Poll debate: The system or the process?
Poll debate: The system or the process?
By Haryoso
SEMARANG (JP): The problem with general elections in Indonesia
has been the way they have been implemented, not the system
itself, according to two scholars at Gadjah Mada university.
Afan Gaffar and Riswandha Imawan both contended, in separate
interviews, that there is nothing wrong with the proportional
representation system that Indonesia has used for the past five
elections under President Soeharto.
Commenting on a proposal to change the system into a first-
past-the-post system in which voters directly elect their
representatives, the two analysts said such a reform was not
Indonesia's most urgent priority.
More urgent, according to Afan, is the achievement of an
election process that is democratic and encourages healthy
competition between the three political parties allowed to
contest elections.
Afan and Riswandha, both staff lecturers at Gadjah Mada's
School of Social and Political Studies, said each electoral
system has strengths and weaknesses, advantages and
disadvantages, making it difficult to state which one is the best
for Indonesia.
Last week President Soeharto commissioned the Indonesian
Institute of Sciences (LIPI) to study alternatives to the
proportional representation election system currently in use and
to make recommendations on which system is best suited to
Indonesia.
The alternative, known locally as the district system, allows
voters to directly elect representatives in their district to sit
in the House of Representatives.
Under the current system, the people do not vote for
individual candidates, but for one of the three parties. The
seats in the House of Representatives are then distributed among
the parties according to the share of the total votes each has
won.
The three political parties -- Golkar, the United Development
Party and the Indonesian Democratic Party -- appoint legislators
to the House of Representatives.
In a general election only 400 of the 500 seats in the House
are contested. The other 100 seats are reserved for the Armed
Forces, whose members do not vote.
Afan said the question of the relative merits of the
proportional representation system and the first-past-the-post
system had been debated by political scientists all over the
world for over a hundred of years and that, as yet, no concrete
conclusion had been reached.
He said the advantage of the proportional representation
system was that it could reflect the character of a nation and
that, in a multi-party system, even the smallest parties could
get represented.
The chief weakness of the system, which is most commonly found
in multi-party systems, is the emergence of radical parties, he
said.
Another weakness is the tendency towards coalitions between
the parties contesting the election which, he said, could lead to
blackmailing practices by small parties in a coalition.
Indonesia's electoral laws, however, limit the number of
parties contesting the election to three only. And Golkar has won
all of the past five elections with an outright majority.
The district system encourages individual figures to gain
prominence at the expense of their political parties, according
to Afan. In fact, he said, the party's function is relegated to
that of facilitating the careers of politicians.
The chief weakness of the representative system is that it
allows for a very large single majority in the House of
Representatives. A party can win all, or almost all, of the seats
contested, albeit some of them only by a slim margin, he said.
This means that the seats in the House can be severely
distorted, Afan added.
Given the weaknesses of the district system, Afan said that,
rather than seeking to change the electoral system, Indonesia
should concentrate on strengthening the electoral process under
the current system.
Riswandha concurred, saying that it did not matter which
electoral system Indonesia adopted as long as it guaranteed the
democratic election of representatives.
"Even if we imported the best electoral system there is, say
from the United States, I don't think it would solve the problem
that we have here," he said.
Under the current system, even a party's selection of its own
representatives has been undermined by the intervention of
stronger authorities, such as the government, Riswandha said. He
pointed, in particular, to the screening process that has been
instituted for prospective representatives in the House.
Further, a legislator who has been appointed to the House
remains subject to dismissal by the political party he
represents, he said.