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nstead of progressing, Indonesian democracy is regressing after the House of Representatives voted early Friday to seize the right to elect regional leaders from the people and give it back to regional legislative councils (DPRDs). Sadly, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has contributed to the setback by failing to live up to his supposed support for direct elections.

Unless the Constitutional Court annuls the regional election system, our hard-won democracy will take a further dive as members of the DPRD who have the power to elect regional leaders will have to heed the wishes of their party bosses instead of the people. The nation chose the direct election of regional leaders in 2004 to acknowledge the people'€™s right to decide their own future amid a deficit of trust in their representatives in the legislative bodies.

A number of directly elected regional heads have been implicated in, or convicted of, corruption, most recently Riau Governor Annas Maamun who was caught in the act by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) on Thursday night. But this should not justify the termination of direct elections because, as the KPK has warned, indirect elections will allow vote-buying to go unchecked.

Following the protracted drama, which ended in a 226-135 vote to pass the controversial bill, we fear the public'€™s loss of confidence in politicians will loom larger than ever. Not so much because the seizure of the people'€™s right took place in a conspiracy by a coalition of parties that lost the July presidential race but will unfortunately dominate the House in the 2014-2019 term, but especially because it happened when the nation was being lauded for its democratic practices.

That Yudhoyono was later caught on the receiving end, as evident in the #shameonyousby trending topic on Twitter, is understandable, despite his televised speech from Washington to express his '€œdisappointment'€ with the Democratic Party'€™s withdrawal from the House plenary session and his plan to seek legal ways to revive the direct regional elections.

As the powerful chairman of the party, which currently holds 148 House seats, Yudhoyono could have ordered his lawmakers not to walk out of the decision-making process merely after the party'€™s belated attempt to have its 10 recommendations to improve the quality of regional elections accommodated by the House failed.

Questions about Yudhoyono'€™s support for direct elections have been increasingly rife after one of his party'€™s lawmakers, Ruhut Sitompul, said it was the party'€™s paramount leader who ordered its legislators to walk out of the House plenary session, paving the way for the House to approve indirect regional elections.

Indonesian democracy will again rest on the conscience of Constitutional Court justices, who on Aug. 21 defied the power of the mob to uphold the people'€™s choice of their president and vice president.

Challenging a law at the Constitutional Court may incite legal uncertainty, but for sure we cannot let democracy come under threat.