Local elections: over 120 women elected
Morocco, Politics, 9/15/2003

A total of 127 women were elected in the local polls held Friday in Morocco out of 6,024 women who run for seats at communal councils, accounting for 5% of candidates. The score of women in Friday's communal elections marks a slight increase compared to the 1997 communal polls, both as regards female candidacies that stood at 1,657 and the successful women candidates that did not exceed 83.

Although eight political parties had pledged in a code of ethics to allocate at least 20% of their candidacies to women in the communal elections, women candidacies remained as low as 5 percent.

The low participation of women was decried by some members of the coordination commission of women members of political parties who criticized political parties' failure to abide by the pledge taken by eight political parties to attribute at least 20% of candidacies to women.

In last year's legislative elections, the government decided to reserve 30 seats in the 325-seat House of Representatives to women.

Some 122,069 candidates vied for 23,680 seats in Friday's local polls which are the first since King Mohammed VI accessed to the throne in 1999 and the eighth ones to be held since independence.

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