Perludem RESEARCHER Fadli Ramadhanil said that the plan to revise the Pilkada Law is not appropriate to carry out at this time. In the midst of the political situation which is still heated after the presidential election, the revision of the Regional Election Law will only complicate the implementation schedule.
“If the aim is only to change the Pilkada schedule, it is no longer appropriate. It will further complicate the implementation of the Pilkada schedule which will coincide with the Election schedule,” he said to Media Indonesia, Tuesday (12/3).
According to Fadli, the ongoing election stages have not yet been completely completed. Bearing in mind, the new inauguration will be held in October.
Meanwhile, if a revision of the Regional Election Law is carried out to change the schedule, it will overlap with the election stages. Moreover, the Constitutional Court (MK) has decided that the regional elections will continue according to the original schedule.
“Why is the Pilkada schedule being moved forward, there is no urgency,” he added.
Fadli added that the support of a number of political parties to revise the Regional Election Law was only to advance the schedule. The argument regarding adjustments to the articles in it is not the main point of the plan. This should be understood in relation to the political interests of the legislative candidates who will also run in the regional elections later.
Another Lucudem researcher, Heroik Pratama, emphasized that changes to the Pilkada schedule would certainly disrupt the constitutionality of its implementation. Because in Decision 12/PUU-XXII/2024, the Constitutional Court stated that the regional elections must be carried out according to the schedule consistently to avoid overlapping the crucial stages of the 2024 simultaneous regional elections with the stages of the 2024 general elections which have not yet been completed.
“This means that changing the schedule in question could disrupt and threaten the constitutionality of holding simultaneous regional elections,” he said.
Changes to the Pilkada schedule, such as advancing the voting time, will have an impact on overlapping stages of the 2024 national election which have not yet been completed, which will impact the complexity of election governance. Advancing the Pilkada schedule to September will also have an impact on limited time for regional head nominations and has the potential to cut campaign time.
As an illustration, if we refer to MK regulation 5/2023, the pronouncement of the decision on the dispute over legislative election results was only completed on June 4-5. After the Constitutional Court’s decision, election organizers must follow up if there is an order for a revote, for example.
This means that the KPU must carry out a series of stages of voting, counting and recapitulating votes, including re-determining the number of votes obtained by parties and elected candidates. So that in June-July there will be certainty about the number of seats the party will win in the DPRD which is a condition for nominating regional heads for the party (requirement for support of 20% of DPRD seats).
“This means that political parties have limited time to build a nominating coalition to achieve support for 20% of DPRD seats, because of the experience in the 2020 Pilkada, not all parties can nominate themselves because their seats are less than 20%. So in our opinion, if the Pilkada schedule is moved forward to September other than “Making it difficult for organizers will also make it difficult for parties to nominate because they have to build coalitions,” he concluded.
This article was published on Mediaindonesia.com with the title “Perludem: Revisi UU Pilkada Bakal Persulit Pelaksanaan Pilkada”, https://mediaindonesia.com/politik-dan-hukum/658211/perludem-revisi-uu-pilkada-bakal-persulit-pelaksanaan-pilkada