T

he country may have more legislators in 2019 as the government plans to increase the number of seats at the House of Representatives from the current 560, which some critics say is too many already.

The government argues that it needs to increase the number of seats as the nation will have new electoral districts in 2019 following the creation of the North Kalimantan province in October 2012. The 34th province, which was once part of East Kalimantan, was not considered a separate constituency in the 2014 general elections.

In the 2019 elections, North Kalimantan will have its own electoral districts and will have representation at the House.

“We are likely to increase the number of seats [at the House], because there is one more province that must have seats,” Home Ministry director general of political and general administration, Soedarmo, said.

 He added that it would be easier to increase the number of seats at the House to accommodate political representatives from North Kalimantan than to reduce the number of seats from neighboring provinces, which he claimed would draw the ire of political parties.

In contrast, elections expert Ramlan Surbakti said increasing the size of the House was unnecessary as the current number of lawmakers was already excessive.

Having more people at the House will only make it more ineffective and may even lead to a problem of overrepresentation, he added.

Rather than increasing the number of seats, Ramlan suggested that the government reduce the allocation of parliamentary seats from 3-10 to 3-6 per electoral district.

“That said, political parties will need to intensify their competition. [...] To me, 560 legislative members is too many,” Ramlan said.

East Kalimantan currently has six electoral districts and eight seats in parliament.

Ramlan said the government and House could also share the seat allocations for East Kalimantan with North Kalimantan, as the combined population of the two provinces had not changed.

Soedarmo dismissed Ramlan’s suggestions, saying that reducing the number of legislative seats in other provinces to accommodate the creation of new electoral districts was not an option as it was likely to upset political parties.

“No [parties] want to have their [amount of] seats cut down. The spirit is that we don’t want to harm the political parties, because the voices of parties are the voices of the people,” Soedarmo said.

But he said that the final say on the matter would depend on the bill’s deliberation at the House.

“We’ll see how the bill deliberation goes,” he added.

In the past, the General Elections Commission (KPU) had the full authority to arrange election regulations, and political parties had no say in determining whether the creation of a new province required additional legislative seats.

When West Papua became a new province and separated from Papua in 1999, the KPU decided to retain the share of the seats and proportionally divide them between the two provinces. Before the separation, Papua had 13 parliamentary seats. Three were then allocated to West Papua.

United Development Party (PPP) lawmaker Reni Marlinawati backed the government’s plan and lashed out at Subakti’s proposal to reduce the number of seats political parties could hold in each constituency.

“The reduction of parliamentary seats to 3-6 is not a solution. The House won’t be able to accommodate aspirations from many regions,” she said.

She argued that the number should be increased to 3-15 per electoral district as the country’s population was still growing.

The government is still drafting the election bill, which replaces several election laws, to serve as a legal basis for the 2019 election, in which, for the first time, the legislative and presidential elections will be merged.