How political parties selected their legislators in 2004 elections
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.