Regional Representatives Council (DPD) members (from right) Intisiawanti Ayus of Riau, Nurmawati Bantilan of Central Sulawesi and Ahmad Nawardi of East Java participate in a House Legislative Body meeting on the revision of Law No. 17/2014 on MPR, DPR, DPD and DPRD (MD3 Law) at the legislative compound in Senayan, Jakarta, Thursday (6/4). At the meeting, DPD representatives presented 12 proposals for the MD3 Law revision.
Miriam Budiardjo, a political science professor at the University of Indonesia, in her book Dasar-dasar Ilmu Politik (The Basics of Political Science; 2010), said that political parties function as a means of political communication, political awareness, political recruitment, and conflict regulators. Other experts add the function of governance, especially for the ruling party.
Political communication and awareness concern not only the interests of the parties, but also the interests of the people who believe in the parties. The failure of parties to voice and fight for public interests will cause them to lose the people’s trust.
Observing the dynamics in the House of Representatives (DPR) in deliberating the Draft Law on Implementation of Elections, the presence of a mature party, one which consciously promotes the interests of the people, is like the idiom “jauh panggang dari api”(far from the fire). The DPR as a representative institution, whose members come from political parties, still struggles to think only of themselves and their own interests. Political parties talk only about the function of political recruitment.
This is evident from the desire of the DPR’s insistence on increasing the number of seats in the legislature. In fact, the number of seats in the Indonesian legislature is among the largest in the world. Upon a final agreement between the DPR and the government, the House will have575 seats in the 2019 election, an increase of 15 seats from the number of seats in the 2014 election.
A variety of reasons were given by House members to justify this proposal, including balancing the number of representatives from Java and outside Java, bringing voters closer to their representatives, the existence of new autonomous regions, and an increasing population.
India, with its population of more than 1.3 billion people, has only 552 members of parliament. The US, with more than 307 million people, has 435 seats in the House of Representatives. The current population of Indonesia is no more than 258 million people.
The number of legislative seats in Indonesia actually totals more than 560 because there are 132 seats in the Regional Representatives Council (DPD), part of which is filled by political parties, even though they represent the regions.
The number of seats in the DPR has continued to increase with each election:360 seats in the 1971 and 1977 elections, 364 in 1982,400 seats in 1987 and 1992, 425 seats in 1997, 462 seats in 1999, and 550 seats in the 2004 election.
On the other hand, the people’s disappointment with the DPR is not diminishing. The DPR and political parties are identified as corrupt institutions. They are more frequently involved in arguing among themselves and less in caring for the people. Let the people speak if there is a need for additional seats.
