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Direct elections should be stopped for president's sake: Dems
Jakarta Post - September 9, 2014
Therefore, he said that, along with some other political parties in the Red-and-White Coalition, his party proposed that regional heads should be elected by councilors.
He said that the ruling party supported such a proposal because it had learnt from the experience of its chairman, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who has served as the country's leader for 10 years.
For example, Khatibul said, when Yudhoyono wanted to increase the price of subsidized fuel, his proposal was rejected by five regional heads, one of whom was president-elect and Jakarta Governor Joko "Jokowi" Widodo, who will replace Yudhoyono on Oct. 20.
"Like Jokowi, [Central Kalimantan Governor] Teras Narang also rejected Yudhoyono's proposal [on raising the price of subsidized fuel]," Khatibul said on Tuesday as quoted by kompas.com.
He said that such an example proved that regional heads frequently refused to comply with the president's instruction. According to Khatibul, such refusals occur because the regional heads, after having been elected by the people, felt that they had equal power with the president.
If councilors elected regional heads, the possibility of rejecting presidential instructions could be minimized, which would then smooth the president's efforts to rule the country, said Khatibul, who is also the deputy chairman of House of Representatives Commission II overseeing home affairs and elections.
"Another benefit if regional heads were elected by councilors would be saving state funds of up to 41 trillion [US$1.1 billion]," he said.
The Democratic Party, along with its partners in the coalition led by losing presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto, began to make serious efforts to remove direct elections for regional heads after the Constitutional Court declared Jokowi the winner of the presidential election on Aug. 21. (alz)
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