JAKARTA - The discourse of postponing the 2024 General Election is getting more and more noisy. Although it is claimed through data that the majority of people want the election to be postponed, the fact is that Indonesia is not in a state of emergency that requires the holding of the five-year democratic party to be postponed.
Political observer from President University, Prof AS Hikam emphasized that in principle, power should be limited. If you don't want a limit, according to him, it is worth asking whether there is malicious intent in the discourse on postponing the 2024 election.
"If we want to be consistent with the substance of democracy and the constitution, the principle of which is power must be limited. If there are ideas that actually want to not limit it, it means that ethically their good intentions need to be questioned," said Prof Hikam in an online discussion held uploaded to Padasuka TV's YouTube account, Wednesday, March 16.
Moreover, the reason for the extension is only because of the economic recovery due to the pandemic. In fact, in 2020, Indonesia successfully held regional head elections amidst COVID-19 still rising.
"That argument is very unreasonable, because we are not in a situation where we have to extend it under an emergency condition," said Hikam.
Plus there is a big data that says the majority of the people want the election to be postponed. But the data is not clearly disclosed to the public.
On that basis, Hikam considered that the country was not in a state of emergency but was indeed not in a normal state and was doing well.
"It was explained earlier by big data, that even though we have to try to get out of there, big data can't be used as a barrier. Therefore, I think this is part of an indicator that we are not in a normal state of democracy," he said.
Hikam assessed that the claims for postponing the election had something to do with the international assessment that Indonesia's democracy index had indeed declined. Therefore, it is necessary to find the cause of the decline in awareness of democracy in the community.
"What is important for us to do is find out, detect why this opportunity occurred. The regulations are clear, in my opinion Pak Jokowi is a constitutional person, but feel free to interpret," he said.
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