Law and Human Rights Minister Yasonna Laoly (left) and Home Minister Tjahjo Kumolo (right) attend a working meeting with members of the Special Committee on the Implementation of General Elections in the House of Representatives complex in Senayan, Jakarta, Thursday (13/7).
JAKARTA, KOMPAS — A failure to learn from experience. That description fits the discussion of the Bill on Implementation of the General Elections, which is dragging on again. As happened before, lawmakers are again engaging in elitist issues to secure their short-term electoral interests.
The deliberation of the election bill by the House of Representatives (DPR) and the government has been set back four months from the initial deadline of April 28, 2017. Last week, the DPR Special Committee for the election bill and the government again failed to agree on the five remaining crucial issues to submit their final decision to the plenary session on July 20.
The five crucial issues are the presidential nomination threshold, the vote-to-seats conversion method, the allocation of seats per electoral district for the legislative elections, the legislative electoral system, and the electoral threshold.
Of these issues, the presidential nomination threshold to determine the requirements for parties to field presidential candidates was the most difficult, with 10 political parties and the government insisting on their individual stances.
Party interests
The five crucial issues are laden with each party interests in the general elections. According to Kompas\' records, discussions of the same issues were protracted each year, thereby taking the completion of election bill hostage.
"The current condition and situation are almost similar to the 2009 General Elections. Our elites do not learn from past mistakes, and they are again faced with delays in completing their deliberations on the Bill on Implementation of the General Elections," executive director of the Association for General Elections and Democracy Titi Anggraini said in Jakarta on Sunday (16/7).
One of the poorest records on the deliberation of electoral draft laws was made by the DPR in the 2004-2009 period. During that time, several bills on the general elections were completed just 13 months before the ballot.
Revising the presidential election law took the longest to deliberate back then,as the DPR and the government were caught up in discussing the presidential nomination threshold, just as they are at present. As a result, the 2009 general elections became known as the worst election since the reform era.
Titi reminded that the current gamble is greater because the election bill is to provide a legal basis for the first simultaneous elections in Indonesia. Before it is passed into law, the General Elections Commission (KPU), in its capacity as the election organizer, cannot do much aside from preparing a number of scenarios that might stem from the draft law being deliberated.
KPU commissioner Ilham Saputra said that consequences of the delay in the bill’s completion from April to July were already apparent, such as cutting the election campaign period from the usual one year to a mere six months.
The KPU has asked that the deliberation of the bill would not be again delayed from the July deadline, because the preparation phase of regulatory technicalities would start in August. October is set for the initial stage of the general elections, involving the registration and verification of political parties participating in the elections. "For us, the law must be finished by the end of July. It cannot be helped," said Ilham.
Seeking deliberation
National Mandate Party (PAN) chairman Zulkifli Hasan said all parties were making an effort not to delay the decision past the planned deadline on July 20. He guaranteed that a consensus would be reached between the 10 parties and the government. "I don\'t think there will be a vote. Deliberations will be made until a consensus is reached. If anyone wants to insist on winning, we will continue to be in commotion," he said.
Nevertheless, in reality, the stances of several political parties on the crucial issues remain highly polarized and other items are yet to be deliberated.
PAN and the National Awakening Party,even though they are part of the ruling coalition, have a different stance from the government. They fall in the same line as Gerindra, the Democratic Party and the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), all non-government parties. The remaining five parties of the coalition – the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), Golkar, Nasdem, the United Development Party and the Hanura Party – claim to be solidly behind the government.
PKS President Sohibul Iman said that the election bill had the potential to become deadlocked because all parties insist on their stance on the presidential nomination threshold. Lobbying continued ahead of the DPR\'s plenary session on July 20. He predicted that the issues would be put to the vote for the final decision.
Meanwhile, the government insists that it will not back down from its stance, especially on the issue of the presidential nomination threshold, for which it proposes that parties must have 20 percent of House seats or 25 percent of the vote. Even though voting on the issues is an alternative, the government is optimistic that a consensus will be reached. "The government expects there will be a consensus within the inter-faction lobbies," said Home Minister Tjahjo Kumolo on Sunday.
Sri Budi Eko Wardani, head of the Center for Political Studies at the University of Indonesia, said that giving in to nearly all the wishes of the parties in the course of deliberations and the government’s insistence on its stance on the presidential nomination threshold issue proved that the democracy being built was simply democracy for the elites.
She asked the parties discussing the bill to think clearly and place the interests of the people and the country first.
