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