During its national meeting earlier this month, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) set an important agenda, which was to reinstate the closed-list electoral system in place of the current open-list proportional representation.

Many have responded to the ruling party’s move, which is said to have been driven by the many unforeseen consequences of the current system. To name a few, widespread vote-buying, clientelism and patronage that have characterized Indonesian politics are attributed partly to the electoral design the country has adopted in the last decade.

In retrospect, why has the open-list system become problematic and why does it need to be changed? To understand the logic of it, one should be mindful that such a system is putting a greater emphasis on voters’ discretion to select candidates. Unlike in the closed-list system, in which the selection of candidates is given exclusively to the party elite, the open system entails candidates relying more on their personal reputation, fame, clan or bloodline.

In the current system, what matters is individual appeal, while the significance of a party’s program and ideology diminishes. It could even be harmful for a female candidate to prioritize, for instance, her party’s Islamic credentials while in fact she is running in a non-Muslim majority electoral district.

Further consequence of these characteristics is the cultivation of personal votes prevailing in virtually every political campaign. Rather than promoting their programmatic visions or their distinctive parties’ platform, candidates are forced to take on a more personalized campaign approach.

In their pursuit for legislative seats, politicians will likely distribute material benefits such as cash or goods in exchange for votes. This practice used to be confined in 2009, when, for the first time, the open-list system was fully implemented.

But as time went by, voters learned that they could use their bargaining power more effectively by earning more benefits, and therefore, causing operational costs for campaigns to skyrocket.

Seen in this light, the impetus to redesign our electoral system is understandable.

Yet, rather than easily pointing out the alternative, such as whether or not we should reinstate the closed system, one should first appreciate the emblematic problems that lie deep within the social and relationship structures that denote Indonesian society. This means that even if the system changes, it does not necessarily solve those problems.

As Edward Aspinall and Ward Berenschot argue (2019), problems with Indonesia’s patronage democracy stem from the pre-history of democracy itself — apart from the design of the current electoral system.

For more than three decades of the New Order, he state managed to grab local personages such as landowners, local small traders, religious leaders and local gangsters. This is not to mention the controlled bureaucracy down to local levels that conspicuously supported the Golkar Party, the then-ruling party of the New Order.

These have allowed the state to incorporate its formal and informal power, making it more effective in mobilizing the masses for electoral purposes. Additionally, the state’s influence was amplified with the plethora of social organizations, many of which were used as a means for the state in mobilizing the masses and distributing state benefits.

For example, the ever-present Family Welfare Movement (PKK) was there from the provincial to the village and neighborhood unit levels. The PKK was design to empower women, especially housewives, in organizing many government programs. Its tasks were haphazard, from registering people in the village, organizing social events, to helping officials in promoting economic and health programs.

Others such as the now-defunct youth organization of Karang Taruna or the patrolling system (Siskamling) conducted at neighborhood and community levels served as quasi-state organization that did rather community surveillance jobs.

When the new party and electoral systems were adopted, some of these clientelistic relationships remained intact, if not intensified. Perhaps, most notably, the role of local personages in organizing and mobilizing votes for candidates remain a very salient factor in determining the upshots of an election.

The relationships were partly constrained once the closed-list system was put in place in the 1999 election. This system, however, came under attack by pro-democracy activists and pundits who then believed that the closed-list was leaned toward bigger parties and served the interests of party oligarchs. Also, because it did not allow the names and photos of candidates to appear on the ballot, critics noted that the closed system was undesirable as how it compelled voters to buy a cat in a sack.

The government then came with a proposal to amend the old system with a semi-open list in 2004 election, and then turning into a fully open system in 2009.

The mentioned critics were warranted empirically and should be addressed if we are willing to reinstate the closed-list system. But, one should also be attentive to existing societal relations embedded in communities that could disrupt attempts of electoral engineering.

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Researcher in the department of politics and social change, Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Jakarta

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