If voting changed anything, it would be made illegal, said notable philosopher Emma Goldman decades ago on the inefficiency and uselessness of elections in a nation filled with corrupt oligarchs and a careless public.

What Goldman cynically said about voting depicts perfectly what is going on with Indonesia'€™s young democracy, which can be considered to have started in 1998 after the New Order regime crumbled.

While many people expect change to come after they cast their votes in the 2014 general election, a survey conducted by a coalition of non-governmental organizations provides a reality check showing that whoever voters elect, the same dirty oligarch of politicians will again rule for another five years.

Based on the survey, dirty politicians will still dominate legislative seats because only 97 out of more than 200,000 legislative candidates have clean records and sufficient competency.

The elections offer 20,257 legislative seats at the House of Representatives, Regional Representatives Council (DPD), provincial legislative councils (DPRD-I) and municipal/regional legislative councils (DPRD-II).

This means that based on the coalition'€™s latest findings, clean politicians, if they were all elected, could only fill a mere 0.47 percent of the total seats.

'€œAs many as 32 out of the 97 clean legislative candidates are running for seats at the House,'€ National Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) coordinator Harris Azhar, who is also the coalition spokesperson, said at a press conference on Tuesday.

The House, which has 560 seats, is the top legislative authority in Indonesia. This means that only 5.7 percent of the House seats can be filled by clean candidates if they are all elected.

For years, the House has also topped the list of the most corrupt institution in surveys and research conducted by anti-corruption civil societies, such as Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW).

Due to the coalition'€™s findings, Harris said that clean legislative candidates would have little chance of instigating change or reform within the legislative institutions even if they were all elected.

However, Harris also said the findings also provided hope that there was a possibility for the public to identify clean and capable legislative candidates if they were willing to conduct their own research using the coalition'€™s standards.

The standards for good legislative candidates were concrete track records in eradicating corruption, upholding human rights, defending the environment and standing up for women'€™s rights, Harris said.

'€œIf the public in a certain electoral district finds a candidate that fulfills all of the required standards, then he or she can also be considered a good candidate to be included on our list,'€ Harris said.

Harris also stressed that identifying and electing good candidates was only half of the job in enhancing the quality of democracy.

'€œThe public, through various channels, must also be willing to monitor the performance of these good people once they enter the House. They might be clean now, but within minutes at the House, they might also change and forget about their commitments,'€ he said.

Another complicated part that needs solving in politics is the official affiliation between political parties'€™ central leadership and their respective factions at the legislative bodies.

Legislators are often confused about whether to heed their constituents or party leaders in determining their final stance on sensitive issues.

In the 2009-2014 House term, a legislator by the name of Lily Wahid from the National Awakening Party (PKB) was removed from her post due to her defiance in ignoring the instructions of her party leaders for the sake of her constituents'€™ interests.

Some candidates listed as good politicians by the coalition promised during the conference that they would remain committed in their idealism to fight for their constituents'€™ interests instead of those of their respective parties.

'€œIf my party wants to oust me for standing up for what I believe in, then so be it,'€ National Mandate Party (PAN) legislative candidate Aulia Prima Kurniawan said.

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