israel and Hamas have agreed to a deal in principle and that the biggest obstacles now include a disagreement on details of the hostage and prisoner swap and control over a buffer zone on the border between Gaza and Egypt. Netanyahu has demanded in recent weeks that the Israeli military be allowed to keep a presence in the Philadelphi corridor. Egypt and Hamas have rejected that demand.
The Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7 killed about 1,200 people. Militants also abducted 250 people and are still holding around 100 hostages. About a third of the remaining hostages are believed to be dead.
Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, said Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and militants in its count. The war has caused widespread destruction, displaced a majority of Gaza’s people and created a humanitarian crisis.
Netanyahu says he is working to bring home the hostages. His critics accuse him of slow-rolling a deal because it could bring down his hardline coalition government, which includes members opposed to a truce with the Palestinians.
Asked earlier this month if Netanyahu was doing enough for a cease-fire deal, Biden said, simply, “no.” But he added that he still believed a deal was close.
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Associated Press writer Aamer Madhani contributed to this report.
