Improvement Of Political Systems And Elections Will Boost Indonesia's Democracy Quality

JAKARTA - Managing Director of the Paramadina Public Policy Institute (PPPI), Ahmad Khoirul Umam, urged the DPR and the government to immediately discuss laws and regulations related to political packages to improve the performance of democracy in Indonesia.

According to him, referring to a number of indicators of the Democracy Index, CPI and SDGs performance, the performance of democracy in Indonesia is not bad, but still requires fundamental improvements. Therefore, improvements to regulations related to the political system and electoralism must be carried out from now on.

"It must be done immediately, to avoid the occurrence of 'Rules by Surprise', the surprises of the rules resulting from acrobatics are not constructive. As a result, many were surprised, while the MEANingful participation was less than optimal," said Umam, Sunday, September 28, 2025.

He explained that there are many lists of rules that must be discussed immediately, starting from threshold rules, both parliamentary and presidential threshold, a choice of proportional system schemes, and a scheme for simplifying political parties which can also be pursued through a decline in disaster magnitudes.

In addition, improvements to the vote conversion system to chairs are currently still using the Sainte Lague calculation method, tightening regulations related to moral hazard behavior through transactional political practices, vote buying, tightening neutrality and abuse of state instruments, improving digitalization and electronization of election recapitulation, to reviewing the principles of simultaneous elections.

The discussion of the political law package must begin in early 2026. Although it is included in the 2026 legislative priority, there has been no fundamental movement at this time. In fact, if all of this is discussed early on, it will be able to strengthen the quality of democracy and the national political architecture," said Umam.