Women, democracy vital to human development

Muhammad Nafik, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Indonesia should nurture its democracy among its fragmented political elite and give women a wider role in the national decision-making process in a bid to improve public welfare and political freedom, scholars have said.

Chusnul Mar'iyah, a lecturer at the University of Indonesia, said that increasing women's participation in politics would render the country able to focus on efforts to improve people's welfare.

Women are underrepresented in the country's political institutions, which are still dominated by males, she said.

She was responding to a report released on Wednesday by the United Development Program (UNDP), which said Indonesia was among the least successful countries for improving the welfare of its people.

The 2002 Human Development Report puts Indonesia in seventh place of the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), just above Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos.

Globally, Indonesia ranks 110 out of 173 countries, just below Vietnam and above Equatorial Guinea.

The report also suggested that Indonesia and other Asian nations give women key roles in the government to make further progress in promoting political freedom.

Chusnul, speaking at a panel discussion after the release of the report, urged the country's political elite to take the call seriously to improve the country's human development.

"The government should provide more funds to regions that are successful in giving women a wider political role, because this would improve people's well-being," she said.

Women's activists and legislators have been campaigning for a 30 percent quota of legislative seats allotted to women in the 2004 general election.

R. Sudarsan, a senior governance advisor for UNDP in Jakarta, said that increasing women's political representation in regional levels would be effective in improving Indonesia's human development.

Besides women, democracy also plays an important role in improving public welfare.

To that end, M. Fajrul Falaakh, an academic from Gadjah Mada University, suggested that Indonesia review its democratic institutions and political systems to allow democracy to fully work.

"Our democratic institutional arrangement should include people in a decision-making process, especially on issues affecting their life," he said at the same seminar.

Bambang Harymurti, the chief editor of Tempo weekly magazine, shared a similar view, saying: "We need to consolidate democracy among members of the political elite at the national and regional levels as well as at the grassroots level."