Nethy Dharma Somba, The Jakarta Post, Jayapura | Archipelago | Sat, May 03 2014, 6:40 PM
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/05/03/papua-women-s-coalition-stages-rally-kpud-meeting.html
The Coalition of Papua Women staged a rally, protesting against alleged vote-stealing and lack of monitoring during the April 9 legislative election.
The protest was held at the Jayapura Aston Hotel, where the Papua General Elections Commission (KPUD) was holding a vote-counting plenary meeting.
Melyna Wonateroy, a Golkar Party legislative candidate from the Papua electoral district no. 2, said that the coalition suspected that the scarcity of female lawmakers in Papua was due to vote buying involving those who organized the elections and other related parties.
"All our hard work as native female candidates has gone to waste because we didn't have any financial means to buy votes," Melyana said.
She added that in reality, Papuan women had the potential to win many votes, but due to their lack of financial resources, the votes were transferred to other legislative candidates that were better off financially.
Elected candidates, on the other hand, were mostly comprised of wives of officials who could afford to indulge in vote buying.
Melyana also said that the coalition had evidence of foul play, which they would present to the Constitutional Court after the meeting had concluded.
"In several areas, we found an inflated number of votes, and there is also proof of candidate names disappearing off the list. For example, I received only 100 votes in the final meeting even though I had 400 votes in the Papua electoral district no. 2. This is unfair to us," she said.
Furthermore, the coalition demanded that there be provisions for female Papua lawmakers, because in the absence of a mandated number Papuan women would never be able to be involved in the House of Representatives (DPR).