• by Richel Langit-Dursin (jakarta)
• Thursday, August 20, 2009
• Inter Press Service

Four months since Indonesia’s legislative elections, Ditah Indah Sari still grapples with her unsuccessful foray into electoral politics. 'We are curious why we did not get elected,' she said.

As a labour activist of more than 15 years, Dita thought she had all what it took to win a seat in the House of Representatives: extensive network, wide support base, and full backing from her party, Reformed Crescent Party. Soon after the April 9 national elections, Dita, 38, lost miserably that she did not bother to know how many votes she had garnered.

'The voters seemed to be very pragmatic. They chose candidates who gave them money, and activist candidates simply had no resources,' said Dita, as she tried to make sense of her failed political bid and those of thousands of other pro-democracy activists who ran in this year's legislative elections.

Participating in this electoral exercise was in keeping with her lifelong advocacy -- fighting for workers’ rights -- a passion shared by all the other like-minded political activists, comprising mostly women, who also ran in the said elections, the third since the fall of Indonesian dictator Suharto in 1998.

The former political prisoner became the recipient of the 2001 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership for her resolute determination to uplift the lives of the working poor in her country. As a labour leader, she had lobbied for reforms in Indonesia’s labour laws.

Compared to past political exercises, the number of activists, including women, running in the recently concluded legislative elections had increased significantly. Dita said that until the 2004 elections, most civil society activists were too critical of political parties that they shunned elections. It was a different story all together in April.

Ani Soetjipto, a political science professor at the state-owned University of Indonesia, said at least 3 percent of the candidates who vied for seats in the House as well as provincial and district councils were civil society advocates for specific platforms.

One of a number of reforms that Dita and her fellow activists wanted to pursue as aspiring lawmakers was outlawing the practice of outsourcing jobs, which is widely believed to deprive affected workers of standard benefits like pension and health insurance.

'We realised that civil society movements were not effective in pushing for reforms and that civil society activists had to be part of policymaking if they wanted to see significant changes [in the political realm],' said Dita of the sudden surge of political interest among pro-democracy activists in Indonesia.

The number of women running for legislative seats across the country also rose significantly, thanks to the so-called affirmative action that required political parties to allocate at least 30 percent of their slates to women in an effort to increase their participation in the country’s political life.

'All political parties tried to meet the 30 percent required [allocation for women candidates] under election laws,' said Ani.

'Political parties have opened themselves up to activists and women as the high number of parties eligible to [participate] in the legislative elections only heightened political competition,' said Hadar Gumay of the Centre for Election Reform, a non-profit organisation focusing on voter education and election monitoring. A record number of 44 parties, including six local ones, participated in the April elections, compared to just 32 in the 2004 elections.

The increased political interest among civil society activists and women, however, was soon confronted with the hard reality of Indonesia’s political life – primarily nepotism and money politics – that effectively reduced their chances of winning.

Ani estimates that less than 3 percent of the thousands of political activists who made a bid for the national legislative elections were elected. Information on the number of women elected to legislative councils at the national, provincial, and district levels is still sketchy, but Soetjipto said it could not be higher than 5 percent.

Most parties, according to Dita, accommodated activists to exploit their networks and skills in mobilising public support. In some cases, activist candidates, including women, were asked to give campaign donations to the parties they had affiliated with. By election day, 'we were very much on our own, without financial assistance or facilities, including party attributes, from political parties,' Dita said.

'We, activists, were not ready to compete with other candidates, especially those who were financially more stable,' she said. 'We simply did not have the resources to compete.' Describing most parties as 'feudalistic,' she complained that they gave key positions to senior cadres willing to dig deeper into their pockets, while the activists were not only young and politically inexperienced but also had no money to finance their own campaigns.

According to Hadar, most activists were neither ready to fight nor persistent enough to win the election, especially when they learned that money was a major consideration in getting elected. 'Money talks,' she said.

To ensure women’s participation in politics, the country’s election laws require parties to allocate 30 percent of their slates to women. Many parties put women as their first, second or third candidate to improve their chances in the 2009 elections. However, a binding Constitutional Court ruling issued in mid-March stipulated that candidates with the highest number of votes would be declared winners regardless of their ranks on the candidates’ list or gender.

While the ruling may have leveled off the playing field, Ani said most women candidates in the April elections found themselves ill equipped to compete with their male counterparts.

Being poor, many women candidates had no proper education and were bereft of the needed resources, since they had considerably less income than men. 'Women are not considered as breadwinners and thus have no financial resources to finance their campaign,' said Ani, adding that women’s public speaking and debating skills were inferior to those of their male counterparts.

To make matters worse, 'most of the women elected were recruited based on political dynasty and popularity, and as such they may not represent the interests of Indonesian women such as high maternal mortality rate, low education, high unemployment and illiteracy rates,' said Ani.

She added that a dilemma confronting those in the pro-democracy movement is whether to support these women 'even though we know that they don’t deserve the [legislative] seats,' and as such will only become a liability amid efforts to increase women’s involvement in politics. Not to support them means to teach them a lesson that women who do not possess the needed qualifications should not run for legislative posts in the first place, she said.

Among the winning women candidates were Puan Maharani, daughter of former Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri. Until her election bid, Puan was a political neophyte, not having run for any legislative post. Still another was Okky Asokawati of the United Development Party, a model who had neither political nor social involvement before going into politics. There were also actresses like Rieke Diah Pitaloka and Nurul Arifin.

According to Ani, most parties treat women in political parties as tools to achieve men’s political goals. This was particularly true of long-standing political parties such as Vice President Jusuf Kalla’s Golkar Party and Megawati’s Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle. Both Kalla and Megawati ran but lost in the country’s July 8 direct presidential elections.

Despite her election defeat, Dita said she and fellow activists would not quit politics. If anything, she said, their failure has only heightened their resolve to get into the Legislature.

'We have learned our lessons and will continue to play major roles in politics,' vowed Dita. Already, members of the pro-democracy movement are talking of fielding their candidates for the 2014 elections.

© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service