Home Minister Tjahjo Kumolo (fourth from right), Home Ministry secretary-general Yuswandi A. Tumenggung (fourth from left) and director general for politics and general governance Soedarmo (third from right), with representatives of institutions and agencies involved in general elections, take part in a meeting of the general elections implementation bill special committee at the Legislative Complex in Senayan, Jakarta, on Monday (19/6). The House of Representatives and the government are still trying to complete the general election implementation bill, which deals with five crucial issues.
JAKARTA, KOMPAS – Regardless of whether or not a presidential threshold will be applied in the 2019 election, unqualified presidential candidates may emerge. In order to avoid this, a transparent and democratic mechanism for political parties to chose presidential and vice presidential candidates must be strictly regulated in the Election Law.
One of the stipulations members of the election bill special committee have agreed upon is a sanction for political parties that meet the requirement to field presidential and vice presidential candidates but fail to do so. These parties will not be eligible to propose presidential and vice presidential candidates for the next election.
Despite avoiding the possibility of sole presidential and vice presidential candidates, such a stipulation creates a possibility of the emergence of puppet candidates. Political parties may propose internal candidates without proper evaluation and recruitment mechanism just to avoid sanctions.
In order to avoid this, the election bill must have a stipulation to ensure the emergence of high-quality presidential and vice presidential candidates by forcing political parties to hold internal conventions.
“Conventions are necessary. This way, political parties will be encouraged to be more responsible and transparent in choosing presidential and vice presidential candidates,” Indonesian Institute of Sciences political researcher Siti Zuhro said on Friday (30/6/2017).
Through conventions, presidential and vice presidential candidates will not be chosen merely through the preferences of parties’ leaders and elites but also through considering input from party members and the general public. Such multiparty monitoring and assessment mechanisms can result in high-quality candidates with good track records.
Benefiting political parties
Philips Jusario Vermonte of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies said that conventions would also benefit political parties, as they would be able to judge candidates’ electability and ability before making a decision. This way, the public can also directly see the ability of parties’ presidential candidates and this would potentially boost the parties’ electability in the election.
Such a recruitment pattern would also give the public more knowledge about the ability of presidential and vice presidential candidates. In the election, the public will make their choices based on candidates’ ability. “They will not make blind choices,” Philips said.
Conventions to choose presidential candidates are not new in Indonesia. The Golkar Party held one in 2004 and the Democratic Party followed suit in 2014.
Philips said that he saw a trend of improvement in these political conventions. “From these two conventions, an even better pattern of convention should be sought,” he said.
Election bill special committee member from the Golkar Party faction, Rambe Kamarul Zaman, said there was no guarantee in the law that political parties would come up with their best presidential and vice presidential candidates. The law can only encourage political parties to be responsible if they wish to propose party members as presidential and vice presidential candidates.
Regarding this issue, the spirit to formalize conventions in the election bill has emerged in deliberations. However, political parties decided that it would be better to hand the authority over to the political parties to decide.
Election bill special committee deputy chair from the Democratic Party faction, Benny K Harman, said he agreed that political parties needed to start thinking of proper ways to recruit and propose qualified presidential and vice presidential candidates.
However, Benny said that such mechanisms should be within the authority of political parties and should not be regulated in a state regulation. “Let the political parties find their own pattern,” he said.
