Megawati a boon for women?

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.