Wahyoe Boediwardhana, Malang, East Java – The Constitutional Court ruling that requires political parties to assign legislative seats to aspirants who win the most votes gives enough room for female candidates to secure political jobs, a major party leader says.
National Mandate Party (PAN) chairman Soetrisno Bachir said Friday he had found that women candidates had more time to meet constituents at the grassroots level, worked harder and performed better than their male counterparts.
issue now is how female candidates seize the opportunity to secure as many votes as possible. Demography-wise, female candidates stand a better chance because most voters are women," Soetrisno said on the sidelines of his tour of East Java.
The PAN was dismissing criticism from women's activists over the Constitutional Court's decision, which overturned the legislative election law article on the party list election system.
Women's groups and legislative candidates have lashed out at the Court's ruling, which they say contravenes the affirmative action to allocate 30 percent of legislative seats to women.
Women have been underrepresented in politics in the country generally, despite the fact that Indonesia is among one of the few democracies that has ever elected a female president.
As if to appease the public's concern, General Elections Commission (KPU) member Andi Nurpati suggested that parties that won three legislative seats could award one of the seats to a female candidate.
Soetrisno deemed the compromise was neither fair nor workable because no candidates would be willing to sacrifice the seats they had won after spending so much money and energy winning them.
Democratic Party deputy chairman Anas Urbaningrum concurred with Soetrisno, saying the Constitutional Court verdict was "very clear" and did not need any interpretation.
"Because votes have no gender, whoever wins the most votes is entitled to the legislative seat," Anas said, adding that Andi's advice was not binding.
He suggested, however, the lawmakers consider that affirmative action be made mandatory for the 2014 elections.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's Democratic Party and the PAN were among the parties that proposed an open party list system of election during the deliberation of the legislative election law last year, but major parties like Golkar and the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) resisted the proposal.
A number of party leaders have expressed fear that the court ruling could spark an internal rift as the new system requires candidates to fight not only aspirants from rival parties but also fellow party members.