Strengthening the Presidential System
The House of Representatives (DPR) is now considering revising the Election Law. One of the prominent issues is strengthening the presidential system.
The DPR plenary session which was held at the Parliament Building Complex, Senayan, Jakarta, Tuesday (12/5/2020).
The House of Representatives (DPR) is now considering revising the Election Law. One of the prominent issues is strengthening the presidential system.
Strengthening the presidential system is not the same as strengthening a president. Theoretically, a president is already strong under the presidential system. First, the president does not depend on the DPR and cannot be overthrown by the DPR for political reasons. Second, the president is directly elected by the people, so his legitimacy is very strong. Third, a single person holds presidential power, politically speaking. A president can mobilize their power more easily than the DPR. In a legislature, power is shared among many parties/many people, so it is more difficult for the DPR to mobilize power to, for example, deal with the president (executive).
So what does it mean to strengthen the presidential system? First, although the president and the DPR are separate and independent of each other, the two must make many agreements to run the government, creating policy such as legislation and the budget as well as policy implementation (president) and supervision (DPR). Therefore, the president needs sufficient political support in the DPR. It will be easier for the president to gain support if the DPR does not contain too many parties. So, strengthening the presidential system means trying to limit the number of parties from becoming too many.
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Second, strengthening the presidential system means ensuring that all groups of people have relative representation in political decision-making, especially in formal institutions like the DPR. This is to reduce the potential emergence of congenital diseases in the presidential system: the majority trend. Because a president’s power is singular and large, there is a potential for the president to overstep other branches of government to gain dominance, ultimately making the system authoritarian. With representation of all groups of people, the potential for creating balance among political forces is more likely.
More explicitly, groups that are willing to be a counterweight or opposition should have formal representation in the legislature whenever possible.
Elections can help strengthen the presidential system even though this is not easy, partly because elections cannot necessarily strengthen both fronts. Strengthening the first can weaken the second; on the other hand, strengthening the second can weaken the first. The DPR must consider both together.
Sociological versus institutional
From the Constitutional Court (MK) decision on both the 2019 elections and all subsequent elections, we know that one way to strengthen the presidential system is through the simultaneous legislative and executive elections. Experts and researchers in this field, such as Allen Hicken and Heather Stoll (2011, 2013), or Mark P. Jones (1995), have found that the temporal proximity of the executive and legislative elections is one way to reduce or minimize the number of parties in the legislature. So the two elections can be held either simultaneously or relatively closely together between one to six months.
The Constitutional Court Building (MK) in Jakarta Monday (1/6/2020).
However, the temporal proximity must be combined with a number of other factors so it can impact party simplification. Jones, for example, suggests that the ideal electoral framework is combining a plurality voting system for the presidential election and a proportional system with a moderate electoral district (5-8 seats) for the legislative election, and to hold the two simultaneously.
The plurality system (called a one-round system in Indonesia) in a presidential election functions to limit the number of serious or worthy candidates (viable candidates). A presidential election can have many nominal candidates, but very few viable candidates. In a one-round system, a party that nominates a presidential candidate must think of immediate ways to ensure that their candidate will win, so they will look for a figure who is most likely to win. Parties will have a natural tendency to form coalitions. Therefore, even though many parties might be participating in a legislative election, there will not be many (viable) candidates.
The existing rules set the maximum number of presidential candidates to five.
The plurality system is locked in the Indonesian Constitution so that it cannot be used, unless the Constitution is amended. However, the number of presidential candidates in Indonesia has been severely limited by the rules on the presidential threshold. The existing rules set the maximum number of presidential candidates to five. The difference is that the plurality system is more "natural", while an electoral system that refers to a presidential threshold carries a sense of being "forced". The latest findings by Nunes and Thies (2013) show that a presidential election without a threshold, even if it evolves into a two-round system like in Indonesia (3-4 election cycles), tends to result in a small number of candidates.
This means that the institutional engineering of our elections only needs to add the option to combine the election simultaneity with the size of electoral districts that are considered moderate. Theoretically, a medium-size electoral district has 5-8 seats each.
