In response to protests from rights groups fearing a lack of women’s representation in the legislature, the General Elections Commission (KPU) has undone a recent rule change that would have decreased the minimum number of women candidates in electoral districts under some circumstances.

The commission returned to its previous policy, in place during the 2019 legislative election, of rounding up the minimum number of women candidates in an electoral district if the calculation resulted in a decimal, revoking a recently passed rule that involved rounding down in some cases.

Following a meeting with the Elections Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) and the Election Organization Ethics Council (DKPP) on Tuesday, KPU chief Hasim Asy’ari said on Wednesday that the commission had decided to return to the previous policy.

The minimum number of female legislative candidates in a given electoral district is set at 30 percent of the total number of legislative candidates. But under the short-lived rule passed last month, if the resulting number involved a decimal point, it was rounded up if the tenths digit was greater than or equal to five and rounded down if the tenths digit was less than five.

By that rule, if an electoral district had nine candidates, the minimum number of female candidates would be rounded up to 3, exceeding the 30 percent threshold.

But if an electoral district had eight candidates, the number would be rounded down to two, giving women only 25 percent representation in the election.

This, the KPU ultimately decided, would contradict the 2017 General Elections Law, which requires that at least 30 percent of legislative candidates in a district are women.

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