Markus Junianto Sihaloho – The ruling Democratic Party has denounced growing calls to revive an electoral system where parties rather than voters decide on which candidates should be allocated legislative seats.

Saan Mustopha, the Democrat chairman at the House of Representatives, said on Sunday that a return to the so-called closed system was bizarre given its flaws.

"It would be a setback," he said. "That system has been tried in previous elections and the only viable option is the open system that we use now. We've only had one set of elections in which to try it out, so don't knock it just yet."

He was responding to a call on Saturday by the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), one of the Democrats' coalition partners, to phase out the open voting system introduced in the 2009 polls, whereby candidates with the most votes in a given constituency get the seat.

Al Muzammil Yusuf, the PKS deputy chairman at the House, said the new system had given rise to an "individualistic streak" among candidates, high campaign costs and a more complicated vote-counting process.

"All these factors prompted electoral violations and manipulation by candidates, which made the 2009 polls much more complicated than those in 2004 and 1999," he said.

He also said the system only ensured that the most popular, and not necessarily the most competent, candidate was awarded a seat at the House of Representatives. "After an internal evaluation within the PKS, we've decided to support calls for a return to the previous system," he said.

The PKS joins the opposition Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and the National Awakening Party (PKB) in urging the return of the earlier system of distributing votes.

Under the closed system, votes do not go to individuals but instead go to their party. The party then combines all the votes and hand them out based on a list of its own favored candidates, even if those at the top of the list in reality won fewer votes than others.

One of the key criticisms of this system that resulted in it being abandoned in 2009 was the argument that most party seniors tended to place their cronies at the top of the list of candidates, thereby guaranteeing them House seats at the expense of more deserving candidates.

Saan refuted the PKS's argument that only popular or wealthy candidates were guaranteed seats under the open system, pointing out that it had proven not to be the case in 2009.

"What's certain is that the new system forces each candidate to get up in front of the voters and work harder. A lot of popular candidates and rich ones didn't, and they didn't make it through," he said.

He also denied that the open system had resulted in internal rifts between candidates from the same party, arguing that the threat to party stability was greater from the intra-party politicking and bickering under the closed system.