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his is to respond to The Jakarta Post'€™s editorial entitled '€œUnbreakable dynasties'€ on July 10. I completely agree with the Constitutional Court verdict scrapping the discriminatory clause in Law No. 8/2015 on regional elections.

Previously, the law included unfairly banning relatives of the incumbent to run in regional head elections. In a democracy, as long as no law is being broken, people'€™s choice should be the only filter in the election.

A political dynasty is not necessarily a bad thing. In America '€” the pioneer of modern democracy '€” political dynasties are well-accepted. No one is complaining about the Kennedy family, Bush family, or Clinton family for dominating American politics.

They ascend to power simply because of their capability of public service. The dynasty grooms them well and politics is ingrained in daily life. Nothing is wrong with this. Unfortunately, instead of quality, the Indonesia'€™s political dynasties depend only on popularity.

The essence of democracy is crowd wisdom. The idea is that all eligible voters decide and the outcome naturally fits with the people'€™s interest. And the precondition for a functional democracy is the quality of voters. They must be aware of how a democratic system works.

They must know the wrong decision means disaster to their opulence. Dating back to early democracy, only the rich, professional and the likes whose interest need protection could vote. They were very rational and only voted for the candidates who would really take care of them. Gradually, more people became eligible and finally universal suffrage was applied.

Democracy was not invented here. Indonesia is not well prepared to embrace democracy. Since the beginning, Indonesia has implemented universal suffrage '€” no filter for irrational voters. Both rational and irrational voters will choose a leader. Unsurprisingly, the outcome sometimes is illogical.

The member of a political dynasty who achieved nothing in the past, even without experience, can easily assume office. Democracy goes haywire.

Accordingly, the key is the rational voters. People must have awareness of the consequences of their choices. Good education emphasizing logic might work for this goals. Since we can reverse the flow of democracy, to be fair, political dynasties must be accepted. To curb the much-concerned corruption, law must rigorously and indiscriminately be enforced. To avoid the low quality of popular candidates, the people must be filled with information.

In my opinion, in the long term this will work.

The problem of Indonesia'€™s political dynasties lies in the existence of rational voters rather than the political dynasty itself. Had the people become rational, the regional heads would have been democratically selected based on meritocracy. The best must lead the rest.

Erwin Wirawan
Bogor, West Java