T

he House of Representatives has almost achieved its mission to push the government to apply lower requirements for political parties for naming candidates in regional elections.

The deputy chairman of House Commission II overseeing home affairs, Muhammad Lukman Edy, said on Tuesday that during several mostly closed-door hearings about revisions to the Regional Elections Law, the government so far agreed to lower the polling benchmark for candidates from political parties.

Candidates from a political party or a coalition of political parties will be able to name a candidate in a local election if they can garner 15 to 20 percent of the seats in the respective local legislative council (DPRD), down from the current 20 to 25 percent.

The agreement was a trade-off for keeping the requirement for independent candidates at 6.5 to 10 percent of the final voters list (DPT), which the lawmakers had earlier insisted should be raised to 15 to 20 percent.

“The government has agreed so far. They only need to talk about it with the President,” Lukman said in a discussion, claiming that the deal was made based on fairness.

Lukman went on to say that the requirement could work effectively as long as the General Election Commission (KPU) strengthen and improve the quality of its verification of the identity cards of the candidates’ supporters.

“The KPU should be able to design a better mechanism to guarantee the quality of the verification using technology,” said the National Awakening Party (PKB) lawmaker.

Having run the first concurrent regional elections in December, the government has initiated the revisions of the Regional Elections Law to improve the running of the next batch of elections, currently scheduled for February next year.

The revisions include an accommodation of the recent Constitutional Court ruling that changed the basis of the minimum requirement for independent candidates from the population numbers to the voters list.

Also in the revisions, the House and government have agreed to grant authority to the Election Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) to directly impose sanctions on candidates or their teams who are proven to have tried to buy votes.

“Money politics is an administrative violation, so the candidates deserve a disqualification,” Lukman said.

However, he said that the House actually proposed stronger powers for the Bawaslu, with which it could supersede the authority of the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court in solving election disputes.

“We actually recommended that the Bawaslu establish a council to deal with violations and sanctions, but the government doubts if the authority should be given to the agency,” he added.

The government also previously proposed that any political party be penalized if it fails to name a candidate in a poll. This is to prevent the single-ticket phenomenon that emerged in the December season.

Commission II has claimed that the proposal was dismissed since most parties were of the opinion that they have full authority to determine whether to endorse or propose candidates.

The revisions also include a requirement for police officers and Indonesian Military (TNI) personnel to quit their jobs prior to contesting elections.

KPU commissioner Juri Ardiantoro said that the House should firmly synchronize the draft with the TNI and police laws so that it would not create problems in the future.

“The draft should make it clear and just say that the TNI and police should refer to their sectoral laws to avoid multiple interpretations,” Juri said.