DPR Asked Political Party Cadres To Become KPU Members In The Draft Election Bill, This Is The Reason

Gedung DPR (Irfan Meidianto/VOI)

JAKARTA - There is an article that has attracted attention in the Draft Law on General Elections. The draft that is being discussed at the DPR will revise Law Number 7 of 2017.

In the draft as of November 26, 2020, Article 16 Paragraph (7) states that the membership composition of the KPU (General Election Commission), provincial KPU, and regency/city KPU takes into account the proportional representation of political parties based on the results of the previous election.

This means that the DPR (House of Representative) proposes that members of political parties may serve as commissioners of the General Election Commission.

Deputy Chairman of Commission II DPR from the NasDem Faction, Saan Mustopa explained the reasons for the inclusion of the proposal in the draft election bill. He said, basically the KPU commissioners were elected by the votes of members of the DPR each term.

"Sometimes the phenomenon of organizers, although from an independent party, is still basically determined by the DPR, which is also part of the political parties," said Saan at the DPR RI Building, Tuesday, January 26.

The DPR, said Saan, considered that KPU membership could not be separated from the association of political parties in the factions in the DPR.

"For example, he wants to be a commissioner, he still comes to the party to get support and so on. Of course there is an understanding there is an agreement and so on," said Saan.

"So, there is something vaguely related to political parties. You can't get out of it. If that's the case, why not just join the party?" he continued.

However, this proposal is not certain to be included in the final draft of the Election Bill because it is still only a proposal by a number of DPR members. However, Saan was reluctant to state which faction submitted this proposal.

What is clear, Saan said that NasDem is of the opinion that the KPU commissioners must be independent. This, said Saan, is mandated by the 1945 Constitution.

"If we ourselves, at NasDem want the KPU to continue to be independent, it should not be filled by partisans. The UUD mandates that the KPU is an independent state institution, and to maintain its independence it must be filled with non partisans, it must be independent," he said.