Of the 80 electoral districts in the current legislative election, 49 electoral districts (61 percent) are categorized as medium, 20 electoral districts (25 percent) are large, and 11 electoral districts (14 percent) are classified as small. So, 75 percent of all electoral districts in the Indonesian legislature is categorized as either small or moderate. This means that, in general, the design of our electoral system is theoretically approaching the ideal design, namely that it has a small number of presidential candidates, the legislative and executive elections are held simultaneously, and nearly all electoral districts are moderate or small.
Then why does the desire to reduce the number of electoral districts always rise, with the reason that the number of parties should be minimized? This is possibly related to our subjective impression of the number of the parties, whether they are numerous or few. No standard exists on the ideal number of political parties for a particular country. However, it is agreed that just one party is not good, because this indicates a tendency to concentrate power, or authoritarianism. Having too many parties, for example 10 or more parties, is also not considered good, because this would make it difficult to form an effective government to run the country. So the generally acceptable number of political parties in a country ranges from two to eight or nine parties.
There is a concept called the effective number of parties in a legislature, taking into account the relative strength of each seat. The formula is 1/(si2), where “si” refers to the percentage of seats per party. Simplified, it roughly indicates the number of parties in a legislature that have real influence on decision-making. By using the formula for the number of effective parties, we get the number of parties in the DPR from the 2004 to the 2019 elections as follows: 7.1; 6.1; 8.14; and 8.05. So the number of parties in Indonesia from election to election under the presidential system ranges from less than eight to eight. This still falls within the tolerable number of parties.
We can also see that during these four elections, or during almost 20 years of a presidential system whose elections are undergoing various changes, the number of effective parties in the DPR remained in the range of 6-8 parties. Isn\'t this already enough time to assume that perhaps our number of effective parties is stable between 6 and 8? With this number, Indonesia’s presidential government has also tended to be stable since 2004. For example, we have never experienced a deadlock between the president and the DPR regarding budgetary approval.
Two lanes
The number of parties in Indonesia indicates an extreme multiparty system according to Siaroff’s classification of party systems (2000), because the parties number six or more. Perhaps the desire to simplify the party system is based on a desire for a simple multiparty party (3-5 parties). Two paths seem to be open for the DPR, namely increasing the parliamentary threshold or reducing the number of seats per electoral district.
The design of an electoral system should not only consider limiting the number of parties, but must also focus on its main function to accommodate the people’s aspirations.
Redesigning an electoral system, including the aim of simplifying the party system, is certainly legitimate, especially from an institutional point of view. However, let us not forget that elections are also a means to accommodate the existing or developing aspirations of a society. So an electoral system must also pay attention to the sociological factors. The design of an electoral system should not only consider limiting the number of parties, but must also focus on its main function to accommodate the people’s aspirations. Do not allow the parliamentary threshold to be used so that it becomes too big and the constituencies become too small, so that a number of important aspirations in society are denied formal representation in the DPR.
For example, if the DPR wants a parliamentary threshold of up to 7 percent or small electoral districts, such as up to six seats per electoral district, then this could potentially lead to the elimination of a number of Islamic parties, such as the United Development Party (PPP) and the National Mandate Party (PAN). Especially regarding PAN, it has long been a sociological symbol of the formal representation of modernist Islamic groups in Indonesia. Accommodating the main sociological groups is important, especially in terms of religion, because the difference between one party and another in Indonesia primarily rests in religious issues.
Djayadi Hanan
What is also important is that if the DPR has too few parties, it opens up a large opportunity for the president to invite all of them to form a coalition, given the tendency of many parties to choose to side with the government instead of standing as the opposition. If this happens, one of the inherent weaknesses of the presidential system could come to the fore, namely majoritarianism, which can lead to authoritarianism. This tendency can be prevented if enough of the opposition has formal representation in the DPR. And this is part of strengthening the presidentialism system.
Djayadi Hanan, Political Science Lecturer at Paramadina University; Executive Director of the Indonesian Survey Institute
