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.