We have seen it in movies, television series and read about it in the chick lit books. The affair between a young and pretty secretary and her boss is something that has become a common laughing stock. It has also made people skeptical about a male boss having a young lady secretary. Recently a surprising dictate has been announced by an Indonesian governor. The governor of Gorontalo province located at the northern Sulawesi Island, Rusli Habibie, has decided that the high government officials have to sack their female secretaries and hire male ones instead.
In the recent past, multiple cases of extramarital affairs between government officials and their female secretaries have come to the light. This has led to the decision that Raslie Habibie has taken. According to him the men who get involved with pretty, young secretaries neglect their wives and do not give them any attention. The wives rot at home when they take the secretaries out for lunch and dinner and get them costly presents. Quite funnily, Raslie has allowed the officials to have old women as secretaries because they have lost their seductive prowess to time.
Such a dictate sounds very patriarchal and as a measure to prevent high government officials it may fail to work. Extramarital affairs cannot be stopped just by stopping the men from having pretty and young females as secretaries. The men will find a way of meeting the women outside the office and may very well continue their affairs. According to government reports around 50 officials who held senior posts had hired female secretaries. One thing at least is good about Habibie’s approach and that is the fact that he has not declared any punishment if his dictate is not followed. All he wants to do is to purge the government offices and stop the sexual immorality of the government officials.
The Gornotalo government even demanded that the monthly salaries of the officials are transferred to the bank account of their wives. The idea behind this was that if the officials cannot spend sufficient money on their mistresses then the extramarital affairs would stop. Such dictates by the governor has put the female secretaries in a lot of trouble. They are on the verge of losing their job and their affairs as well. The wives should not suffer because of the affairs of their husbands but blaming the secretaries and taking away their jobs seem unfair as well.
