Buying Cats Out of the Bag

Kompas/Wisnu Widiantoro

Independent panelists, consisting of a number of experts (from left) Hamdi Muluk, Bibit Samad Rianto, Mari Elka Pangestu, Neng Dara Affiah, Djayadi Hanan and Indonesian Solidarity Party (PSI) general chairperson Grace Natalie, after a press conference on screening for PSI legislative candidates at PSI\'s central executive board office in Jakarta on Saturday (4/11). About 200 PSI legislative member candidates will undergo screening. The move is intended to identify anticorruption and anti-intolerance figures.

It is like buying a cat in the sack. The idiom is commonly used to describe voting for legislative candidates in a general election.

Very often, the people do not know their candidates. The authority to select legislative candidates, according to Law No. 7/2017 on General Elections, lies with political parties.

Article 241 of the law stipulates that candidates for the House of Representatives (DPR), the provincial legislature and the regency/city legislature are selected by the political parties contesting the election. The candidates’ selection is to be conducted democratically and transparently in accordance with the party’s rules. The law does not mention anything about public involvement in the process.

The history of this country’s general elections shows that political party leadership have the authority to place certain people at the top or somewhere in the middle of the list of legislative candidates, or simply to determine them as trivial elements in the candidate selection. The subjective interests of the party leadership are always there. It is common for the children or relatives of party leaders to appear at the top of the candidate list. Votes are also collected to ensure that the leaders’ family members win legislative seats. The more qualified, professional party cadres may not get elected, because they are placed lower on the candidate list.

Since the 2009 election, and in the upcoming 2019 elections, the candidates with the most votes, regardless of their rank in the candidate list, are elected. The candidate’s capabilities and integrity, aside from their popularity, are the determining factors in whether a candidate is elected or not. Thus, the parties need to prepare their best cadres.

In the past two days, this daily has reported that it has been difficult for political parties to come up with their legislative candidates for the 2019 elections. Transparency in the recruitment and selection of legislative candidates, which has historically been in the hands of the party leadership, can no longer be used as reference. There are party leaders who have gotten into trouble, so their credibility is in question, which also affects the credibility of their party. The people have also become smarter at choosing their legislative candidates.

In the last election, several political parties published advertisements in the mass media, inviting competent citizens to become legislative candidates. However, the parties got individuals looking for a job, any job.

The move of the Indonesian Solidarity Party (PSI), which organized a fit and proper test for its legislative candidates last week that involved non-party public figures and was conducted transparently, deserves recognition. Such a move will at least reduce nepotism among the legislative candidacy. The people will also get to know their candidates much earlier, and it will not be like buying a cat in the sack. The candidates are already out of the bag.

Now, the bet is on whether the party leaders can accept the resulting selection. Other political parties, of course, could develop their own models that involves public participation.