Urgent - Innovative Election Method

Election Day is getting closer and closer. Starting this year the election will be very different from before. Legislative candidates must personally know their voters and voters have to know their preferred candidates. Candidate’s rank in the list does not play important role anymore. The more votes a candidate gets, the higher the chance of him/her to get into the House of Representatives.

It is true that this election method is somehow giving the people/voters the chance to choose their representative. Old system gave the parties to chose which candidates can go to House of Representatives. The rank of candidates affects the chance of each candidate. People vote for the parties not the candidate. This method has produced some complications. People representatives, ideally, have to have broad knowledge and have skill in creating public policies. In reality, some rich guys that can pay more money to the party but have no idea about public policy can be in the first rank and if the party got enough votes, he/she can sit in the House of Representative. This condition has made some regional House of Representative could not work effectively and the government has to waste money on them.

New method really gives a hard test to the candidate. Not just knowledge wise but also money wise. Parties, especially small ones and even the big ones, can not give 100% support to somebody who run for a position in the House of Representative. The candidate has to have enough money to sell him/her self to the public. Creating campaign posters, paying campaign managers and many other things are costly. The new method does need huge amount of money and deep pocket of a candidate. The new method also still has weaknesses. One of them is that many of the candidates do not personally know their voters. It is often that candidate based in Jakarta has voting area in the regions far from his/her home. The “real” connection between people and their representatives is not “there”.

Because it is costly, when candidates elected and won the seats in the House of Representatives, the worst thing can happen. Corruption can grow easily. It is just like business. When you invest on something, you need to gain profit and your investment paid back as soon as possible. When a candidate spent, say 1 million Rupiah for the election (it is more likely minimum 5000 million Rupiah than 1 million Rupiah per candidate), then he or she has to get 1 million Rupiah plus profit during his/her duty period. The salary and all the bonuses for 5 years duty period, I am sure, will not be that much. It is time when House of Representative play dirty role. If government wants to pass a regulation or budget, it needs to be agreed by House of Representative. The House can play hard in order to be bribed.

There are many options, I believe, to play dirty in the House of Representative. This condition creates high social cost and nurture the bribery and corruption habit. And if the representatives are only focusing on speeding up the payback period, they will not be able to focus on their responsibility. The victim will always be the people.

I think smart people in the government have to invent an innovative way to do election. Innovative enough so that in the end elected representatives do not have to worry about their financial investment. Their investment in making better condition for the people is far more valuable than money.