House in a dilemma over allocation of seats

House in a dilemma over allocation of seats

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

While it is almost certain that the 2004 election will adopt a
proportional representation (PR) system, just exactly how the 550
seats in the House of Representatives are to be distributed
between the provinces is a potentially contentious issue that
could pit the heavily populated Java against the rest of the
country.

The bill on general elections, already sent to the House for
deliberation starting next month, proposes a combination of PR
and district electoral systems, but without stipulating what
constitutes a district and how the seats should be distributed to
each province or district.

The International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES), in a
paper published this week, proposes the multi-member district
proportional representation (MMD-PR) system, one that could
accomplish best the goal of one-person/one-vote/one-value.

IFES, in a study funded by the US Agency for International
Development (USAID), urged the House to settle the matter in the
early stages of the bill's deliberation.

"Allocation of seats to provinces is a preliminary electoral
issue that requires serious and immediate attention by the House
in reviewing the new draft election law," the study said.

Rather than one seat/one district, it proposes more than one
seat to be contested in each district: The seats are then given
to party contestants in proportion to their share of the vote.

The study proposes redrawing the electoral boundaries, pooling
sparsely populated regencies outside Java into single districts
and dividing densely populated Java provinces into several
electoral districts.

Under the proposal, the country's 30 provinces would be carved
up into between 76 to 91 electoral districts, depending on how
many districts the provinces in Java are divided into.

Under this proposal, using the 2000 population census, each
seat would represent between 275,299 people (not registered
voters) in North Maluku, and 381,886 people in East Kalimantan.

This system would still be more representative than that used
in 1999, when the 462 House seats were divided among 27 provinces
on the basis of population and number of regencies.

In 1999, heavily populated provinces in Java were not as well
represented in the national legislature, even if they had the
largest number of seats.

Based on the number of registered voters, a seat in Papua
(with 13 House seats) was worth 77,066 voters, in East Timor
(then still an Indonesian province with 4 seats) 105,024 and Aceh
(with 12 seats) 123,858.

In contrast, a seat in Yogyakarta was worth 321,567 voters,
East Java 320,759, Central Java 312,010, West Java 308,945 and
Jakarta 281,792 votes. This is in spite of their receiving
respectively 5, 68, 60, 82 and 18 seats in the House.

The system proposed by IFES seeks to redress this imbalance.

The study noted the establishment of the Regional
Representative Council (DPD), the upper house in the People's
Consultative Assembly, in which each of all 30 provinces,
whatever their geographical or population sizes, would be
represented by four members. The council would represent
"territory" while the House would represent "people".

The proposed districts would only be used for the purpose of
the election of the national legislature, and not for
administrative purposes or the election of local legislatures.

The proposed MMD-PR would reduce the size of "wasted votes" of
the 1999 general election, as well as eliminate the number of
parties winning the seats. Smaller parties will have less chance
of picking up one or two seats in Java than they did in 1999.

IFES also proposes the use of an "open-list" voting system, in
which people would vote from a list of candidates that have been
proposed by their parties. In 1999, people voted for political
parties which allocated the seats to registered candidates after
the seats were divided.

The bill on general elections was rather vague on how the
seats should be distributed, but stated that this would be the
job of the General Elections Commission.