The government and lawmakers have agreed to advance all regional elections scheduled for 2014 to this year to reduce tensions and ease the work of the General Election Commission (KPU). The decision, reached after hours of deliberation on Monday between Home Minister Gamawan Fauzi and lawmakers on the House of Representatives’ Commission II overseeing regional autonomy, will affect 127 regional elections originally slated for 2014. Gamawan said that the next step would be to issue a presidential decree in lieu of law.
“We will let President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono know about this so that he can immediately issue a regulation to serve as a legal basis for the change,” Gamawan said. Advancing election day for regional races would help the commission as it readied itself for legislative and presidential elections in 2014, according to the minister. However, Gamawan said that the winners of the regional races would only be sworn in after the legislative and presidential races.
The policy would allow incumbents to finish their terms as scheduled after the nation elects its next president, when political tensions are expected to subside, he added. Gamawan also told the lawmakers at the hearing that the Home Ministry would expedite implementation of the national electronic ID (e-ID) card program, under which 175 million cards have been issued to date, so that it could be used as database of eligible voters for both for the legislative and presidential elections.
Lawmakers also agreed that holding regional polls in 2013 would aid the commission’s preparations for 2014 and might curb the practice of money politics. “I can already imagine the hustle and bustle in the lead-up to both the local and national elections,” lawmaker Arif Wibowo of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) said. “It will cause confusion and will spiral out of control if we have so many elections at the same time. By holding all elections this year, it will certainly help control the moves made by political parties,” he said.
According to the Home Ministry, 137 regional elections were slated for this year before the 2014 elections were moved up: 14 provincial elections and 123 municipal or regency elections. Previously, KPU chairman Husni Kamil Manik said that three potential problems might emerge if the local administrations proceeded with regional elections in 2014 as scheduled: overlapping voter data, potential violence during simultaneous campaigns and financial mismanagement.
The KPU also suggested that it might be wise to hold another round of simultaneous regional elections in 2016, claiming that this would significantly improve its performance by allowing the commission to focus on one round of elections at a time. With the advance of the election season, graft watchdog Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW) warned about a possible flourishing of political corruption in 2013. The ICW said that due to poor political party finance regulations and weak implementation, almost all parties would seek campaign funds from illicit sources, including by tapping governmental budget allocations.
source : the jakarta post
source : the jakarta post
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