Megawati a boon for women?
By Santi Soekanto
BRISTOL, United Kingdom (JP): Some overly optimistic observers have in the past speculated that having Megawati Soekarnoputri lead the country in a certain capacity would not only represent a historical milestone for Indonesian women, but also a real start to their political empowerment.
Her ascent to the vice presidency (though others have actually called it her defeat in the presidential race) indeed signified a new era for Indonesia, which had suffered severe political and power abuses at the hands of Soeharto's regime, and a new beginning for democratization.
It is questionable, however, that Megawati's election would be followed by the empowerment of women in social and political spheres. She's no trailblazer for the cause of women. She could have done more, but she neglected many an opportunity to do so, the last of which was during the establishment of the new Cabinet.
President Abdurrahman Wahid's decision, which was reached in consultation with Megawati, to create a nonportfolio Cabinet post for issues pertaining to women was indicative of the lack of seriousness in furthering women's causes.
The office was the previous administrations' gesture of paying lip service, its officials often displayed immense helplessness upon facing the tremendous task of bettering the welfare of Indonesian women.
Khofifah Indar Parawansa is a fine politician and may prove to be more capable than her predecessors, but the very limitations of the office of State Minister of Women's Affairs may prevent her from really doing anything to help women who make up 52 percent of the 202 million population and constituted 57 percent of some 100 million voters in the June 7 elections.
It is high time that scholars and laymen alike, male and female activists, tell the president and the vice president to start paying as much attention to women's issues as they have promised to do with other issues.
The two so-called "friendly rivals" need as many reminders as possible because the president sometimes patronizes women, while the vice president has not been very relevant to the Indonesian women's struggle to improve their lives.
Proof of Abdurrahman's patronizing ways was when, in May, he said he forbade Megawati to come to the crucial and highly publicized "power-sharing" meeting with Amien Rais, because she needed to tuck-in early in order to catch an early flight the following morning.
"Oh, I forbade her to come. She needs to catch the flight and you know how women are, they need so much time to put on their makeup," Abdurrahman was reported as saying.
As for Megawati, there have been cases when she did not even bother to show that she cared about the plight of other women. She failed to respond to many women activists' criticism that political parties, including her Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan), put women on the sideline, to be mobilized only as a political commodity.
She enraged women's groups and human rights activists when she kept silent following an incident last March when during an election campaign rally in Purbalingga, her supporters harassed and stripped a group of women rallying for the rival Golkar Party. Megawati said not a word.
"It's ironic how (Megawati) failed to come to the defense of the (harassed) women, as she is also a woman," Sita Aripurnami Kayam of the Kalyanamitra women's group said then. "She should have at least openly apologized for her supporters' conduct."
It is difficult to recall occasions when Megawati voiced concern over violence against women in volatile areas such as East Timor, the Maluku capital of Ambon, or in Aceh. She did openly weep at one point in her moving political speech last July when she referred to Aceh, the gas-rich province which Soeharto turned into a military killing field a decade ago and where revelations of the severe abuse of human rights only came to light after his downfall last year.
But so far that has been the extent of Megawati's involvement in Aceh where hundreds of women were raped, tortured beyond imagination, widowed or killed over the merest suspicion of separatism.
Those women and their families are now still waiting for help, both locally and internationally, but it does not seem likely that Megawati would be the one to extend it as Abdurrahman himself has moved to take the "Aceh case" into his own hands.
"I gave her the (more) difficult (problems), though, namely Ambon (where more than 400 people have been killed in the religious conflicts since last January), Riau (another province testing the separatism water) and Irian Jaya (where separatism is gaining strength following the independence of East Timor)," Abdurrahman said last week.
Megawati has now come into possession of enormous power and is perhaps a future president, given Abdurrahman's frail health. She commands respect in some volatile areas; her brief presence in Ambon during her election rallies indeed introduced a respite from the religious fighting.
It is questionable whether she has any hold over Irian Jaya and Riau, but she could begin to win the hearts of her sisters, the female population of Indonesia who are mostly poor villagers who are illiterate.
Only 1.5 percent of Indonesian women have had a college education, while the greatest number are either elementary or junior high school educated. Furthermore, they do not usually have access to public decision making, which is especially true in rural areas.
Their plight was never really an agenda in the previous administrations of Soeharto and B.J. Habibie, for whom women's issues were not really an issue at all. Hence the creation of the office of State Minister of Women's Affairs, which does not even have the authority to work with other government offices to create policies that would improve women's welfare.
This was despite the increasingly acknowledged importance of women's issues, such as violence against them, lack of education opportunities, a poor reproductive health service and wage inequality, in politics.
"Those issues have never been given the attention they deserved," lamented another woman activist, Chusnul Mar'iyah in a recent interview with the Republika daily. "Despite the fact that those issues actually are central to democratization."
Megawati now has the power to reverse the situation and help bring women issues into the mainstream of people's consciousness.
Yet another task out of the many that Megawati must have willingly taken up by joining the race for the executive position, is to usher in greater political participation for women. She is now there, in the position to open the door for other women.
If asked to recall female politicians during Soeharto's years, many people would not be able to come up with even 10 names, among them Aisyah Amini of the Muslim-based United Development Party (PPP), Ida Yusi Dahlan of ruling Golkar, the late outspoken Brig. Gen. Rukmini Kusumoastuti of the military faction, and Fatimah Ahmad of the tiny Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI).
That is because women were denied political representation, but it had not been a gender issue back then. Soeharto simply could not stand independent political activists, regardless of their sex, and could tolerate only members of the two sexes who groveled and became his cronies.
Megawati shared some of the above women's terms as a legislator in the House of Representatives, but she hardly left a mark. Journalists remember her as being there, but not entirely there -- quietly sitting through hearings and munching snacks, as were hundreds of others legislators in the mostly rubber-stamp session.
Some journalists who tried to obtain comments from her were usually disappointed; when asked about an increase in the price of fertilizer, which was a sensitive issue as it involved the livelihood of millions of impoverished farmers, she retorted that "it's not my field" despite serving in the House commission in charge of agriculture.
Now she has the chance and challenge to leave her mark.
The writer is a journalist studying for a masters degree on development, administration and planning at the University of Bristol.