A German-born woman is running for parliament in Indonesia. Petra Odebrecht has lived in Indonesia for 20 years and wants to represent the resort island of Bali. The 42-year-old, blue-eyed blond from Hamburg called the world’s third-largest democracy “a work in progress.” When Odebrecht recently visited a factory, workers asked her for money, the candidate told AFP while sitting in a Euro-Asian restaurant overlooking Bali’s famous beaches. The women wanted to know what Odebrecht would give them if she is elected. “It always goes back to the money. It makes me sad,” she told AFP.
But her own candidacy should give people reason to hope that Indonesia is changing. “I am the first bulé [white foreigner] joining politics in Indonesia. This proves that the democratisation process is ongoing, and that everybody can be a candidate as long as he or she has the will to do something,” Odebrecht was quoted as saying in the South China Morning Post.
Odebrecht, a member of the Democratic Renewal Party, is the first German-born candidate to run in Indonesia. She decided to enter the policial arena out of an interest in making a contribution to her adopted country, an archipelago in Southeast Asia with 234 million people, mainly Muslims.
