JAKARTA, KOMPAS – With its deadline only a month or so away, the deliberation of the election bill must be focused on matters that are directly related to the Constitutional Court ruling in January 2014. At the time, the Constitutional Court ruled that the legislative and presidential elections must be held simultaneously in 2019.
The issues related to the Constitutional Court ruling include the conditions for nominating a presidential/vice presidential candidate and the technicalities of a five-box (to choose House of Representatives members, Regional Representatives Council members, Regional Legislatives Council I members, Regional Legislatives Council II members and president) election. Another priority is arranging the electoral districts to improve the principle of representation, as well as the strengthening of election law enforcement to prevent maladministration and corruption.
Deputy head of the special committee for the election bill, Yandri Susanto, said in Jakarta on Monday (20/3) that the initial spirit of the bill deliberation was really to discuss the issues related to the Constitutional Court ruling. “The government was the first to suggest a change in the legislative election system, a vote-to-seat conversion method and so on,” he said.
However, now, several factions at the House of Representatives also want to completely change a number of fundamentals in the previous bill. For example, they want the open proportional system (election based on most votes) to be changed to a closed proportional system (based on serial numbers). The legislative election’s vote-to-seat conversion method and the number of seat allocations for each electoral district have also been proposed to be changed.
A special committee member from the NasDem Party faction, Johnny G Plate, said that his faction did not want any fundamental changes, especially if the old system was still relevant. Instead of making fundamental changes, Johnny said, the election bill must be directed to help improve the regulations so that the implementation of the old system can be more optimal.
“However, this is the meeting of politicians for the interest of politicians. Just like the strategy in football, there are some that attack to score a goal, there are others that counter-attack. But this is only a strategy. We believe that in the end, there will not be many that want to change principle things in the election system,” Johnny said.
With this in consideration, Yandri said he was still optimistic that the election bill deliberation would be finished by the end of April. Should it be difficult for the factions at the House to come to an agreement, the decision-making will be done through voting.
The unfinished election bill deliberation was one of the reasons behind the House’s decision to reject 14 names of prospective General Election Commission (KPU) members and 10 prospective Election Supervisory Agency’s (Bawaslu) members for the 2017-2022 period, which were names that were the outcome of a selection process carried out by selection committee. Another reason is the selection process at the selection committee, which is seen as discriminative. The rejection of the names was done despite the fact that the office term for KPU and Bawaslu commissioners for the 2012-2017 will end on April 12. “The solution of extending office term must be given some thought. Of course, whether or not this can be done must be looked into,” said House of Representatives deputy speaker Fadli Zon.
Deputy head of the committee for the selection of KPU and Bawaslu member candidates, Ramlan Surbakti, assured that the selection process would be carried out properly so that only the best candidates would go through. KPU commissioner Hadar N. Gumay hopes there are no political obstacles at the House of Representatives in the KPU-Bawaslu member candidate selection process because the quality of the 2019 election would be put at stake (Kompas, 14/3).
(AFE/APA)
