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.