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House to elect special committee head for elections bill
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All ready: Lawmakers prepare to attend a plenary meeting at the House of Representatives complex in Jakarta on Nov. 16. (Antara/Reno Esnir)
T
he House of Representatives is slated to elect a leader for a special committee tasked with deliberating a bill that regulates the 2019 simultaneous legislative and presidential elections on Monday.
The selection process is expected to see tight competition for the chairmanship between the 10 political factions at the House because the special committee’s chief will have the power to direct the course of committee discussions.
“We are ready to use a voting mechanism if members of the committee fail to achieve a consensus. This is a mechanism the House usually prefers,” committee member Arif Wibowo told The Jakarta Post on Friday.
Arif, a politician from the ruling Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), said the leader of the special committee would play a crucial role in determining the course of deliberation of the bill and its contents, in which he or she must be able to accommodate each political faction’s aspirations in the process.
Once the leader is elected, the special committee will start to deliberate provisions that will comprehensively regulate how the 2019 simultaneous legislative and presidential elections will take place and how elections organizers will work.
Initiated by the government, the elections bill is intended to merge three laws, namely Law No. 8/2012 on legislative elections, Law No. 15/2011 on the implementation of elections and Law No. 42/2008 on presidential elections. (ebf)
