TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Elections ‘exhausting’, but no need to rush law amendment: Lawmakers
Observers have called for the vote count to be completed before any moves are made to change the system.
Change Size
A medical team from the Lhokseumawe Police in Aceh check the health of polling station officers in Muara Dua district office on Wednesday, April 24. (Antara/Rahmad)
A
mid growing calls to revise the concurrent legislative and presidential election system that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of polling station officials, observers have called for the vote count to be completed before any moves are made to change the system.
Network for Democracy and Electoral Integrity (Netgrit) cofounder Ferry Kurnia Rizkiyansyah, who is also a former General Elections Commission (KPU) member, said the election organizers should focus on finishing the vote tally that is still progressing nationwide.
"They still have to focus on the counting process and data entry on their website," he said on Saturday during a discussion on the elections review.
He said that it would be better if the House of Representatives began deliberating an amendment to the Election Law a year from now or in 2021, after the new administration and lawmakers had been installed.
Andy Budiman, a legislative candidate from the Indonesian Solidarity Party (PSI), said there should be no rush to change the simultaneous election system, as it was a new experience for the country. He said it was normal for the election organizers to encounter technical problems.
“Just like a company, if the problem is workload, the solution is not changing the system, but hiring more people,” he said.
The country held concurrent legislative and presidential elections for the first time on April 17 following a Constitutional Court ruling in 2014 that mandated that the presidential and legislative elections be held on the same day from 2019 onward. The time consuming process and the large budget spent to hold the elections on separate days led to the court’s decision to hold them on the same day.
