Indonesia is the most dynamic Southeast Asian country in changing its electoral system. Since the 1999 elections, the first elections after the authoritarian era, until the 2019 elections, Indonesia has changed its electoral system at least three times. The 1999 elections used a closed proportional system. The 2004 elections used a semi-open proportional system. The 2009 to 2019 elections used an open proportional system.
The three changes were only limited to the variable voting method system. Others, Indonesian elections also change system variables such as parliamentary thresholds, the size of electoral districts, and vote conversion methods.
These dynamics do not occur in other Southeast Asian countries. Generally, all countries still apply the electoral system left by the previous colonizing country. Malaysia, for example, continues to use the plurality system inherited from the British. The Philippines, on the other hand, continues to use the ‘mixed system’ because it was a Spanish colony for so long. Timor Leste, which separated from Indonesia, uses a proportional system.
The issue of changing Indonesia’s electoral system faces a new context at the 2024 election stage. One member of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle filed a judicial review of the election law to the Constitutional Court. The article being tested concerns the open proportional electoral system to be changed to closed proportional. If the Constitutional Court grants this, then the behavior of voting on ballots by voting for the name of the legislator candidate will change to voting for the image / name of the political party. In other words, the way of voting from the 2009 to 2019 elections will change to the way of the 1999 elections.
Hopefully, the Constitutional Court will not issue a black and white decision. Because basically, the problem of Indonesia’s electoral system is not about maintaining open proportionality or returning to closed proportionality. In addition, every electoral system has its disadvantages that need to include solutions to the consequences. It is important for the Constitutional Court and lawmakers to include comprehensive and systemic considerations so that the provisions made are not just a matter of open/closed.
Indonesia has fundamental electoral system problems. First, elections produce extreme multiparty parliaments. Second, political parties are of poor quality and not trusted by the public. These two fundamental problems persist because 2022 is not used as a moment to improve the electoral legal framework and political parties. In fact, the 2019 elections were so systemically bad that their complexity claimed hundreds of lives.
Extreme multiparties
Avoiding extreme multiparties in parliament does not guarantee that a country will be better at democracy. However, no country that is a good democracy has an extreme multiparty system. If we refer to a number of indices of countries in democracy/freedom (Freedom House) and clean from corruption (Transparency International), we can conclude that the ranking of countries between indices is relatively similar. When we relate this to political systems, we find that none of these good countries have extreme multiparty party systems.
The party system of the Indonesian Parliament, from the results of the 1999 elections to the 2019 elections, has been trending upwards as extreme multiparty. The definition of extreme multiparty here is that there are more than 5 relevant parties that can influence the government and the formation of laws. This calculation is based on the effective number of parliamentary parties (ENPP) formula. ENPP values of 3 to 5, parliamentary party fragmentation is moderate. ENPP values of more than 5 are extreme. Since Indonesia implemented a semi-open proportional electoral system in the 2004 parliamentary elections with electoral districts of 3-12 seats, the DPR has had an extreme multiparty system (7.1). Whereas in the 1999 elections, a closed proportional system converted the votes of 48 political parties participating in the elections into moderate multiparty systems (4.7). Then in the 2009, 2014 and 2019 DPR elections with an open proportional system and electoral districts of 3-10 seats, it still resulted in extreme multiparty systems (6.1, 8.2 and 7.5).
This is partly why there is no opposition in the DPR. The fluidity of party ideologies in the DPR is due to the fact that many parties have a relatively even percentage of seats, so they work based on the goal of obtaining power and development projects as a consequence of legislation. The deviation of policies and laws in the electoral field also occurs in other fields. We can see how Government-initiated legislation such as the Omnibus Law on Job Creation, the Revision of the Minerba Law, and the National Capital City Law, which have many formal and material records, can be quickly passed without significant inclusion of the DPR’s legislative, supervisory and budgetary functions.
