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Across indonesia, local chiefs slam plan to stop all direct polls
Jakarta Globe - September 7, 2014
In a lengthy explanation to journalists in Jakarta on Saturday, Isran said the regional election bill now being deliberated at the House would completely deprive people in more than 500 districts and cities the right to directly elect their regional heads, shifting that right to local legislatures. This would benefit parties that aim to establish an oligarchy to fulfill their selfish interests instead of those of the people.
"People pay taxes and obey laws as good citizens, and they don't demand anything more than having the right to elect their own leaders directly," Isran said. "Only once in five years can they exercise this right. So why should you take it away from them, after they have seen the benefit of democracy through direct elections?"
Parties at the House are reported to be rushing to pass the bill by their Sept. 11 deadline, with their term of office ending next month.
Isran said this was strange because on the executive front President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono had issued a directive that ministers must not make strategic decisions since their term was ending soon. "So why should the legislative body take the reverse direction for such a strategic issue?" he asked.
The Home Affairs Ministry reportedly endorsed the idea of shifting people's right to elect their local leaders to the respective legislative councils in last year on the grounds that direct elections at the local level were prohibitively expensive to stage and were rife with vote-buying.
This high cost of winning office, the government contends, is what compels local leaders to engage in corruption once in office.
Isran disagreed, saying that if the high cost of local elections was what worried the central government and the House, then the right solution was not to deprive people of their democratic right to vote, but to improve the electoral system.
For instance, campaign rules can be tightened so that candidates get equal opportunities to appear on television and in print media, he suggested. In this way the public will know how much money these candidates spend for such activities, Isran said.
"Students have died fighting for democracy, from Trisakti University to other parts of the country, and people have only now enjoyed the benefits of freedom through direct elections. Don't rape their democratic rights, because that is all they have as Indonesian citizens," Isran said.
He warned of at least two "dangerous scenarios" emerging should district heads and mayors be elected by local legislative councils. First, members of the councils would see this as an opportunity to engage in political horse-trading with the candidates.
"Even stupid people could then become district heads and mayors, as long as they have the money to bribe the local councilors. But they may not be the type of leaders that the people of the district want, because the people are not involved in the election process," Isran said.
The second, and worse, scenario would be that political parties' representatives in the local councils would propose their own candidates to run for office, Isran said.
This, he argued, would create a dangerous oligarchy because the local executive and legislative leaders would collaborate for their own interests and there would no longer be a functioning system of checks and balances to ensure a fair and working democracy.
"In such a situation, district heads and mayors would subordinate themselves and feel indebted to the councilors, and consequently the executive leaders would spend their time satisfying only their legislative bosses and not pay any attention to the actual needs of the people," Isran said.
He warned that should the bill be passed into law, APKASI would immediately seek to have it struck down by the Constitutional Court.
"The people of Indonesia would take to the streets to protest this bill if it is passed into law," he said. "The government could come to a halt as could the House. Never play around with the people's right; it is part of their human rights."
He cautioned the central government and the House against repeating the blunder of the 1999 Regional Elections Law, which he said had created local government instability in many parts of the country.
Ramlan Surbakti, a political scientist from Airlangga University in Surabaya, also slammed the House's move as a gross violation of the Constitution. He told journalists that the pursuit of selfish interests should not be allowed to defeat the Constitution and the spirit of democracy.
Ramlan said that because Indonesia was a republic, "consequently sovereignty lies in the people's hands, and this is manifested through direct elections as mandated" in the Constitution.
He said the Constitution also stated that Indonesia had a presidential government system instead of a parliamentary government system. In a presidential system, Ramlan explained, the executive leaders are elected by the people, unlike in a parliamentary system, where a prime minister is elected by parliament based on majority representation.
"In order to emphasize and ensure consistency of the presidential government system, executive leaders must be elected directly by the people, and not by legislative councils," Ramlan added.
The heated row over the bill was fanned by a meeting last week in Bogor involving central government and House representatives who aimed to go even further than the concerns raised by Isran and Ramlan.
Barring politicians from the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), all the other members of losing presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto's Merah Putih coalition reportedly agreed that not only the election of district heads and mayors but those of governors also should be conducted by local legislatures, so that there would be no more direct elections in Indonesia's 34 provinces.
The coalition's argument is that the direct election system has created inefficiencies in local governance. But Ramlan said the real reason for the high cost of the elections was political parties' inability to nominated credible candidates.
He theorized that if the candidates were credible, they would not need to spend too much in "gratitude fees" to their respective parties; and nor would they need to waste money during campaigning, because people recognize their capabilities.
And if inefficiency is what worried them, Ramlan went on, simultaneous elections across the country would be a far better solution than depriving people of their only constitutional right to elect local executive leaders according to their aspirations.
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