Should Pilkada Be Conducted Simultaneously In The Next 2024?

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

Seeing this condition, the founder of Saiful Mujani Research and Consulting (SMRC), Saiful Mujani, considered the general elections (elections) simultaneously in 2024 to be risky. Because, this can create a pile of conflicts and risks which should be managed properly by distributing them.

"Pilkada and elections that are spread out according to time and place, the risk of being managed is lower during our experience so far. The most recent example is the successful 2020 Pilkada: peaceful, high voter turnout even in the midst of a pandemic," said Saiful in a statement received by VOI, Monday, February 1st.

The government, he said, should be able to see examples of the 2019 legislative and presidential elections. At that time, the elections which were carried out without proper management resulted in casualties because many election officials died and this should be an important lesson that cannot be repeated.

Moreover, the idea of a judicial review to unite the legislative and presidential elections which was finally granted by the Constitutional Court (MK) was also due to practical politics rather than democratic management and was not based on adequate academic texts.

Practical politics is meant so that the results of the legislative elections do not determine the presidential election. That way, he said, small parties could nominate presidential and vice presidential candidates without the requirement for party votes because these two elections were held simultaneously.

"However, this goal was not achieved. Because the DPR continues to make laws so that candidates are based on the votes acquired by parties from the previous election. The threshold remains high so that only a coalition of parties in general can nominate," he said.

Executive Director of Indonesia Political Review (IPR), Ujang Komarudin, also agreed that elections should be held in 2022 and 2023. This, he said, served to break down the hubbub and maintain the conditions of election organizers at the grassroots level.

"The good thing is that the Pilkada will be held in 2022 and 2023 so that it is not noisy with other contests that will occur in 2024, namely the legislative and presidential elections. The elections in 2024 will make election organizers at the lower level exhausted," said Ujang.

In addition to guarding election management officers, this observer also assessed that if the elections were forced to be held in 2024, there would be many regions led by task forces and this would be unhealthy for the government to move.

"From 2022 to 2024 many governors, regents, and mayors have expired and are not healthy if for 2 years the government in the regions is carried out by Plt (executor)," he said.

Previously, in Article 731 of the draft Election Bill as of November 26, the 2022 Pilkada was held to elect regional heads from the 2017 elections, while the 2023 Pilkada was for regional head elections from the 2018 elections.

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 (Pilkada Law).

In the Pilkada Law, national simultaneous elections which were originally held in 2022 and 2023 were changed to 2024.

Deputy Chairman of Commission II DPR from the NasDem Faction, Saan Mustopa said, the Election Bill they proposed actually normalized the pilkada stages. He also explained that almost all party factions in parliament agreed that the next regional elections would be held in 2022 and 2023.

However, one PDI-P faction noted that his party actually wanted the regional elections to be harmonized in 2024. Even so, the PDIP votes lost to almost all factions in the DPR.

"Most of them want the pilkada 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.

Although the DPR wants the elections to run normally in 2022 and 2023, the government is the opposite. Through the Ministry of Home Affairs (Kemendagri) they want the next 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 Pilkada.

"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 Home 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 are of the opinion 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 Pilkada will be unified 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 overcome the COVID-19 pandemic problem, thank God, now there is a vaccine, our priority now is to save our people and citizens, so of course there are priorities that we must do," he concluded.