Different Desires Of The Government And The House Of Representatives Regarding The Election Held In 2022 Or 2024

JAKARTA - The Draft Law on General Elections proposed by the House of Representatives (DPR) as of November 26, 2020 regulates that further regional head elections (pilkada) will be held in 2022 and 2023.

In Article 731 of the draft of the Election Bill, the 2022 election is carried out to elect regional heads from 2017, while the 2023 election is for regional head elections from 2018.

The Election Bill revises the provisions in Law Number 10 of 2016 concerning the Election of the Governor/Deputy Governor, the Regent/Deputy Regent, the Mayor/Deputy Mayor constituting an amendment to Law Number 1 of 2015 (Law of Elections).

In the Law of Elections, national simultaneous elections which were originally held in 2022 and 2023 were moved to 2024.

Deputy Chairman of Commission II of The House of Representatives from the NasDem Faction, Saan Mustopa said the Election Bill proposed by DOR normalized the stages of the elections.

"So, what should be enacted in 2024, we normalize 2022 as a result of the 2017 regional elections, and the 2023 regional elections as a result of the 2018 regional elections will still be carried out", said Saan, some time ago.

Saan said that almost all party factions in parliament agreed that the next elections would be held in 2022 and 2023. However, one PDI-P faction noted that his party actually wanted the elections to be harmonized in 2024. However, the PDIP votes lost to almost all factions in the House of Representatives.

"Most of them want the election cycle to be like now. Well, outside of that, PDIP is the only one who gives notes. Others want it to be normalized", explained Saan.

Not in line with the government's wishes

The Ministry of Internal Affairs (Kemendagri) stated that the government wants the next regional head election (pilkada) to be held simultaneously in 2024.

Director-General of Politics and General Government of the Ministry of Home Affairs, Bahtiar said that his party still wanted to implement the rules in Law Number 1 of 2015 concerning the election.

"So, our position on the discourse is that let's run the existing laws in accordance with the mandate of the law, Law Number 10 of 2016 article 201 paragraph 8, we will carry out simultaneous regional elections in 2024", said Bahtiar.

Thus, the Ministry of Internal Affairs rejects the contents of the draft Election Law (RUU) which states that the implementation of regional head elections (pilkada) is normalized.

That, said Bahtiar, is not without foundation but has been adapted for juridical, philosophical, and sociological reasons.

"We believe that this law should be implemented first, of course, there are philosophical reasons, there are juridical reasons, there are sociological reasons, and there are goals to be achieved as to why the elections will be held simultaneously in 2024", said Bahtiar.

Moreover, said Bahtiar, the current government's focus is to face the COVID-19 pandemic, to overcome various problems from the health aspect to the socio-economic impacts caused by the pandemic.

"Today our main focus is how to quickly solve the COVID-19 pandemic problem, thank God there is now a vaccine, our priority now is to save our people and citizens, so of course there are priorities that we must do", he added.