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Govt to keep direct elections in ‘mature’ regions
Tito Karnavian (JP/Seto Wardhana)Across its more than 17,000 islands, Indonesia is divided into 34 provinces, consisting of 416 regencies and 98 municipalities, ranging from Surabaya with more than 2
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Tito Karnavian (JP/Seto Wardhana)
Across its more than 17,000 islands, Indonesia is divided into 34 provinces, consisting of 416 regencies and 98 municipalities, ranging from Surabaya with more than 2.8 million residents to Tambrauw regency in Papua with only around 6,300.
With the exception of the administrative municipalities of Jakarta and the special region of Yogyakarta, where the governorship is an inherited office, all these provinces, regencies and municipalities have one thing in common: They hold direct regional elections to pick their local leaders for five-year terms. The government has indicated that that might be about to change.
One of Home Minister Tito Karnavian’s many suggestions to “evaluate” direct regional elections made over the past few weeks is an “asymmetrical” approach, in which some regions hold direct elections, while others, particularly conflict-prone ones such as Papua, do not.
“With direct regional elections, besides the potential of conflict in some regions with shootouts happening between tribes, identity politics is also on the rise,” Tito said on Monday. “Maybe the evaluation will find that [we should hold] asymmetrical regional elections.”
He added that he had asked Statistics Indonesia (BPS) to create a “democratic maturity index” to indicate regions in which the potential drawbacks of direct regional elections outweigh whatever benefits they might bring.
“We should look at which regions are ready and which are not,” he said. “In big cities [voters] may be ready, so we will carry out [direct regional elections]. But in other regions with a low index, maybe because the level of [political savvy] among the public is still low, resulting in candidates’ programs not being understood, we can perhaps hold elections in another form.”
While it remains unclear what exactly Tito’s “maturity index” would measure, state agencies have already devised a few indicators that could be used to evaluate the quality of democracy in regions as well as how vulnerable a particular region is to problems when holding elections.
The BPS’s annual Indonesian Democracy Index (IDI), for instance, uses a 0 to 100 scale to measure the state of democracy in a particular region, based on three main indicators: civil liberties, political rights and democratic institutions. The higher the score, the better the quality of democracy in that region.
The national average over the past four years has been 71.85, with a significant drop occurring in 2016, largely as a result of the run-up to the highly contentious 2017 Jakarta gubernatorial elections, by the end of which then-incumbent Basuki Tjahaja Purnama was convicted of blasphemy.
With direct regional elections, besides the potential of conflict in some regions with shootouts happening between tribes, identity politics is also on the rise.
Meanwhile, the Elections Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) has regularly calculated an Election Vulnerability Index (IKP) shortly before regional and general elections. The IKP also uses a 0 to 100 scale, measuring four possible sources of problems in elections: the sociopolitical context, the organization of the elections, the competition between candidates and the participation of all stakeholders. The higher the index, the more vulnerable the elections in that region are to election-related conflict or foul play.
In the last index, released shortly before election day in April, the national average was 49.63. Papua was the most vulnerable province with a score of 55.08, while South Sumatra was the least vulnerable with a score of 45.85.
The Jakarta Post charts both indexes to assess which provinces are considered “ready” according to the government, with the vertical line representing the province’s IDI score, while the horizontal line represents its IKP score.
The scatter plot shows the provinces with scores below the national average for both indicators, namely: Papua, West Sumatra, West Java, Central Java, South Sulawesi, Jambi and Central Sulawesi.
Fifteen provinces did better than the national average on one indicator, while doing worse on the other. Twelve provinces beat the national average on both indicators.
The provinces that performed significantly better than the national average on both indicators, such as Jakarta, Bali and Bangka Belitung, tend to have lower poverty rates and higher rates of high school and university enrollment. The three aforementioned provinces have among the lowest rates of poverty in the country.
The seven provinces that did worse on both indicators did so for varying reasons, ranging from a high prevalence of vote-buying to potentially faulty voter lists. However, most of the provinces remained relatively close to the national average, with the conspicuous exception of Papua, which scored 15 percent lower than the average IDI and 10 percent higher than the average IKP.
West Papua, for example, scored very poorly on the IDI, but also had a relatively low level of election vulnerability. Conversely, Yogyakarta — which does not hold gubernatorial elections but does hold regency and municipal ones — had a high IDI score but also a high election vulnerability rating, largely due to the potential of communal conflict.
While, like most of Indonesia, the province is majority Muslim, it has a significant Catholic minority, and instances of intolerance against religious minorities have increased over the past few years.
In the run-up to the last batch of elections in 2018, unidentified assailants shot at a plane carrying election materials to Nduga regency, injuring the pilot.
Proponents of changing the regional election system in Papua point out that the province already uses a different vote-casting system called the noken system, named after a type of traditional Papuan bag.
Association for Elections and Democracy (Perludem) executive director Titi Anggraeni said that, while there was a case for discontinuing direct elections in regions such as Papua, the government should ensure that such a measure would only be temporary.
“In Papua, political parties have yet to become institutionalized, political education is not optimal, and there are many security concerns, which pose problems for quality direct elections,” she told the Post.
