Plus Minus The 2024 Presidential Election Followed By 3 Candidate Pairs, This Is Observer's Explanation: Potential For Polemic Communities

A political observer from Andalas University (Unand) West Sumatra Prof. Asrinaldi. (Photo via ANTARA/HO)

JAKARTA - The 2024 Presidential Election (Pilpres) may be followed by two or more candidates. The reason is, several names have appeared to the surface to be ready to run as presidential candidates.

A political observer from Andalas University (Unand) West Sumatra, Prof. Asrinaldi explained, the advantages and disadvantages if the 2024 presidential election is followed by three pairs of candidates (paslon).

"The surplus is of course more people's preferences, that's the ideal democracy," said Asrinaldi in Padang.

On the next positive side, Asrinaldi believes that polarization in the community after the election will be minimal or will not appear like during the 2014 and 2019 presidential elections.

In other words, he continued, political choices by constituents in the country will be channeled more, so that it can suppress the emergence of polarization like the previous two rounds of the presidential election.

Meanwhile, for deficiencies or minus points if the 2024 presidential election is followed by more than two pairs of candidates, there is a great potential for two rounds. This automatically has an impact on costs, logistics and personnel.

However, Asrinaldi views that the additional costs and personnel are a consequence of what must be accepted by the people in the country.

"That is a consequence of democracy that we choose. If the DPR is not elected again, change the law again," said the lecturer at the Unand Faculty of Social and Political Sciences (FISIP), as reported by Antara, Thursday, March 23.

Finally, he said, if the 2024 presidential election is two rounds, the potential of society to polemic on social media is also increasingly wide open. However, the government, presidential and vice presidential candidates and relevant stakeholders must also be more prepared, especially educating voters.

"If we can prevent it, it will have a positive impact. For example, teach the public to be wise in social media so as not to conflict in cyberspace," said the political professor from Tanah Minang.

In his view, the 2024 presidential election has great potential to be followed by more than two pairs of candidates. Moreover, until now the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP) has not declared the names of candidates who will run in the presidential election.

On the other hand, NasDem, PKS and Democrats have declared former DKI Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan to run in the 2024 presidential election.

Registration for presidential and vice presidential candidates is scheduled for October 19, 2023 to November 25, 2023.

Referring to Law Number 7 of 2017 concerning Elections, pairs of presidential and vice presidential candidates are proposed by political parties or coalitions of political parties participating in the election who meet the requirements for obtaining seats of at least 20 percent of the total seats in the DPR, or obtaining 25 percent of the nationally valid votes in the previous election for members of the DPR.

Currently, there are 575 seats in parliament so that pairs of presidential and vice-presidential candidates in the 2024 presidential election must have at least 115 seats in the DPR RI. In addition, candidates can also be promoted by political parties, or a combination of parties participating in the 2019 Election with a total valid vote acquisition of at least 34,992,703 votes.