Amien Rais on women president
The National Mandate Party (PAN) strongly protests the way in which The Jakarta Post presented the position of party chairman Amien Rais on the issue of women presidency. On your June 27 edition, you wrote as a lead to your main story: "Abdurrahman Wahid, Amien Rais, Nur Mahmudi Ismail and Hamzah Haz agreed on Saturday that Islam bars women from becoming heads of state..."
It is clear that the lead is misleading and shows sloppy journalism. Nowhere in the story could the Post present a quote from Amien Rais that supported such conclusion as presented in the lead. We believe that the Post has fallen short of our expectation of professional journalism.
We strongly believe that it is crucial that the public understand Amien Rais' stance on the issue of women presidency -- which he already made clear in a June 16 press conference. Amien Rais stated that "in the Koran, it is very clear that there is no discrimination whatsoever between men and women. So as a Moslem, I can accept that women can become president, army general, university professor, housewife." Asked if he would accept women presidency, his answer was "there is no question about that." Indeed, for Amien Rais, the most important thing from a leader is not his/her gender, but the quality of the person. Again, reporting on the press conference, the Post chose to write that Amien Rais "implied" that PAN has no problem with the issue of women presidency. This is another example of the Post's misleading report: the view was not simply implied, it was directly expressed.
The issue of gender equality is one of the basic principles of democracy. No democracy can be developed with any form of discrimination. Our position is very clear on this issue, and we encourage the Post to report it clearly. PAN expects a substantially more professional reporting from the Post and invites the Post to take our hand and together work towards a democratic Indonesia.
Sandra Hamid,
Deputy Secretary General,
The National Mandate Party (PAN),
Jakarta