It is all a matter of timing

It is all a matter of timing

Medelina Hendytio, Budi Setiyono and Guy Janssen
Jakarta

When the General Elections Commission ordered a nationwide
recount of the ballot, election monitoring groups rightly
expressed their concern there would be no subdistrict-level
representatives of the candidates available to witness the
recount.

During the legislative elections such concerns were not raised
by election observers. Interviews with election officials at
subdistrict level, however, confirm election fraud could easily
have occurred because in several subdistricts ballot counting was
not witnessed by trained staff from all the political parties.

On April 5, four different legislative elections took place
making it difficult for observers to supervise the elections. If
national, provincial and district elections were organized on
different dates, this supervision would have been better. The
parties would also have had more time to create more detailed
political platforms, informative campaigns and media coverage of
the campaigns would have improved as a result. Splitting up these
elections would mean political parties, candidates and voters
would all profit.

During the last legislative election, research showed that
district level politicians felt discouraged from developing an
election platform. Parties were not motivated to invest in a
political program for their district because they had to promote
provincial and national platforms at the same time.

If the national elections were not organized on the same date
as the district level elections, district candidates would no
longer be hidden behind the national platform and would propose
solutions to local problems in their campaigns. Voters measure
the performance of their representatives against the promises
made in election campaigns. So voters could better control their
district governments if national, provincial and district
elections took place on different dates.

Going one step further and organizing elections in every
district on a different date would create even more democratic
control and accountability.

Discrete dates for polls would allow parties to improve their
campaigning methods from the current practices, which are not
seen as effective. Only a few district politicians interviewed
believe their parties' mass-media campaigns have had any effect
on voters. The election results seem to confirm this.

District political candidates, therefore generally opt for
closed-door campaigns to try and sway voters. A simple
calculation proves that this method has its limits.

Observations indicate that indoor campaigns cost about Rp
50,000 for each participating voter. If one out of every two
voters who attended decided to vote for the candidate they met, a
candidate would have to dish out at least Rp 1.2 billion
(US$130,000) just to reach the BPP election threshold (the
minimum number of votes need for a candidate to get a seat in the
local legislature).

Even the very wealthy would not be able to meet enough
constituents. If candidates had the charisma to convince every
person they met to vote for them, they would still have to
organize 15 meetings of 40 voters every day of the campaign
period to reach the BPP threshold. During the March campaign
period, even the most active candidates did not manage to reach
out to more than 10 percent of the BPP threshold.

New campaign methods are urgently needed. The best campaign
methods are developed through trial and error. Currently party
specialists have no time to try new methods because they are too
busy with their party's nationwide campaigns at the national,
provincial and district level.

Parties moreover have little incentive to study the
effectiveness of their campaigns. When elections happen again in
five years time everything may be different. If elections would
happen in "district A" today and in "district B" some weeks
later, parties in district B could profit from studying what
messages and methods resulted in a larger number of votes.

So if elections were to take place on a different date in
every district and every province, campaign methods could be
studied more often and as a result campaigns would become more
effective. Moreover, local media would have more time and space
available to cover the elections in each district.

In fact local and national party leadership, voters, the
administration, civil society and even business stand to gain
from elections spread out over the current five-year term:

National-level political leadership would have more time to
concentrate on local party development and the selection of
candidates to ensure their party philosophy was properly
translated into a local platform.

Voters would be exposed more frequently to elections and would
become more sophisticated in their choices and expectations.
Specifically organizations concentrating on election monitoring
and voter education could develop highly qualified staff in a
very short period of time.

Elections would be simple in small geographical areas. It
would allow faster procedures for counting the votes, announcing
the winners and swearing in new officials.

Finally, companies providing election support services would
become more professional if elections were held on an ongoing
basis. These companies could be printers, T-shirt producers or
election advisors as well as polling companies and journalists.
The services would also become cheaper. For example there would
be more companies available to print the ballot papers at any one
time, resulting in better prices. Some researchers argue that
cost reduction due to more competition and better supervision,
could offset the expected additional cost of spread-out
elections.

At this moment the national parliament is discussing the
revision of Law 22 including the direct election of regents and
governors. All the above arguments are valid for executive as
well as legislative elections. Since regents and governors are
already elected on different dates in every district and
province, not the dates for the executive but rather the
legislative should change to improve accountability.

The regental elections should follow shortly after the
legislative elections. Similar to the presidential elections, the
right to field a candidate for the position of regent or governor
will be conditional on a minimal representation in parliament.
This would increase the chance for the development of a real
opposition at regional levels, improving accountability even
further.

The timing of elections is as important as the layout of the
ballot paper. Organizing national, provincial and district level
elections staggered on different dates would be most
advantageous.

Medelina Hendytio is a political researcher at the Centre for
Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Budy Setiyono is a
lecturer at the Department of Public Administration, Diponegoro
University, Semarang. Guy Janssen is a Jakarta-based governance
specialist.