Hans Nicholas Jong, Jakarta – Camellia Lubis, a 28-year-old dangdut singer popularly known as Camel Petir (Thunder), is one of 2,467 women legislative candidates vying for a seat in the House of Representatives.

The legislative candidate from the Indonesian Justice and Unity Party (PKPI), who will be standing for the second Jakarta electoral district, says she has been greatly underestimated due to her background as a singer with no political experience. "I do not have a political background and I perceive myself as unintelligent," Camel told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

Realizing, however, that she lacked political knowledge and experience, she said she had attended training sessions organized by the PKPI. "I have received some political education from the PKPI but it is still lacking as it is only been one or two sessions [so far]. Ideally, I would get more training, but that is impossible," she said.

Women legislative candidates like Camel have prompted the government to step up its game. According to Women's Empowerment and Child Protection Minister Linda Amalia Sari, the ministry had so far trained 4,500 women candidates for the House and Regional Legislative Councils (DPRDs) as well as the Regional Representatives Council (DPD).

Linda said the training was necessary as many women candidates still lacked the requisite political education from their parties, plus many parties had hastily recruited women to fulfill the minimum 30 percent quota of women on the list of legislative candidates, as required by law.

"Some parties have been recruiting [women candidates] from the very beginning, but there are also those that only began recruiting them after the law was enacted," she said on Thursday at the ministry's office in Central Jakarta.

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Indonesia, which is helping the ministry to provide training for women candidates through a project called Strengthening Women's Participation in Governance in Indonesia (Swarga), found that 50 percent of the candidates who they trained still lacked the necessary knowledge to become a lawmaker.

"In some cases, their knowledge is so limited that they don't even know which House commission they would want to enter," Swarga's project manager, Pheni Chalid, said on Thursday.

He added, however, that this was normally only the case with women candidates who had been recruited by certain parties at the last minute to fulfill the quota. "Many of them are ordinary housewives. It is hard to train them because they are not really interested [in running for a seat] and they have no clear goals," Pheni said.

Nurina Widagdo, the head of the UNDP Indonesia's Democratic Governance and Poverty Reduction Unit (DGPRU), meanwhile, said that most of the training participants were over-confident about their abilities. "Before they began the training, their confidence was high. But afterward, they realized they had no substantial knowledge," she said.

Thankfully, the Swarga project, in which women candidates are trained how to garner votes, how to count for the votes needed to win a seat, as well as other issues plaguing the country, had helped to increase the women's political abilities by 17 percent, according to Nurina.

Commenting on the project, Camel said it was a positive gesture on the government's part and that she was interested in attending the training. "I am like a blank piece of paper," she said. "I am very interested in the program so that I can gain some experience."

In a bid to increase the number of women in the country's political system, the women's empowerment ministry has also launched a public service announcement, which will be broadcast on several TV stations. Linda said that the advertisement was aimed at encouraging the public to vote for women candidates on the April 9 Election Day.

According to her, the government's support was needed since women were still underrepresented in the House, where women lawmakers make up only 18.57 percent of the national legislature.

The TV ad stars former president BJ Habibie, who says in the ad that men are not capable of solving every problem. "The representation of women in the House is very important to solve the country's problems," Habibie says in the 30-second ad.

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/03/29/women-candidates-get-help-government.html