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Activists condemn voting rights for married children
Throughout the world, the right to vote is most commonly granted to people once they hit 18 years of age
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span>Throughout the world, the right to vote is most commonly granted to people once they hit 18 years of age. In Indonesia, the voting age is 17. However, people under 17 are also given the right to vote if they are married.
Activists are calling for an end to this stipulation ahead of the 2020 simultaneous regional elections amid efforts to curb child marriage.
Dian Kartikasari, the secretary-general of the Indonesian Women’s Coalition (KPI), a group that advocates for an end to child marriages, said children could not make informed political decisions until they reached 17 years of age, regardless of whether they were married or not.
“Giving married children the right to vote is wrong because it gives them privileges for getting married, when, in fact, they shouldn’t have been married in the first place. While we are trying to curb child marriages, this could instead motivate parents or families to marry off their underage children,” Dian said.
The KPI, along with the election watchdog Association for Elections and Democracy (Perludem), has decided to bring the matter to the Constitutional Court.
On Tuesday, the group filed an unprecedented judicial review petition to challenge Article 1 (6) of Law No. 8/2015 on regional elections, which permits children below the age of 17 to vote if they are married.
Perludem executive director Titi Anggraini said the organizations expected the Constitutional Court to rule in favor of their petition before February 2020, when independent candidates are expected to submit the required documents ahead of the elections, including copies of their supporters’ IDs.
The simultaneous regional elections, meanwhile, are scheduled for Sept. 29, 2020, during which the heads of 270 regions will be elected, comprising nine governors, 224 regents and 37 mayors.
The nine gubernatorial elections will be held in West Sumatra, Jambi, Bengkulu, Riau Islands, Central, South and North Kalimantan as well as North and Central Sulawesi.
“It should be an easy task for the Constitutional Court, as it previously ruled to increase the minimum age of marriage [...] The implications will be very positive for the quality of our election system, as it will be easier for officials to collect voters’ data,” she told reporters after filing the document to the Constitutional Court on Tuesday.
As part of the efforts to curb child marriage, the Constitutional Court ruled last year that the minimum age of marriage in the 1974 Marriage Law — 16 for women and 19 for men — was unconstitutional. The court said the difference between the minimum ages for men and women was a form of gender-based discrimination and, thus, violated the 1945 Constitution.
Following the ruling, the House of Representatives finally agreed in September to increase the minimum age of marriage for women to 19 in Law No. 16/2019, an amendment to the 1974 Marriage Law.
Child marriage has long been a problem in Indonesia, with a 2013 UNICEF report placing Indonesia seventh for countries with the highest number of child marriages in the world, with 457,600 women aged between 20 and 24 years old having been married before they were 15 years old.
The 2017 National Social and Economic Survey (Susenas) also revealed that 0.74 percent of girls aged between 10 and 17 had been married, of which 0.05 percent were divorced. Two out of five were married before they were 15.
Titi from Perludem argued that removing marital status from the Elections Law would aid efforts to end child marriages and prevent children from “becoming electoral objects” of political parties’ pragmatic strategies to gain votes. It would also set a standard for data collectors to follow in the creation of the final voter list (DPT), she added.
“As we have seen during the post-presidential election period in 2019, one of the issues raised to the Constitutional Court was the validity of the DPT. There were doubts about the DPT’s accuracy, as voters aged below 17 were included on the list,” she said, referring to losing presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto’s unsuccessful attempt to challenge the election result.
“This was partly owed to the fact that different standards were used, as we didn’t only take into account a voter’s age, but also their marital status, causing confusion for data collectors in the field,” she added.
The United Development Party (PPP) and the National Mandate Party (PAN) have refuted claims they have targeted married children to gain votes.
PPP secretary-general and lawmaker Arsul Sani said only a small number of his party’s voters were aged below 17 years, meaning the party received “no political benefits”.
“However, the PPP doesn’t agree with the KPI and Perludem’s view that underage children cannot make political decisions. They’re using the old-school paradigm that children cannot access political information, like in the past. Now, many junior high school graduates are already politically aware,” he told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.
PAN lawmaker Yandri Susanto, who chairs Commission VII overseeing religious, social, women and children affairs, said these claims were untrue, adding that the party would respect the Constitutional Court’s decision.
Former National Awakening Party (PKB) central board head Muhammad Lukman Edy acknowledged that some parties had indeed targeted married children.
“Some parties have long had [married children] as their captive market and are responsible for protecting their rights. We don’t have many [child] voters; we can count the number with our fingers, but their rights should also be protected, right?” he told the Post on Tuesday.
