District electoral system is ideal for RI: Scholar

JAKARTA (JP): Ideal democracy in Indonesia can be achieved only when the people themselves elect candidates to the House of Representatives, instead of having them appointed through a proportional system, a noted political scientist said yesterday.

Mochtar Pabottingi, a scholar of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, told members of Commission X of the House during a hearing yesterday that the district system, in which voters directly nominate their candidates, is most appropriate for Indonesia because of the geographic spread of voters.

"Through this system, the representatives are elected from those who can really air the people's aspirations," Mochtar said.

He warned that changing the election system would not have any impact on Indonesia's political condition unless the nation is thoroughly prepared.

The government should not force itself to change the electoral system, he said, adding that it was most important that the implementation of the existing system be improved.

"The reason is very simple," he said. "It may not be the system which is wrong, but the implementation."

He also warned that any mistake made in changing the system could fatally affect the country's political life and discredit the government.

Mochtar, who heads the institute's Center for Political Studies, has been appointed as chairman of a team specially set up to study the current electoral system.

Study

President Soeharto commissioned the institute in February to study the possibility of changing the election system from the current proportional representation, to a first-past-the-post system.

The Army has also undertaken a similar study and its provisional result, announced in June, determined that there was no need for Indonesia to move away from the proportional representative electoral system.

Under the current system, voters elect one of three political parties -- Golkar, the United Development Party, or the Indonesian Democratic Party. The 400 seats in the House are then distributed to the three parties according to their shares of the votes. The parties then appointed their representatives.

Mochtar stressed that it is the people's perception of how democracy is implemented that really counts, rather than what system is being adopted.

As part of the current project, the institute has launched a survey in 15 provinces, which includes looking at how past general elections were conducted there and on the political views of the people in those provinces. The institute has also studied the electoral systems used in other countries.

Mochtar said the people's growing demand for democracy and freedom of expression, and the expansion of Indonesia's middle class, are living examples of stable political changes taking place in the country.

"We have finished the first part of the study and we hope we can finish it entirely in December. It is the President who will later decide whether to announce the results of the study," Mochtar added. (05)