Designing Presidential Elections to Fight Corruption
As has become a habit, ahead of the five-year presidential election ritual, our legislation process is filled with debates by political parties on the required presidential nomination threshold.
The requirements for fielding presidential candidates are so much at the center of the debate that they lead any discussion about other aspects of the electoral system to a dead end. Still fresh in our memories is the deliberation of the presidential election bill at the beginning of the Reform era, when each political party proposed rules for the sake of nominating the presidential candidate it supported.
The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) got the minimum education requirement of senior high school (SMA) for Megawati Soekarnoputri. Golkar abolished the free condition of legal matters for Akbar Tandjung. The National Awakening Party (PKB) got a "capable" requirement for Abdurrahman Wahid. The National Mandate Party (PAN) obtained the requirement of party support as a transitional rule for Amien Rais.
The legislation process will certainly not be devoid of parties\' political interests. Any hopes that parties would refrain from including their interests into the discussion of the electoral law will almost certainly be dashed. Preference on legal rules will be closely related to strategies for winning the 2019 presidential election. The battle has begun with the formulation of requirements for presidential candidates. What we need to be mindful of is that the legislation process, despite being full of party interests, remains in line with the national agenda, especially concerning anticorruption efforts. What requirements for presidential candidates are needed to ensure a presidential election system that facilitates the fight against corruption?
A presidential election system to take on corruption
The president is not just at the center of the presidential system, but also of the fight against corruption. The president is the commander in the war against corrupt officials. Without a clear commitment from the president, the struggle against corruption will continue to fall into the darkness of defeat. Therefore, an anticorruption presidential election system must be designed, namely a system that opens space for anticorruption figures to run for president, win the election and then gain adequate political support for their anticorruption agenda.
Given that our presidential nomination system is controlled by political parties and does not open the door for independent presidential candidates, the parties\' anticorruption commitments are key to the birth of a corruption-fighting president. Unfortunately, that is where our main issue is; our political configuration is still trapped in rampant corrupt practices. If we look at the case of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), none of the parties are clean from the trap of corruption.
This is one of our presidential system dilemmas, namely how party simplification efforts remain in line with the corruption eradication agenda. Many studies have concluded that the presidential system is not compatible with a multiparty system. One that is frequently referred to is an article by Scott Mainwairing (1993), in the journal Comparative Political Studies entitled, Presidentialism, Multipartism and Democracy: The Difficult Combination. However, the problem of corruption that ensnares our political parties, not to mention the increasing strength of the parties – which tends to increase the temptation of corruption –, means we must keep open the space for new parties that bring new hope for the fight against corruption. Therefore, I agree with the electoral threshold being gradually raised. In this case, we are on the right track.
Minority president
Constitutional Court (MK) Decree No. 14/PUU-XI/2013, which affirms that legislative and presidential elections must be held simultaneously, has not put an end to the debate about the threshold for nominating a presidential candidate. I myself am of the opinion that there is no clarity on the constitutional rules that prohibit the presidential threshold. The Constitutional Court decree only confirms the implementation of the general elections but does not discuss the constitutionality of the presidential threshold. Therefore, the issue of the presidential threshold is an open legal policy to be determined through legislation.
There is the opinion that simultaneous elections will bring forth a more effective president than consecutive elections. Simultaneous elections tend to see a smaller number of parties join the race, because small parties would typically choose to form coalitions and support the presidential figure that is most likely to win. To be sure, in simultaneous elections, it will be even more difficult to create legislative control over the president. In non-simultaneous elections, the voters can conduct a presidential election that is different from the supporting parties (split ticket). Such a thing is not possible in a simultaneous election.
Therefore, in a simultaneous election, the odds of getting a minority president, namely a president who does not enjoy majority political support in parliament, are smaller. According to a calculation by Jose Antonio Cheibub (2002) presented in an article entitled, “Minority Governments, Deadlock Situations, and the Survival of Presidential Democracies” in the journal Comparative Political Studies, simultaneous elections produce a minority president in 31.3 percent of the cases, compared with the 56.4 percent in elections held separately.
Presidential threshold
With the electoral threshold that has been gradually raised and the simultaneous general election system, which supports the emergence of a non-minority president, the space for a political configuration that is not controlled by a corrupt party oligarchy is set to enlarge the presidential election competition arena. A competitive system will open up a wider space for democracy rather than a monopolistic system.
The competition room should not eliminate the presidential threshold requirement at all. Not only will there be fewer incentives for a simplification of the party system without a presidential threshold, but in theory and practice, there cannot be an effective president without political support in parliament.
Even an independent president cannot negate the requirement for parliamentary support for the implementation of his or her platform. It should be noted that whoever wins the presidential elections and gets the majority of electoral support, will not be able to effectively do many things without political support in parliament (political support).
However, a presidential threshold of 20 or 25 percent, as currently applies, is also not worth defending, because it does not create a wide enough space for competition and tends to perpetuate a corrupt political party oligarchy. So, I agree that the presidential nomination threshold be brought down; by how much is up for debate. The smallest option is to make it equal to the electoral threshold. Therefore, each party that has seats in the House of Representatives as a result of the 2014 general election has the right to propose presidential candidates.
Then what about new parties participating in the 2019 general elections? They would not have the right to propose presidential candidates. After all, all parties have to prove they deserve and indeed have voter backing by having members in the legislature, in order to be eligible to propose their own presidential candidates in the next election.
We must note that lowering the presidential nomination threshold by no means guarantees the emergence of an anticorruption president. What can be ascertained is the opening of a wider competition space through the presence of alternative candidates. Meanwhile, the risk of nominating corruption-prone candidates will hardly be eliminated altogether. No system is immune to corrupt practices, only the modus operandi changes.
In a system with a high presidential threshold, corrupt practices are conducted by political parties selling boat tickets to candidates or parties. This is the mode of purchasing a party ticket to become a candidate (candidacy-buying). In a system with a lower threshold, which stimulates the presence of alternative candidates, the political party or alternative candidate sells his opportunity as a competitor who can dredge the same votes. This is the ticket-selling mode for non-candidacy-buying party figures.
In the current deliberation of the presidential elections bill, the government\'s position is to maintain the presidential threshold at 20 or 25 percent. Perhaps, President Jokowi calculates that that requirements give him greater chances to be reelected. Let\'s wait and see where this presidential election will eventually end up. Is it toward the long-term interest of creating a presidential election system geared toward fighting corruption or rather to perpetuate a party-oligarchic coalition that tends to be corrupt.
DENNY INDRAYANA
Professor of Constitutional Law of UGM; Visiting Professor at Melbourne Law School and Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne, Australia