W

ith lawmakers having only around six or seven months to pass the election bill into law, questions have been raised over their ability to produce a quality law that could ensure the legitimacy of the 2019 election results.

The country will for the first time hold concurrent presidential and legislative elections in 2019, as mandated by the Constitutional Court.

The court’s ruling, issued a few months before the 2014 legislative elections, has forced the government and the House of Representatives to revise three separate election-related laws — the 2008 Presidential Election Law, the 2011 Legislative Law and the 2011 Election Organizers Law — and merge them into one.

The revision has paved the ways for political parties to modify the nation’s electoral system to accommodate their interests.

Civil society groups and election watchdogs, meanwhile, may have little say in the deliberation, which has to be concluded before election preparations kick off next year.

The 2019 general elections are set for April or July 2019 and preparations for them, including the election for new General Elections Commission (KPU) members, should begin two years beforehand.

Potential legal loopholes within the bill, if passed into law, could put the credibility of the 2019 election results on shaky legal ground, constitutional law expert Feri Amsari told The Jakarta Post on Saturday.

He argued neither the political parties nor the public was familiar with the possible changes in the electoral system. “The election result will be vulnerable to legal challenges. Even worse, it could also trigger conflicts,” Feri said.

Other than providing a legal basis for the concurrent legislative and presidential elections, the bill also introduces many controversial provisions, which may lead to protracted debate at the House and, if approved, would be subject to challenges at the Constitutional Court.

The government, which is supported by a coalition of parties led by the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), for example, has proposed to change the election system from the current open-list system to an open-limited or semi-closed-list proportional representation system.

The proposed system will allow voters to vote for their preferred candidates on the ballot papers but the political parties will have the final say on who will get a House seat.

Chusnul Mariyah, a political expert from University of Indonesia who served as a KPU commissioner from 2001 to 2007, has warned that the new system would trigger conflicts within political parties.

The bill also plans to bar new political parties from nominating presidential candidates as it stipulates that only those that won seats in the 2014 legislative elections can do so.

The major parties’ plan to raise the electoral threshold to reduce the number of factions at the House would also likely drag on the bill’s deliberation as small parties would strongly oppose such a move.

“The late deliberation [of the bill] makes it difficult for the public to give substantial input,” Feri said.

The House will start deliberating the bill by mid-November after the recess period. Lawmakers say they are aware of this situation. “The House and the government may only be able to discuss several crucial issues or risk dragging the bill’s deliberation on too long. We could run out of time and it will ruin the election process itself,” Prosperous Justice Party lawmaker Almuzzammil Yusuf said.