Women candidates get only 11.81 percent of legislative seats
A. Junaidi, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The country's hopes of allocating 30 percent of legislative seats for women will remain a dream for at least five more years as only 65 female candidates look likely to be elected for the House of Representatives this year, or just 11.8 percent of the 550 seats available, a study has revealed.
An inquiry conducted by the Center for Electoral Reform (Cetro) found that many of the women politicians lost the seats to their party colleagues, mostly because they were lower down the list on the ballot paper. Each political party ranked its own candidates
"The reluctance of political parties to place women candidates on top of their list has impeded women from being elected," Cetro's program director Ani W. Soetjipto announced to the public.
Around 9 percent of the current House legislators are women.
The Election Law No. 12/2003 recommends that women account for 30 percent of legislative candidates nominated by political parties. The article, however, is not legally binding.
Ani said many female candidates, such as activist Eva K. Sundari of Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), actress Nurul Arifin of the Golkar Party and activist Maria Ulfah of the National Awakening Party (PKB), were not elected although they secured a higher number of votes than some of the eventual winners, who are males and placed higher on the party's priority list.
This happened because only about half of all voters punched the party symbol and the individual legislator. If an individual legislator at number 10 on the list got the most votes but did not pass the threshold to guarantee a seat and the party only got three seats in a given district, then the top three on the list are selected.
Eva, who secured 31,237 votes, lost the House seat to lawyer Gayus Lumbun who only garnered 22,532 votes, while Nurul (81,566 votes) was defeated by legislator Ade Komarudin (61,491) and Maria (55,311) was overwhelmed by PKB's executive Muhammad A.S. Hikam.
"The election results revealed that the women candidates were just cash cows or vote getters of their respective parties," Ani asserted.
Many of the women are relatively popular or known in their electoral districts, like Eva and Maria who were born and active in their respective towns of Malang in East Java and Indramayu in West Java. Gayus, a top lawyer, and Hikam, a former researcher, are based in Jakarta, but represented East Java.
Cetro's executive director Smita Notosusanto said the result of the legislative election also demonstrated that political parties remained the dominant player in deciding the candidates, instead of voters.
"The requirement of minimum votes stated in the election law violates the principle of fairness," Smita claimed.
She suggested that the law be amended so as to stipulate that the article on the minimum number of women legislative candidates was mandatory.
Cetro also proposed that the current proportional system with a semi-open candidate list be revoked and changed into a system that meets the principles of transparency and fairness.
Projected women and men House of Representatives legislators following the 2004 polls:
------------------------------------------------------------------- No. Political Parties F % M % Total -------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Golkar Party 19 14.28% 114 85.71% 133 2. PDI-P 12 11.11% 96 88.88% 108 3. PPP 3 5.26% 54 94.74% 57 4. Democratic Party 8 14.04% 49 85.71% 57 5. PKB 7 13.20% 46 86.79% 53 6. PAN 7 13.20% 42 85.71% 49 7. PKS 5 10.41% 43 89.58% 48 8. PBR 2 15.38% 11 84.61% 13 9. PDS 2 25.00% 8 75.00% 10 10. Others 0 0% 22 100% 22 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
Total 65 11.81 485 88.18% 550