System of direct elections needs evaluation: Mahyudin

Mahyudin says people are not yet all ready for the system of direct elections.

REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, SAMARINDA -- Deputy Chairman of the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) Mahyudin said the present system of direct elections need to be evaluated. He expected democratic performance to be improved.

"What needs evaluating are the effectiveness of the election implementation and efficiency in budget to prevent possible horizontal conflicts as a result of direct elections," Mahyudin said here on Tuesday.

He said evaluation could be carried out over direct elections for regional leaders of provincial and district/city administrations, and for members of regional legislative assemblies and the House of Representatives as well as presidential election.

"Evaluation does not necessarily result in change , but to see if the direct election is the best system but , still it may needs improvement," he said.

He said evaluation would show any weaknesses in the system that could be improved . If the system is considered not yet right for the people at present, change could be made with representation system.

Representation system was already used by the country under the first two presidents before the era of reform toward greater democracy prevailing in the country. The representation system was considered to be vulnerable to producing corrupt leaders including lawmakers.

However, direct elections also produced many corrupt lawmakers and regional leaders. Mahyudin also suggested evaluation of the presidential election related to witnesses at polling stations (TPS).

There are 800,000 units of TPS to be used for the coming presidential elections that would need a huge cost to pay for TPS witnesses.

"If a TPS would need Rp200,000 for witness cost, the 2019 presidential election to be held at once with the legislative elections, the witness cost would total around Rp160 billion. It would be quite a burden for the candidates," he said.

As a result, the candidates would have to raise fund from various sources. Corruption , therefore, is potential involving the lawmakers when they are elected members of the legislative body.

He said currently the people are not yet all ready for the system of direct elections as could be seen from the rampant money politics in elections.

According to Mahyudin, corrupt leaders were the products of corrupt community, adding a community open itself to bribery would give birth to corrupt leaders. Money politics resulted in many officials who bribed the voters in the process of their election, accept bribe, he added.

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