Indonesia’s parliament has given the country’s election body permission to issue new rules that comply with two Constitutional Court rulings that pro-government legislators sought to override in controversial circumstances last week.
Protests erupted across Indonesia on Friday, after it was revealed that the House of Representatives’ Legislative Body (Baleg) had drafted revisions to regional election rules that benefited President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and his allies ahead of regional elections in November.
In a meeting yesterday, the Jakarta Post reported that officials from the General Elections Commission (KPU) and lawmakers from the House legislative commission overseeing election issues agreed on a revised version of the KPU election regulation.
Mohammad Afifuddin, the acting chief of the KPU, said that the new rules will reflect the two rulings handed down by the Constitutional Court on August 20, which clarified the minimum age requirement for candidates in regional elections and lowered the threshold for parties to make nominations.
“We are thankful that we can speed up (the consultation process with parliament), as it will give more room for us to prepare the nomination process,” he said, as per Reuters, referring to the registration of candidates for the November elections. The three-day nomination period begins tomorrow and runs until August 29.
The two Constitutional Court rulings that Baleg sought to override placed two significant roadblocks in the way of the broad coalition supporting Jokowi and President-elect Prabowo Subianto, who takes office in October.
The first decision significantly lowered the threshold necessary for any political party or alliance of parties wishing to nominate candidates for provincial and regional leadership positions. This opened the way to competitive elections in places where the broad ruling coalition was expected to run candidates unopposed. In particular, it has opened the way for Anies Baswedan, a key rival of the Jokowi-Prabowo coalition who ran against Prabowo in the presidential election in February, to stand for election as governor of Jakarta.
The second ruling tweaked the minimum age of 30 for candidates contesting governor and deputy governor posts, affirming that this applies at the time of nomination, not at the time of inauguration. This blocked Jokowi’s 29-year-old son Kaesang Pangarep from taking part in the upcoming election. Kaesang, who will turn 30 in December – after election day but prior to the date of inauguration – had been mooted as a possible candidate for a number of positions, most recently, deputy governor of Central Java.
The new rules represent a victory for government critics, who claim that Baleg’s attempted overturning of the court rulings served Jokowi and Prabowo’s desire to use their dominant coalition to shut down effective opposition. It also demonstrates the capacity of Indonesia’s democratic system to self-correct, despite the ongoing attempts by its politicians to bring it under greater central control. Baleg’s move, which was gleaned from draft revisions leaked online on August 21, prompted such widespread anger the House of Representatives was forced to postpone its vote on the changes.
The fact that the Election Commission has now decided to enshrine the court rulings in law appears to mark a recognition of the court’s authority. Of course, the House Commission has framed the changes in defensive terms. Commission Chair Ahmad Doli Kurnia of the Golkar Party, a member of the pro-government coalition, expressed hope that “people will no longer have speculations, prejudices, and wrong preconceptions” about the ruling coalition and its intentions.
However, the pattern of events strongly indicates that the only reason that parliamentarians abandoned the Baleg changes is because of the anger that they aroused. That does not rule out more attempts to co-opt and pre-empt sources of meaningful opposition. The Indonesian political system’s ability to self-correct is likely to be subject to greater tests once Prabowo takes office.