Mehrezia labidi biography template
By Meherzia Labidi
February 2,
National Press Club
Washington, D.C.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Thank you for being here today to listen to my intervention and I hope that we will have a very fruitful discussion.
My name is Mehrezia and I belong to the generation born just after the independence of Tunisia. I benefited from a modern Tunisia, the modern state founded by President Habib Bourguiba, from the rigorous public education system, a very progressive approach to women’s rights, and a world-class public healthcare system; it was also our generation that really hoped and worked for a better Tunisia; a state where it was possible not only to develop oneself socially and economically and to dream of a modern and democratic state, but to really make it possible.
Since independence, Tunisia has become a modern state, yet, the principles of democracy, pluralism, peaceful alternation to power, and respect of human rights remained severely lacking. Tunisians have been demanding more democratization and greater freedoms from the s.
I am proud to say that one of the first voices in the struggle for democracy was a lady’s: Ms. Radhia Haddad, the founder of the Tunisian Women’s Union. She declared, in , speaking directly to Bourguiba in the Tunisian parliament, that modernity itself was not enough: “we want modernity and democracy in this country; we deserve it, and we are worth it as Tunisians.” She was eventually expelled from parliament as a result of that speech.
Some forty years later, after the revolution, we came into that same parliament building with the same dream and the same mission. It was high time for Tunisians to finally have a say in their government. For all Tunisians, human rights coincide with Islamic values, that Tunisian people shall reconcile with their history, their present, their traditions, and with their modernity; the dream was a big one. As I was among the members of parliament in the National Constituent Assembly that took office i Considering that Tunisia has long been on the frontlines in gender politics, electoral lists for the parliamentary elections that took place on October 26 have proved a disappointment; female candidates led 11 percent of electoral lists. Given that women made up percent of registered voters (up from 45 percent in October ), the low percentage of female candidates sparked outrage among female activists who had a leading role during the Tunisian revolution in and who, over the last three years, have stood steadfastly against trends that threatened to derail the democratic movement. Despite their increasing political participation and the constitutional and legislative protection for women’s political and civil rights (such as Article 24 of the Tunisian Electoral Law ensuring parity in electoral lists), Tunisian women find themselves almost excluded from “real” political opportunities. Female human rights activists and members of civil society generally agree that this exclusion demonstrates what is called “duplicity of political discourse” and the marginalization of women’s political representation. They argue that political parties are unconvinced by the principle of parity and that they nominated women just to “fill in the blanks” in their electoral lists or to clean up their image in the eyes of national and international observers. Nominating three women at the head of Ennahda’s electoral lists in foreign countries while nominating only one figure, Deputy President of Tunisia’s National Constituent Assembly (NCA) Mehrezia Labidi, to lead only one of its local electoral lists, is a disingenuous attempt to showcase the Islamic political movement’s “betting on the leadership abilities of women,” intending to “deliver the image that the West wants to see from a “modern” Islamic party.” Equally important, statistics show that female political participation is remarkably lower in the interior regions than the coastal ones—particularly surprising given that vo “A Gazelle and a Lioness:” An Interview with Mehrezia Labidi *************** Mehrezia, I know your father was an Imam. Can you tell me a bit about how he influenced your leadership style? Yes, my father was an imam. What differentiated him from other imams was that he was extremely advanced & liberal in his thought – he was a reformist. He graduated from Zaytouna, Tunisia’s most venerated religious institution, and was deeply influenced by his professor, the famous Sheikh Fadhel Ben Achour. He impacted me so much, my father… Since my early teens, he’d invite me and my siblings, but especially my sisters, to participate in the circles of discussion he had with students. We were a modest, lower-middle class family—two parents and eight children. But my father was teaching fiqh [Islamic jurisprudence]—he was an imam and a very learned man. So he had a kind of intellectual salon in which he received important members of our community— history teachers, the judges of our city, some civil servants also—and he invited us children to participate thoughtfully and critically, presenting our opinions and defending and arguing those opinions. Our views—the girls’ views—were as valuable as anyone else’s. He had a very deep respect for women & their intellectual abilities, and he inculcated this in us. He asked what we thought, and made it clear that we were all equals in discussions of ideas—both religious and political… I also learned from my father how to defend the integrity of my positions even if I must pay a high price for it… During the Bourguiba and Ben Ali years [when government coercion was rampant] he taught us never to trade our dignity or principles for security or money, never to let the government buy our silence, and never to ask forgiveness for t .Women in Tunisian Politics: Two Contrasting Perspectives - Publications
Women in Tunisian Politics: Two Contrasting Perspectives