CIDISS. In the year 2018, as many as 171 regions will hold the election of regional heads simultaneously. This is the third uniform election of regional head that occurred in Indonesia after 2015 and 2017. In addition, re-emerged phenomenon that occurred in the previous election of regional heada, the single candidate.
The emergence of a single candidate phenomenon in Indonesia is an anomaly. In advanced democracies such as Britain, single candidates appear in areas with few voters, or small elections. Thus, the appearance of a single candidate in a region with this small election scale does not affect the existence of a political party. But what happened in Indonesia, single candidate actually appearing in fat dumpils with large number of voters and in areas where the power of political parties is quite well distributed.
The main cause of the number of single candidates due to the heavy requirements that must be fulfilled by political parties to nominate candidates for regional head. One of them is the requirement of sufficient number of seats in the DPRD which makes the party can not independently carry its candidates. The party must work with other parties to nominate candidates.
Based on Law No.10 / 2016 on the Regional Head Election, a party or a coalition of parties may register a candidate pair if it has fulfilled the requirements of acquisition of at least 20% of the total seats of the Regional House of Representatives (DPRD) or 25% of the accumulation of valid votes in the election of members of DPRD in the area large number of votersconcerned.
In some cases, this situation makes candidates, especially petahana candidates – ‘exercising the number of seats from the existing parties. However, election of regional head will still be held even though there is only one candidate pairs and by law, then a single candidate will be juxtaposed with empty columns.
As a good Indonesian citizen, we certainly hope for a clean, honest and fair elections. However, do not give priority to our own assessment and it is better for us to entrust it to the rules. On the other hand, we are not supposed to abstain for elections in election of regional heada because it can harm the spirit of democracy.
By: Mirwan Achmad *)