JAKARTA - The Coalition of Civil Society for Electoral Codification urges the government and the DPR RI to immediately discuss the Draft Law (RUU) on Amendments to Law Number 7 of 2017 concerning General Elections (Elections).
The General Election and Democracy (Perludem) researcher Kahfi Adlan Hafiz, who is part of the coalition, said that the insistence was based on the results of a comprehensive evaluation of previous elections which showed various structural problems in the design and regulation of elections.
"The need for a revision of the Election Law is increasingly urgent, especially in relation to the selection stage of the election organizer which will soon begin," Kahfi said at the coalition's press conference which was held online in Jakarta, Monday, quoted by Antara.
He said that the bill was actually included in the National Legislation Program (Prolegnas) priority since 2025. However, until now it has not been discussed.
According to him, the delay in legislation has the potential to create legal uncertainty which has an impact on various aspects of the implementation of elections. As a result, the opportunity to make substantive improvements in the electoral system is becoming increasingly limited.
On the other hand, he assessed the absence of initiatives from political parties (parpol) to accelerate the discussion of the bill showed a conflict between the normative interests of democracy and the pragmatic interests of power.
Political parties, he said, tend to maintain existing rules, if they are considered to be beneficial to their position in the electoral competition.
"This situation undermines the legitimacy of the system in political parties which should be the vanguard in maintaining the quality of democracy are trapped in narrow political calculations," he said.
Ideally, he assessed that the revision of the Election Law must be completed by August 2026 at the latest to ensure the readiness of regulations before the election phase begins.
For this reason, he also urged all political parties in parliament to show a real commitment to democratic reform by no longer delaying discussion of the revision of the Election Law, and ensuring that changes to regulations are not based on short-term electoral interests.
The DPR RI and the President, he said, need to ensure that the revision process of the Election Law is carried out through a constitutional, transparent and accountable legislative mechanism, as well as ensuring meaningful public participation in each stage of discussion.
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