W

omen legislative candidates added life to the Kartini Day celebrations in West Kalimantan on Tuesday with a possible unprecedented clean sweep of Regional Representative Council (DPD) seats.

Maria Goreti, Sri Kadarwati Aswin, Erma Suryani Ranik and Hairiah took unassailable leads in the 26-candidate race and look certain to win the four DPD legislative seats.

Maria and Kadarwati will serve their second five-year term after taking first and second places in the 2004 polls, when electors voted for the first time for 124 DPD members.

The provincial elections commission will not announce the official vote count result anytime soon, but unofficial vote tabulation conducted by the provincial police based on vote tallies in 10,777 polling stations showed that the four women had secured "significant votes" at between 50,000 and 80,000 each.

Kadarwati tops the table, followed by Maria, Hairiah and Erma.

The polls commission registered 3,154,887 eligible voters for the April 9 elections.

Hairiah expressed her surprise to hear of women candidates moving closer to winning all the DPD seats.

"We may join the Guiness Book of Records if it happens," she said.

Hairiah, who is member of the West Kalimantan office of the National Commission on Human Rights, said her activities allowed her to keep in touch with the society possibly helping her win support.

"My profession concerns the society, that's perhaps why people voted for me," she said.

She admitted she relied much on her network, as she did not have money to finance her campaign,

Her network includes victims of violence, women, religious groups and human rights activists.

"I don't have any campaign team, but there were volunteers who fought for me," she said.

Maria and Kadarwati looked to take advantage of being the incumbents to win back-to-back election.

Maria was a magazine journalist focusing on Dayak indigenous issues before she turned to politics in 2004.

Kadarwati gained popularity due to her status as the wife of former governor Aspar Aswin. During her husband's term between 1999 and 2003 she often visited local people at grassroots level.