Prabowo Criticizes High-Cost Elections, DPR Promises to Fix the System

Member of Commission III of the DPR, Bambang Soesatyo (Bamsoet), revealed that President Prabowo Subianto highlighted the importance of rearranging the national political system. The system that is running today is considered too expensive and tends to be transactional.

According to Bamsoet, President Prabowo on various occasions, including when attending the 60th anniversary of the Golkar Party in Sentul, Bogor on December 12, 2025, emphasized the need for a more substantial and quality-oriented political transition.

"The point is, we have to make a restructuring towards a substantial political transition, not like now which is transactional and brutal because elections are expensive," said Bamsoet in the Senayan area, Jakarta, Sunday, February 15.

Bamsoet assessed that an expensive political system opens the door to corruption in various lines. The high cost of elections encourages transactional political practices that are detrimental to democracy.

According to him, political system reform must start with regulatory improvements, especially laws that are the umbrella of the law for the implementation of elections and national political governance. "The arrangement of the political system is in the law. The key is in the DPR together with the government to discuss and improve it," he said.

Bamsoet emphasized that the DPR together with the government has a strategic role in encouraging a healthier and more efficient political system reform. He assessed that improving regulations was the first step to creating a system that no longer burdened the election participants with high costs.

In his speech in Sentul, President Prabowo also briefly touched on the implementation of elections in neighboring countries which were considered more efficient and did not cost a lot of money. This is an important reflection for Indonesia in improving the political system in the future.

This reconfiguration of the political system is considered crucial to strengthen democracy, suppress corruption practices, and create a cleaner and more integrated government governance.