Harry Bhaskara

Harry Bhaskara
The Jakarta Post
Jakarta

Rather than "ladies and gentlemen", a provincial candidate for
the House of Representatives once addressed an audience "Bapak
dua dan ibu dua (father two and mother two)."

The candidate, an ojek (motorcycle taxi) driver who was
reading a prepared speech, should have said "Bapak-bapak dan ibu-
ibu" instead of saying "dua" for the figure "2" after each of the
words "Bapak" and "ibu" -- under the old spelling system.

"The candidate was a very talented leader," says Novi
Nasution, a legislator of the Indonesian Democratic Party of
Struggle (PDI-P), "unfortunately he had a limited education."

This story came out in a discussion at book launch for
Nomination and Selection Process of Indonesian Legislative
Candidates, edited by Syamsuddin Haris at the Hotel Ibis in West
Jakarta on Friday. The book scrutinized local elections in 15
cities in six provinces including East Java, Banten, West
Sumatra, East Nusa Tenggara, South Sulawesi and North Sumatra.

Novi urged political parties to set up a short education
programs before the 2009 elections for candidates like the "ojek"
driver, whom she described as "very brave".

Two other speakers, Syamsuddin Haris of the Indonesian
Institute of Sciences (LIPI) and Hadar N. Gumay of Center for
Electoral Reform (Cetro), agreed that a limited education should
not be an obstacle to people becoming legislators.

With university graduates making up only 3 percent of a
population of 230 million people, Indonesia ranks among the
lowest-educated nations in Southeast Asia.

Currently candidates who wish to stand for legislative
elections must have a minimum high school diploma qualification,
leading to the disqualification of many candidates after it was
found they had faked school or university-level diplomas.

Despite the ruling, however, low education levels are also
blamed for the poor performance of members in the House.

The discussion concluded that other hindrances to democracy in
the 2004 legislative elections included money politics, parochial
voting, thuggery and an "invasion" of businesspeople entering
politics to protect their vested interests.

The speakers also drew attention to what they said were "miss-
matches" in the electoral system. They agreed that the concept of
"open elections" where independents could stand, were more
representative than the current system, which only allows
candidates representing a set list of recognized parties to
contest positions.

"This is something that we need to work out for the 2009
election," Novi said.

Syamsuddin said among his book's significant findings were
that the major party, Golkar, tended to prioritize "old faces" in
candidate selections as opposed to other parties, which often
looked for new blood.

"Almost 90 percent of the legislator candidates were current
members of political parties," he said.

Hadar said legislators' nominations and selection processes
also left a lot of space for improvement.

"In some cases, nominations were decided by only a few
people," he said, "the whole process was still political party-
heavy. Alas, we know a democracy deficit is still plaguing our
political parties."

The discussion was organized by LIPI, book publisher Gramedia
and the Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy.