What is Neglected in Our Election Discourse

KOMPAS/WISNU WIDIANTORO

Chairman of the General Elections Commission (KPU) Arief Budiman (fourth left) along with other KPU leaders and an Election Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) member, Mochammad Afifuddin (left), attend a coordination meeting on presidential and vice presidential candidates at the KPU’s office, Jakarta, Friday (08/03/2018). The meeting was attended by representatives of political parties. The registration of presidential and vice presidential candidate pairs will begin on Saturday (today) and end on August 10, 2018.

Political elites are constantly maneuvering to find the right presidential and vice presidential candidates for the next general election, scheduled for April 19, 2019. These maneuvers have been in the news non-stop.

Newspapers, television news programs and online media report the political maneuvers of political elites almost every day. Among the latest news was the possibility – a very tiny one – of creating a third political coalition in the hope of offering the public an alternative presidential candidate. Political parties pressure one another to get their respective member picked as a vice presidential candidate. However, what seems to be forgotten in these maneuvers and discussions among political elites is who will pay for the candidacies, their campaigns and the 2019 election. These involve huge costs. A political party leader once said that presidential candidates require not only integrity, capability and acceptability but also deep pockets to support election materials.

In today’s era of highly transactional politics, a high-ranking official once said that Rp 1.4 trillion (US$96.55 million) was needed to win a gubernatorial election. A legislative candidate needed to shell out almost Rp 40 billion to win a House of Representatives seat in the 2014 election.

The 2019 election has often been touted as having a high level of complexity. In the simultaneous elections, General Elections Commission (KPU) chair Arief Budiman said that around 300,000 legislative candidates would compete for around 20,000 seats at the House and the Regional Legislative Councils (DPRD).

With five ballots – for president/vice president, the House, the provincial legislative council and the regency/city council, tallying all the votes will require a huge amount of time. In one polling station with 300 voters, vote tallying will require around 19 hours if everything goes smoothly. The KPU has allocated Rp 16 trillion for the simultaneous elections, provided that there will be no runoff.

Some 11,791 polling stations will be established, an increase from the 8,354 polling stations in 2014. This will have financial consequences. Political parties will need to place witnesses in these polling stations. With the estimate that vote tallying will take up to 19 hours, one political party will need to prepare two or three witnesses to monitor the vote tallying in turns. Mobilizing witnesses also requires money.

We bring forward these often-overlooked issues in the hope that our political elites will think about the election’s complex problems, including the huge amount of money to be disbursed. With a costly election system, our question is centered on where the money will be obtained from and how the money will be returned once candidates win elections.

Is this the fact that explains why so many active lawmakers are arrested by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK)? In the future, we really need to rethink our election system and consider other alternatives, such as e-voting. We believe that many political party leaders are rarely concerned about the details of election organizing. The fact that many legislative candidates have been rejected by the KPU (due to their past involvement in corruption cases) shows that improvements are necessary in the management of our political parties.