Big parties support plan to fire dissenting legislators
Tiarma Siboro, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The country's three most popular political parties have thrown their weight behind plans to revive a mechanism to fire dissenting legislative members, but differ on other issues.
Executives of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan), Golkar Party and National Development Party (PPP) factions in the House of Representatives said on Friday that reinstating the old mechanism would help parties discipline members, rather than allow the parties to practice authoritarianism.
"A legislator can only be fired after the case is heard at the local chapter of the party concerned," said Yahya Zaini, a Golkar Party member and chairman of the House special commission deliberating the political party bill.
Echoing Yahya were Thaher Saimima of the PPP faction and Sukowaluyo Mintohardjo of the PDI Perjuangan faction, both deputy chairs of the commission.
They said a party had the authority to select its members for legislative seats, despite an open-list proportional system that might be adopted to elect House legislators.
The issue also highlights the deliberation of the election bill by another commission.
On Thursday evening, Minister of Home Affairs Hari Sabarno held a hearing with the commission deliberating the political party bill.
The three biggest factions in the House underlined four prominent points that needed prolonged discussion: Article 2 on minimum requirements for those wishing to establish a new political party; article 4 on the party's ideology and principles; article 7 paragraph f on the firing procedures and article 20 on supervision of political parties.
Both Thaher and Sukowaluyo agreed to impose strict requirements on people wishing to establish new parties, saying too many parties was not suitable for democracy building in the country.
Golkar rejected the clause and instead proposed that a 3 percent electoral threshold be imposed to restrict the number of parties eligible to contest the next election.
"I guess we should allow natural selection to work," Yahya said.
The current Law on Political Party No. 2/1999 has paved the way for people to establish political parties. More than 200 parties have registered with the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, raising suspicions they are only trying to obtain government funds.
In the 1999 general election, the government provided subsidies for all parties contesting the general election, the amount ranging from Rp 500 million (US$56,818) to Rp 1 billion.
On supervision of parties, both Golkar and PPP rejected the government's role, saying "the government itself is made up of the country's political parties."
"I suggest that the Supreme Court or the Constitutional Court conduct the supervisory job," Yahya said.
PDI Perjuangan agreed on the proposal, but limited the roles only to certain areas, including the registration process of parties.