PRESIDENT Prabowo Subianto’s nod to the idea of abolishing direct regional head elections to cut costs has been met with strong criticism from pro-democracy advocates, who warn that imposing indirect polls would turn the country into a semi-authoritarian state.
Prabowo made the suggestion less than a month after the country held nationwide simultaneous regional head elections, which saw candidates backed by his Onward Indonesia Coalition (KIM) scoring victories in key battleground provinces amid historic low voter turnout.
Addressing the Golkar Party’s 60th anniversary event on Thursday, the President proposed that local leaders be appointed by members of local legislatures as a cost-saving measure.
Prabowo, who is also the leader of the Gerindra Party, criticised the reliance on foreign consultants – who he said advocate for frequent elections.
“We don’t have to listen to them too seriously,” the President said.
The idea of scrapping direct elections was met with support from pro-government parties, including Golkar, the second- largest party in the House of Representatives and which holds the most seats in Prabowo’s ruling coalition.
The National Awakening Party (PKB) has also lent its support to the President’s suggestion, saying the Islamic-based party itself had repeatedly called for an improvement to the electoral system.
But Prabowo’s suggestion was met with outrage from pro-democracy advocates, who warned that reverting to an indirect election system would constitute a serious setback for decades-long democratic reform.
Indonesia used to apply indirect regional head elections when former president Soeharto, who is also Prabowo’s former father-in-law, was in office.
After the fall of his New Order in 1998, the country started to decentralise regional powers and introduced direct regional elections in 2005, allowing voters to directly elect the mayors, regents and governors they deemed best represented their interests.
Researcher Firman Noor at the National Research and Innovation Agency urged the government to address the democratic and economic needs equally, rather than sacrificing one for the other.
“Democracy is indeed expensive, and this is the case everywhere else,” he said. “But it’s the government’s responsibility since the country decided to adopt democracy. The government’s job is not to erode it, but rather to strengthen it.”
He pointed to the high number of votes for “blank boxes” in uncontested elections in November, which showed that orchestrations by political elites, especially by members of Prabowo’s ruling coalition, had pushed voters away from the electoral process.
Many also blamed the big-tent coalition for sidelining popular candidates in favour of its preferred candidates.
Abolishing direct elections may turn the country into a semi-authoritarian state, Firman said, as it would “shrink the people’s role” in determining how the country is governed. — The Jakarta Post/ANN
