MPR should adopt closed voting

MPR should adopt closed voting

From Media Indonesia

Like the last two plenary sessions of the House of Representatives, which resulted in the first and second memorandum of censure against the President, the next special session of the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR), scheduled for Aug. 1, 2001, would probably adopt the same mechanism of voting i.e. open voting in making its decision. At that time the House, in its deliberations on whether to accept the President's accountability report, resorted to open voting because lobbying efforts and debates to reach a unanimous agreement failed.

An open voting system is in fact an effective way for large House factions to pin point and control a legislator who has a different opinion from that of his own faction. We have then observed how not a single legislator cast a vote which was against his faction's aspiration. In a way, legislators had been psychologically terrorized and coerced to vote for a decision in line with their respective faction's policy.

However, the open voting mechanism could be harmful to a legislator, if he or she had to vote for a decision that would lead to the ousting of President Abdurrahman Wahid from his presidential post by rejecting his accountability report. The legislator concerned could become a target of attack by angry supporters of the President. So a better choice would be a closed voting system. The closed voting system is not only safe for the voters, but also democratic in nature where honesty and conscientiousness are more likely to be guaranteed.

It is true that a closed voting is vulnerable to money politics. But again it all depends on the conscience and mentality of the individual legislator.

SAMSU

Jakarta