matanews.com, Thursday, 18 March 2010

Jakarta, matanews.com- Member of Commission II of the Indonesian People’s Representative Council from Golkar Party Faction, Nurul Arifin, stated that the majority rule applied during the 2009 Election was not good for women candidates.

“There are three things that are not possessed by women; they are, economic capital, political capital, and social capital,” mentioned Nurul Arifin during a seminar celebrating International Women’s Day held by Women Research Institute in Jakarta, Thursday.

According to her, the referred economic capital includes the money needed for the candidacy. Also, political capital requires women to be party officials. 

“Women have to be main party officials. Without this, women will find it difficult to run in elections,” said Nurul. As for social capital, popularity is needed to win the most votes. “Popularity is the capital for women to be able to compete and become the winner in the majority rule,” she explained. 

All the three things cannot be fulfilled, and even can render difficulties for women in their candidacy to be members of the legislature. Nevertheless, Nurul also views that the majority rule has an advantage of fostering parties’ modernity. “Because cadres no longer rely entirely on political parties, competition becomes fairer, and legislative candidates can be closer to society,” Nurul said. (*cdr/z)