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Indonesia gets first female speaker for House of Representatives
The daughter of Indonesia's female president gained the most votes in the House, as she won 404,034 votes in the Central Java electoral district.
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Newly elected House of Representatives Speaker Puan Maharani (center) hugs her mother, Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) chairwoman Megawati Soekarnoputri at the House complex in Senayan, Central Jakarta, on Tuesday while four deputy speakers Rachmat Gobel (left), Azis Syamsuddin (second left), Muhaimin Iskandar (right) and Sufmi Dasco Ahmad look on. (JP/Seto Wardhana)
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awmaker Puan Maharani, the former coordinating human development and culture minister and daughter of Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) chairwoman Megawati Soekarnoputri, has been officially nominated by the PDI-P as the new House of Representatives speaker for the 2019-2024 legislative term.
The acting House speakers and all party representatives agreed on Tuesday during a closed-door meeting in the House Legislation Body (Baleg) to elect first president Sukarno's granddaughter as the House speaker. The ceremony will take place Tuesday evening at the Senayan compound.
The daughter of Indonesia's female president gained the most votes in the House, as she won 404,034 votes in the Central Java electoral district. The PDI-P gained 128 seats in the House by winning 19.3 percent of the vote and is thus entitled to the speakership post as per the 2018 Legislative Institutions (MD3) Law.
The law also mandates that four deputy speaker posts be allocated to the four other political parties with the largest number of votes.
Those were the Golkar Party, Gerindra Party, NasDem Party and National Awakening Party (PKB).
Acting House speaker Abdul Wahab of the Democratic Party said Golkar, as the party that gained the second-highest number of votes in the legislative election, had appointed Azis Syamsuddin as a new deputy speaker. Gerindra appointed Sufmi Dasco Ahmad, while NasDem nominated Rachmat Gobel.
As of noon on Tuesday, the PKB has yet to decide the deputy speaker from its party but a leaked document made available to The Jakarta Post on Tuesday afternoon showed that it would be Muhaimin Iskandar. Earlier, lawmaker Abdul Kadir Karding said among the nominations for deputy speaker from the PKB were Cucun Syamsurizal, Jazilul Fawaid and Daniel Johan.
