Jakarta to hold Miss Indonesia contest

JAKARTA (JP): After a four year gap, the Miss Indonesia beauty contest is being held this week and is expected to be attended by the newly elected Miss Universe 2000, Lara Dutta, the organizers said.

Chairwoman of the Miss Indonesia Foundation Mooryati Soedibyo said last week the fifth contest would be participated in by 30 women from 25 of the country's 26 provinces.

Maluku and North Maluku provinces will be represented by one contestant, while capital Jakarta will be represented by five delegates, one from each of the city's five mayoralties, in the June 7 to June 10 contest.

"The contestants will be judged based on their intellectual ability, behavior and beauty," Mooryati, a businesswoman who runs a cosmetics company, said.

She said the grand final of the beauty contest would be held next Saturday at the Taman Mini Indonesia Indah (TMII) and be attended by some 1,000 people.

Beauty contests were banned by the government of former president Soeharto on the grounds that they treated women as objects and were against religious and eastern values in general.

State Minister for Women's Empowerment Khofifah Indar Parawansa, who attended the meeting, said the government supported the event. She underlined, however, that contests such as these should view women an asset, not a commodity to be exploited, as was stipulated in a 1984 education and culture decree on beauty contests.

The decree states that contests should not be based upon participants' beauty and body measurements.

"So, whoever wins the contest will be one of the country's assets and not merely a tourist commodity," Khofifah said.

She said the urine of each candidate would be checked to make sure that she was not a drug user.

Minister for Tourism and the Arts Hidayat Jaelani, also at the media briefing, said he hoped the event would help restore the country's image, which had been badly tarnished by social unrest and political uncertainty.

Data from his office shows that the number of foreign tourists visiting the country in the first four months of this year totaled 1.3 million people, compared to 1.24 million over the same period last year.

"Hopefully, the event will help us to boost our tourism sector," Hidayat said, adding that the winner of Miss Indonesia would represent the country as a tourist ambassador at international events.

Mooryati said Miss Universe 2000 from India would arrive in Jakarta on Wednesday.

During her 10-day visit to Indonesia, Dutta would visit Borobudur temple in Yogyakarta and several other places in Surabaya and Bali. (06)