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BREAKING: Top court upholds open-list voting system for 2024 legislative elections
Thursday’s ruling means Indonesia will host elections for seats at the national and regional legislatures next year under the existing open-list voting system, which allows voters to choose legislative candidates instead of political parties.
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A voter dips his finger in election ink during an election. (JP/Anggara Mahendra)
To:p>The Constitutional Court on Thursday rejected a petition to reinstate the closed-list electoral system for the upcoming legislative elections, ending debates among political parties across the spectrum and rumors that the court had decided otherwise.
Thursday’s ruling means Indonesia will host elections for seats at the national and regional legislatures next year under its existing open-list voting system, which allows voters to choose among legislative candidates, rather than just from among political parties under the closed-list proportional representation format for legislative elections.
The petition filed by six individuals, including a member of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle Party (PDI-P), the largest party in the ruling coalition, and an individual who wants to run in the coming legislative elections, sought a return to a closed ballot list system that was scrapped in 2008, where voters choose parties instead of local candidates. The plaintiffs filed the petition in November last year, arguing that the current open-list format encouraged vote-buying and undermined the role of political parties in elections.
The justices held that it was policymakers who have the authority to change the electoral system, not the court, and that neither of the two systems was superior.
The open-list format is vulnerable to vote-buying, while the closed-list voting is prone to “nomination-buying”, said Justice Saldi Isra. The real problem, he said, was in the management of the political parties and their candidates themselves, and therefore political parties and legislative candidates should instead improve their integrity, while law enforcement is also crucial to curb “money politics”.
The bench also said the existing open-list format did not necessarily undermine the roles of political parties in elections.
The ruling was almost unanimous, with only one justice out of eight, Arief Hidayat, a two-time House of Representatives appointee, dissenting.
