IT took Firliana Purwanti one year to be convinced to run for parliament. Her one-decade experience of being a Democrat Party cadre was apparently not enough to encourage her to run for a seat in the House of Representatives (DPR) in Senayan.

Firliana would feel sure one minute and lose her conviction the next minute. “At first I decided not to run,” she said in Jakarta last Wednesday. But when a problem with the bill on domestic wor