Jakarta – The ruling Democratic Party has proposed that electoral constituents be shrunk and allocated fewer legislative seats so as to decrease the number of under-performing lawmakers in the House of Representatives.

During a discussion on the election law, the party's deputy secretary-general, Saan Mustopa, said it was important to reduce the number of electoral districts because there was a general lack of accountability among lawmakers in the House.

"[The Democratic Party] recommends that in the election bill we set the range for the number of seats allocated to polling regions to three to eight," Saan said in a discussion on Sunday.

He said that his party felt that the change would be a natural progression of the trend of reducing legislative seats since the 2004 election. In 2004, polling regions were allocated three to 12 seats, which was then changed in 2009 to three to 10 seats.

Saan said that legislators had a "representative function", which meant that they had the potential to establish emotional bonds with their constituency, which in turn meant that they were accountable for them.

He said that currently, legislators did not know their own constituencies, showed little accountability and therefore lacked responsibility.

"Many legislators never visit their constituents, not even during [House] recess," Saan, who is also a member of the Special Committee for the election bill, said Sunday.

He said legislators were reluctant to visit their polling regions because the polling regions were too large.

He added that legislators faced overwhelming challenges in maintaining their accountability, citing East Kalimantan, where several electoral districts represented eight regencies each.

"I myself represent three districts in Karawang, West Java. Just with these three districts I am already overwhelmed," Saan said. He said that reducing the size of polling regions would make it easier for lawmakers to represent their constituencies.

In the 2009 general elections, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's party won 20 percent of the total 104 million votes cast. In 2009, some electoral districts represented entire provinces each.

National Mandate Party faction deputy chairman Viva Yoga Mauladi said it was reasonable for some electoral districts to cover large territories. "The population density in remote areas especially outside of Java is different from Java," Viva said.

Unity Development Party deputy secretary-general Muhammad Arwani Thomafi said it was not necessary to shrink polling regions.

"Political parties should choose their legislative candidates long before election time. This would give them [the legislative candidates] more time to get to know their polling regions, and thus decrease the number of 'political adventurers' or opportunists," Arwani said.

Center for Electoral Reform senior researcher Refly Harun told The Jakarta Post that shrinking polling regions would benefit the big political parties and handicap the smaller ones. "Small parties usually get seats only if there are more than five seats in a polling region," he said.

He suggested introducing a 'mixed proportional election system', by which only one legislative seat would be assigned to each electoral district. "Based on our concept [the mixed proportional system] about 280 legislators seats would be won through polling regions," Refly said.

He said that the remaining 260 House seats would be allocated based on a provincial-based closed proportional election. (rpt)