O

ur elected representatives can pat themselves on the back after they endorsed a regulation that restores direct election as the method by which leaders of local governments are chosen. Democracy lives on.

On Tuesday, the House of Representatives voted by acclamation, without any dissenting voice, to turn a presidential decree issued in lieu of law into full legislation that ensures the people will continue to vote for their governors, regents and mayors. The House has also agreed that these elections must be held simultaneously after 2020. There are 34 provinces and more than 500 regencies and mayoralties, so it makes sense both logistically and administratively to hold them all at the same time.

We just wish we could congratulate the House for a job well done.

Wasn'€™t it only last September that the House got us into this big mess in the first place? When it voted to abolish direct elections and hand the power to choose local leaders to the local councils. Then, the Golkar Party led the campaign in the House to eliminate direct polls arguing that it was '€œun-Indonesian'€, exorbitantly expensive and prone to corruption. Golkar assembled a majority coalition to defeat the PDI-P-led group in the vote.

The Democratic Party of then president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, which could have turned the outcome around, abstained. Yudhoyono was overwhelmingly vilified on social media for handing victory to Golkar two weeks before he was due to leave office. Sensing the major blunder, he issued the decree restoring the direct-election mechanism, which was confirmed by the House this week.

Admittedly, now we have a different House, which was inaugurated in October, but that is hardly an excuse for the sudden about-face. They are the same parties and many incumbents who were reelected are today singing a different tune about democracy from that of five months ago and have voted to reinstate direct elections.

Behind all this to-ing and fro-ing obviously was the power play that elected politicians indulged in all throughout 2014, an election year. They still do so to this day. They don'€™t really care whether people choose their leaders directly or indirectly, but they use every single opportunity they find to score a few petty political points.

Golkar, the Gerindra Party and other parties in the coalition wanted to punish President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo and his PDI-P for beating them in the presidential election in July. It was an arrogant display of power on their part, and they pulled it off. This seems to be the game they are playing now and it has essentially turned the House into nothing more than their playpen. More than three months after its inauguration, the House continues to engage in internal power playing with few results to show for it.

These elected representatives, who are on the state payroll paid for out of our tax money and with generous expense accounts, are making a complete mockery of the country'€™s sacred institutions and of our democracy.

Can we still seriously address them as honorable members?