KPPA Recommends Parliament to Revoke the Requirement for Female Candidate to Resign from State-Funded Company

The Ministry of Women Empowerment and Children Protection (KPPA) recommends the Special Committee (Pansus) for the Elections Law Bill to revoke the provision in the current Elections Law that requires female candidate in election to resign from their job at State-Funded Company or any kind of institution that receives financing from the government. According to a representative of KPPA, the revoke of the provision will increase women participation in elections as candidates.

“Female candidates shouldn’t be forced to leave their job. The government may to force them to leave their job after they are getting elected, but not during candidacy. There are actually many women in Indonesia who want to participate in elections as candidate. However, many of them are getting discouraged by the provision,” says the Deputy of Gender Equality of KPPA, Heru P. Kasidi, during a hearing session in the House of Representatives, Jakarta (02/01).

The recommendations is supported by the Director of Executive of Center for Elections and Political Party (CEPP) of University of Indonesia, Chusnul Mar’iyah. According to Chusnul, the government needs to establish provisions and regulations that are affirmative to women participation in politics.

“I have a friend who was working as a lecturer at the Syiah Kuala University. She once participated as a candidate in local election but lost. She then got rejected by the University when she wants to get her job back. This is ironic,” says Chusnul.

KPPA does not have any preference on a certain election system that needs to be used by the government. What is important according to KPPA is to fulfill the 30 percent gender quota in Parliament, political party membership, and election management bodies. Meanwhile, CEPP prefer the government to apply closed-list proportional system.