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he Election and Democracy Syndicate has suggested the government return to a proportional electoral system for the 2019 legislative elections. However, the NGO said it was up to the government to decide whether the public or parties should retain the right to choose individual candidates.

The organization was referring to the system applied in the 1999 legislative elections. Under a proportional system, the proportion of votes for a political party determines the number of seats that a party has in the legislature.

Unlike the previous elections, which used closed-list systems, in 2014 the country applied an open-list proportional system in which voters directly choose candidates for the House of Representatives and local legislative councils.

A closed-list system gives parties the authority to decide the legislative candidates who will sit in the legislature.

 “We don’t have a suggestion about whether the legislative elections should use a closed or open system. We will let the government decide that, but we demand that it consider using a proportional system like what was used in the 1999 legislative elections,” August Mellaz, the chairman of the Election and Democracy Syndicate, said recently.

According to Constitutional Court Decree No. 14/2014, Indonesia will use the open-list proportional system when it holds simultaneous regional, legislative and presidential elections in 2019.

Three major political parties — the ruling Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), the Golkar Party and the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) — are in favor of the closed-list system, as it gives them more control over choosing their representatives.

The PDI-P, a political party that won the 2014 presidential election and has 109 out of 560 seats in the House of Representatives, declared in January at its national working meeting that PDI-P wanted the upcoming legislative elections to be held using a closed proportional system to increase political parties’ responsibility to prepare qualified candidates.

Golkar voiced similar concerns at its extraordinary national congress, which was held from May 15 to May 17 in Bali. Meanwhile, the PKS announced at its national coordination meeting in January in Depok, West Java, that the party had agreed on the use of a closed proportional system for the 2019 elections.

Ahmad Riza Patria, a lawmaker from the Gerindra Party, the third-largest political party that won the most votes in 2014, said that his party supported the open-list system.

“A closed-list [proportional] system is not bad but we want people to be involved directly in choosing their representatives. That is why Gerindra supports the open list,” Riza told journalists.

He added that the closed-list system had some good points, such as giving highly qualified but unpopular candidates the chance to serve the public.

“A legislative candidate who is not popular enough to get many votes, but is known as qualified person can be elected by his/her party to be in the House of Representatives under that system,” Riza said.

He added that there were many young candidates who might not be effective politicians who had a big chance of becoming House members because they were popular or had a lot of money. (wnd)