KPU opts for electoral districts

Moch. N. Kurniawan, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The General Elections Commission (KPU) is putting the legitimacy of next year's polls on the line as it decided on Tuesday to break the law to end a stalemate over electoral districts.

Following a long-standing debate, KPU members ruled that overpopulated municipalities or regencies would be considered as one electoral district although based on population they deserve more.

The decision violates article 46 (2) of Law No. 12/2003 on general elections, which stipulates that an electoral district is allocated with between three and 12 seats at the provincial legislature.

West Jakarta, East Jakarta, South Jakarta and the North Sumatra towns of Medan and Deli Serdang are examples of densely populated areas where the general elections law cannot work properly. They deserve 15, 18, 14, 14 and 15 seats respectively.

KPU deputy chairman Ramlan Surbakti said on Tuesday the commission was referring to the article 46 (1), which stipulates that an electoral district comprises a municipality/regency or a merger of municipalities and or regencies.

"The article only allows KPU to merge several regencies or municipalities into one electoral district, but not to separate a regency or municipality into more than one district," Ramlan said.

Ramlan said KPU realized that articles 46 (1) and (2) were contradictory to one another, thus choosing one of them would simply violate another and the law itself.

The law gives the KPU the authority to determine electoral districts for the House of Representatives, provincial legislative councils and regency or municipality legislative councils.

Ramlan said that despite violating the law, the decision would give all political parties, including the small ones, a great chance to win seats on provincial legislative councils.

KPU announced on Monday that 1,780 councillors in 30 provinces, and another 13,525 in 410 regencies and municipalities would be elected in the 2004 general elections.

The number of new councillors to be elected in general elections is an increase from 1,455 councillors in provinces and another 10,495 in regencies and municipalities in the 1999 poll.

When it comes to the election of the House of Representatives members, Ramlan said KPU had decided that based on population a seat equals 425,000 voters in Java, while outside Java a seat equals 325,000 people.

"We made this decision as we considered that population above 600 people per square kilometer is a densely populated area. All of those areas are located in Java," he said.

Under a simple calculation, Jakarta with its 8.62 million people will be allotted 20 seats in the 2004 elections, up from 18 seats in 1999.

But Papua with 2.4 million people should only get seven seats, down from 13 in 1999. Maluku with a population of 1.185 million should get four seats in 2004, compared to six in 1999, and South Kalimantan with a total population of 3.181 million should secure 10 seats in 2004 from 11 in 1999.

However, since the general election law also requires that old provinces get the same number of seats they got in 1999, Papua would get 13 seats instead of seven, Maluku would obtain six and South Kalimantan 11.

Ramlan also said that new provinces Gorontalo, North Maluku, and Bangka Belitung islands would secure three seats in the House regardless of their tiny population.

The KPU decision would be tried out with regional KPU in early August to see how it works and would be opened to a public scrutiny for two weeks afterwards, he said.