Coordinating Minister Yusril: Local Elections Through DPRD Facilitate Political Money Supervision

JAKARTA - Coordinating Minister for Legal, Human Rights, Immigration, and Corrections Yusril Ihza Mahendra assessed that the election of regional heads (pilkada) through the Regional Representative Council (DPRD) makes it easier to monitor political money or money politics which has often occurred.

According to Yusril, if the regional head is chosen by the DPRD, there will only be around 20-35 people who are supervised during the pilkada process.

"The possibility of money politics is very small compared to, for example, direct elections with voters from one district. It is not easy to monitor people from across the district and the possibility of money politics is much greater," said Yusril as reported by ANTARA, Wednesday, January 14.

On the other hand, he argues that the election through the DPRD opens up greater opportunities for potential regional leaders to be elected.

Yusril said that one of the weaknesses of the direct election by the public is the tendency to only choose popular figures such as artists, without thinking about the person's ability to lead an area.

According to him, this is actually unhealthy for the growth of democracy in Indonesia because the elected regional heads tend to win only because of their popularity or the amount of funds they have.

"Meanwhile, those who really have the potential to lead cannot advance into the election because they themselves may not have funds or they may also not be popular in the sense of being a celebrity or artist," said Coordinating Minister Yusril.

Even so, he left it to the government and the House of Representatives (DPR) to determine their stance regarding the mechanism for the upcoming gubernatorial election.

So far, he said, the government continues to evaluate the implementation of the local elections which have been running directly so far to find out their weaknesses and compare them with indirect elections through the DPRD.

"Whatever mechanism is chosen, both of them are legitimate and democratic. Both direct and indirect local elections, both of them are in line with our constitution, namely the 1945 Constitution," said the Coordinating Minister.