Businessmen in the Election

Kompas daily newspaper today write an interesting article about the jobs of this year's election candidates (i.e. house of representatives). To be specific, Kompas focuses on the businessmen that are nominating them selves. Kompas found that the percentage of "businessmen" candidates in each party is significantly big. On average, approximately 18% of the candidates of each party are businessmen. On average 27.5% of those businessmen are number one in the election list (for each specific election area), 18.8 in number two and 13.7% in number thrree. Although this year's election does not 100% counting on candidate's position in the list, but being first listed will give them the chance to get more votes.

Kompas identified possible "vested interests" when businessmen are going to the politics. I am afraid that money will be their first priority reason. As businessmen, they will think of "paying back" the investment. That kind of thinking will eventually nourish more corruption and inefficiencies in the system. Politics and public administration needs specific knowledge, a more macro ones. Businessmen usually think micro (business only). therefore I have the tendency to believe that those businessmen candidates are not sufficiently equipped with the right knowledge.

Mature parties have little businessmen in the candidate list. GOLKAR and DEMOKRAT have little number of candidates coming from business sector. I believe, mature parties have specific rules and standard in allowing somebody nominating his/her self. The standard, I believe, includes the knowledge and also experience. A party that really cares the greater good of the people will be very selective in nominating candidates. The failure of parties in identifying right people will be the failure of the system. However, let's hope that those businessmen are really capable in doing something good in politics. If not, let's blame the parties.