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Parties reject closed-list electoral system
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Making the right choice: A man cycles past a board listing Malang Council candidates in front of the election commission’s offices in Malang, East Java, on Wednesday. The legislative election on April 17 will see 610 candidates vie for 49 seats. (JP/Aman Rochman)
Pro-government and opposition parties put on a united front on Tuesday against a push to ditch the current open-list proportional representation format for legislative elections, which allows voters to have an influence over legislative candidates put forward by political parties.
A member of the ruling Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) is challenging the 2017 General Elections Law at the Constitutional Court, seeking to restore a closed-list system, in which voters solely vote for parties that in turn exclusively decide the winning candidates proportionate to the number of votes won.
In a joint statement released on Tuesday, eight of nine political factions in the House of Representatives stressed their shared opposition to changing the current open-list system, describing the prevailing mechanism as “progressive and characteristic of our democracy” that should be maintained.
The statement was signed by the pro-government Golkar Party, Gerindra Party, Nasdem Party, National Awakening Party (PKB), National Mandate Party (PAN) and United Development Party (PPP), as well as opposition parties the Democratic Party and the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS).
An open-list system, the statement said, was a “beautiful coalescence of the requisite close bond between the people and their representatives and the participation of political party institutions that must still be upheld.”
The eight parties called for the Constitutional Court to “participate in safeguarding the progress of Indonesian democracy” and remain consistent in its decision in 2008 that changed the country’s electoral system into the fully open system after decades of adopting a closed-list system.
Indonesia, which is set to hold general elections in 2024, moved from the closed-list to the fully open-list proportional representation system in the 2009 election to increase the directness of democracy, with voters gaining more power over whom they elect at the expense of political parties that nominate candidates.
