Presidential election

From Forum Keadilan

The amendment of Article 6 of the 1945 Constitution regarding the election of the president and the vice president as a single team is a step forward in turning Indonesia into a genuinely democratic country.

Unfortunately, this bill has been tarnished by a stipulation that in the event that no presidential election team meets the requirements, it is the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) that will elect the president. The reason is cost efficiency.

If the bill gets the green light, the amendment process will be no more than a lie to the public. If there are three teams of presidential candidates, then there will surely not be a single team that will be able to collect the required number of votes.

If using a second-round system entails a high cost, we could try to combine our system with that prevailing in the U.S. Each province would have their electoral votes, the number of which would be in proportion to the size of the population.

Counting in the first ballot for each team would be based on the popular vote system. If no team collected 51 percent of the popular vote as required, the electoral votes of each team would be counted under a "winner takes all" system. In this way it is likely that one presidential team would be able to secure more than half of the electoral votes as minimally required even though there may be several contesting presidential teams. Only when no requirement is fulfilled at this stage would the second round of the election be implemented.

The essence is that we should no longer apply the representative system that we have now. It is too naive to say that the choice of MPR members is the choice of the people. Vox populi vox dei, so the saying goes, does it not?

CHRISTOPHER LIMARJO

Central Sulawesi