High School dropouts will be allowed to become lawmakers: KPU
High School dropouts will be allowed to become lawmakers: KPU
Moch. N. Kurniawan, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
High school dropouts will be allowed to run in legislative
elections if they manage to get a letter of recognition from a
high school or the equivalent, a final draft instruction issued
by the General Elections Commission (KPU) says.
KPU member Anas Purbaningrum said on Tuesday that the letter
of recognition must also be notarized by the Ministry of
Education or the Ministry of Religious Affairs.
"With this strict procedure, we are simply trying to take it
out of the individual schools' hands, as they might just issue
letters for prospective lawmakers, because people will doubt the
credibility of the institutions," he told a press conference.
Law No 12/2003 on election requires legislative candidates to
have a minimum education of high school or its equivalent.
In Indonesia, there are a number of schools equivalent to high
school including religious schools, or madrasah.
Last week, the KPU launched its draft instruction on
legislative nominations publicly to get feedback from the people.
It will conclude the draft with Anas promising to pass the
draft into an instruction later this week.
Anas said people who meet the minimum education requirements
must show a copy of their certificates with an official seal from
the high school to become legislative candidates.
Aside from the education requirement, the final draft
instruction also states that a political party without leadership
in a particular province, regency or municipality, would not be
able to nominate legislators from that province, regency or
municipality.
"This does not mean that a political party is not given an
equal chance to contest the election, but simply that the party
is just unable to use the opportunity to run in that province
because it has no official presence there," he said.
Regarding the ranking of legislator candidates, KPU will leave
the matter to parties, and they expect the Elections Supervisory
Committee (Panwaslu) to investigate any corruption involved in
those decisions.
"We can't intervene in any party's affairs. If there are
scandals about the ranking, Panwaslu is supposed to handle it,"
Anas said.
Regarding the maximum number of nominees, the KPU will return
a list of total legislative candidates to each party if the
latter submits the list surpassing the maximum quota in an
electoral district, according to him.
If the party makes the same mistake within 14 days after the
KPU returns the documents, the KPU would automatically eliminate
the legislative candidates with the lowest ranking in the party,
he added.
The KPU will also return legislative candidate documents to
parties that failed to meet the 30 percent quota of female
legislative candidates.
If the party failed to get the documents right, KPU will
announce publicly that the party had less than 30 percent quota
of female candidates, he added.