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Analysis: Court ruling on presidential election mechanism may not be a milestone
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Game changer: Constitutional Court Chief Justice Suhartoyo (center), accompanied by his deputy, Justice Saldi Isra (second left), Justice Enny Nurbaningsih (left), Justice Arief Hidayat (second right) and Justice Guntur Hamzah, presides over a hearing in Jakarta on Jan. 2, 2025. (Antara Foto/Fauzan)
T
he Constitutional Court’s decision to remove the electoral threshold to allow any political party to nominate presidential and vice-presidential candidates is not quite the milestone in the country’s democratic journey that many activists are making it out to be. The next election is not until 2029, and a lot of things can happen before then that will make their elation in welcoming the Jan. 2 court ruling appear overboard, if not premature.
For one, the ruling refers to an article in the 2017 General Elections Law. The House of Representatives has already decided it wants to review the entire raft of electoral regulations before 2029. It can easily reinsert the presidential threshold in the new law if there is majority support. The threshold was inserted as far back as 2003 at the insistence of the big political parties, which have the most to gain from the higher barrier to entry.
Second, assuming that the House reintroduces the threshold in the new law and the case is brought before the court again, there is no guarantee the court will stick to the same decision, even without changing the composition of the nine justices.
If anything, the odds are heavily stacked against it. The court had previously rejected similar petitions to remove the threshold in the 2017 law as many as 33 times, some as recently as 2023. The same justices who had made a compelling argument rejecting the petitions have now come out with equally forceful arguments to call the threshold unconstitutional to contradict their own earlier decisions.
The latest ruling was made in response to three new petitions. In statistical terms, the odds are 11/1 in favor of keeping the threshold. The odds are even higher if we count the endless petitions against the threshold going back to 2003 when it was first introduced.
The real substance from this ruling has little to do with the integrity of the electoral process and more with the integrity of the justices. Of late, such flip-flops at the Constitutional Court are not uncommon, showing a lack of independence, if not principle.
Third, the court ruling and the ensuing lively debate about what it means for democracy may be academic if the majority of political parties succeed in their campaign to reintroduce an indirect election mechanism in choosing the president and vice-president. Some of the big parties were pushing for a constitutional amendment before the 2024 elections, but they missed the cut. They are bound to try again before the next elections in 2029.
