Desy Nurhayati, Jakarta – Following the Constitutional Court's recent ruling that candidates with the most votes would get legislative seats, major parties have come up with different ways to distribute collected seats among their candidates contesting the 2009 elections.
Next April's legislative elections are expected to see many voters vote only for political parties, and not choose a particular legislative candidates as printed on ballots, due to widespread public distrust of individual candidates.
It is thus expected they will only mark the parties' logos, allowable under the legislative election law passed in March 2008.
This will affect how the parties decide which candidates get legislative seats at national and local levels, because of the dual nature of the vote: a vote for the party and a vote for its candidates.
The election law also allows voters to mark only the candidates' names printed on ballot papers, or both the party's logo and its candidates.
To be eligible for seats at the House of Representatives, a party must garner at least 2.5 percent of total valid votes nationwide.
On Friday, the Golkar Party said it would sum up all votes, both those in which only the logo was marked and those in which candidates' names were marked, while the Democratic Party said it would separate the two types of vote.
"We will not differentiate between the two kinds of vote because we will recapitulate all the votes to get total votes we need to compete against other parties in securing the most seats," said Golkar deputy chairman Syamsul Muarif.
"We will then distribute the votes among our legislative candidates by prioritizing those who have already secured the most votes in their respective electoral districts," he told The Jakarta Post.
Democratic Party deputy chairman Anas Urbaningrum said his party, founded by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, would not distribute among its candidates those votes in which only the party logo was marked.
"Votes for the party will only be used to reach the 2.5 percent threshold, but will not be distributed among candidates," said Anas, a former member of the General Elections Commission (KPU). "Eventually it will be the candidates with the most votes who win the seats."
On Tuesday, the Constitutional Court ruled that seats in the nation's legislatures would go to candidates who won the most votes.
It revoked Article 214 of the 2008 election law concerning the way legislative seats are distributed. The article would have allowed political party leaders to handpick their close supporters to represent the parties in the national and regional legislatures, rather than the seats going to the individual candidates who win the most votes.
The article stipulated legislative seats be distributed first to candidates securing at least 30 percent of the original vote. The rest of the seats would then have been allocated according to the list of permanent legislative candidates submitted by the parties.