We have mapped out that extreme multipartyism makes governments in all countries worse. Changing the party system from extreme to moderate multiparty can be done naturally and democratically. This includes reducing the size of electoral districts from 3-10/3-12. If an open proportional system is chosen, the maximum seats will be 3. If a closed proportional system is chosen, the maximum seats will be 5. Too many seats in each electoral district is a contributing factor to the formation of extreme multiparties in the DPR/DPRD. If the number of seats in each electoral district is too large, many political parties will put aside ideology in order to get many remaining seats. Too many candidates in an open proportional system are more likely to result in relatively balanced votes for political parties, resulting in an extreme multiparty system in the DPR.
So far, large electoral districts have encouraged political parties to only win votes by various means. Systemically, the cost of politics has become very expensive. After gaining seats in the DPR, parties put aside their legislative, supervisory and budgetary functions. Coming to power in the DPR means paying the political costs incurred in the previous election and then collecting them for the next election. Parliamentary politics is not only very expensive but also corrupt.
Poor political parties
In addition to the extreme multiparty system, the poor quality of Indonesia’s parliament is due to the poor quality of political parties. The results of the CSIS survey, which ranked the DPR as the least trusted state institution by the public, are connected to the results of the Political Indicator and Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI) surveys, which ranked political parties as the least trusted democratic institutions. The survey results in mid-2022 are fairly consistent with many similar survey results in previous years.
The public’s poor assessment of political parties is in accordance with the level of political party rooting. Based on the survey results of Saiful Mujani Research and Consulting (SMRC) and Political Indicators, the value of party identification (Party-ID) in Indonesia has continued to fall significantly from the 1999 elections to the 2019 elections. During the first post-Reform election, around 86% of respondents admitted that they were affiliated with one particular political party. This percentage fell by about half in the following elections. The 2004 election was at 55%. The 2009 election was at 21%. The 2014 election was at 11. Until the 2019 elections, it was only 7%.
The most systemic reason for the distance of political parties from the masses is the legal framework. Since the Reformation, the political party law has been revised four times. We can compare the changes from Law 2/1999, Law 31/2002, Law 2/2008, and Law 2/2011. From the beginning of the revision in 2002 until 2011, the requirements for the formation of political parties have become heavier. Law No.2/2011 has the most severe requirement because political parties must have management and permanent offices in 100% of provinces, 75% of districts/cities, and 50% of sub-districts. This 100:75:50 requirement is then applied as part of the requirements for political parties to become election participants, including Law 7/2017 which is used in the 2024 Election. The 100:75:50 requirement has consequences for the need for very expensive financial capital.
Political party reform should emphasize two things. First, what legal provisions should be changed in political party and electoral laws. Second, through the authority of which state institutions these changes should be made.
There are at least two provisions that must be changed in the laws of political parties and elections. First, making it easier to form a political party, for example restoring the requirements in 1999. Second, changing the verification of political parties participating in the elections, which is very heavy, complex and discriminatory, to only one requirement, namely transparent and accountable financial reports of political parties.
Meanwhile, changes to all these provisions are pursued in three forms of advocacy. First, continuously conducting education and political empowerment for citizens by cooperating with many parties such as NGOs, campuses, and certain political parties. Second, when the composition of the Constitutional Court Judges is relatively able to withstand the intervention of the DPR/President, conducting another judicial review of the provisions of the political party and election laws by easing the requirements for the formation of political parties and the participation of political parties in elections. Third, the provisions of this political party reform continue to be submitted to the current or next president to be followed up as a government regulation in lieu of law (Perpu) with the meaning of the urgency of compelling reasons that the two problems of the current electoral system have resulted in a state political emergency that is increasingly corrupt and increasingly undemocratic. []
USEP HASAN SADIKIN
Researcher at the Association for Elections and Democracy (Perludem)
This article was published on rumahpemilu.org on January 19, 2023 with the title “Two Problems with Indonesia’s Election System”, https://rumahpemilu.org/dua-masalah-sistem-pemilu-indonesia/