H

ome Minister Tjahjo Kumolo has said there will be no more candidate registration extensions for the December simultaneous elections after Aug. 11.

He also said the government was committed to holding the elections according to schedule.

'€œBasically, [the government] wants to run the elections simultaneously in 269 regions as planned,'€ he said on Monday.

Due to a lack of candidates that resulted in single tickets in seven regions, the government has extended the registration period to Tuesday and encouraged political parties to make last ditch efforts to name candidates.

The seven regions are Tasikmalaya, Blitar, Pacitan, Surabaya, Mataram, Samarinda and Timor Tengah Utara.

Several political parties have expressed their reluctance to name candidates, arguing that such an effort will result in poor quality candidates.

According to regulations in the Regional Elections (Pilkada) Law, the government should postpone elections in the regions that only have one ticket, but the government is mulling issuing a government regulation in lieu of law (Perppu) that would allow regions to hold elections in spite of only having a single ticket.

Tjahjo said that the political parties'€™ reluctance to waste their resources to challenge strong incumbents was the main reason behind the phenomenon.

'€œSo this is a political strategy. We can'€™t blame [political parties],'€ said the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) politician.

Another 81 regions are at risk of holding such uncontested elections as only two tickets have registered. The candidates are currently waiting for the KPU'€™s verification and may be eliminated during the process.