SP/Robertus Wardi & SP/Carlos Paath – Under Suharto's presidency, universally denounced as undemocratic, there was no such thing as direct elections for regional leaders. And if President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has his way, that could once again be the case by the end of this year.

That is when the government hopes the House of Representatives will pass a set of proposed amendments to the 2004 Regional Governance Law to eliminate the election of mayors and district heads – a plan widely criticized as a throwback to the days of Suharto's New Order regime.

Djohermansyah Johan, the director general of regional autonomy at the Home Affairs Ministry, said on Wednesday that the measure was needed in light of the spiralling costs of holding regional elections as well as the growing number of violent conflicts linked to elections.

"We're proposing this [ban on direct elections] for the sake of effectiveness and cost efficiency," he said. "We also want to prevent community conflicts from breaking out, and we can do this by putting an emotional distance between candidates for district chief or mayor and their supporters."

Under the government's plan, district heads and mayors will be appointed by their respective regional legislatures, while governors will still be chosen through direct elections.

Djohermansyah said the rationale for this was that governors needed to be given greater legitimacy and power to run their provinces, whereas lower-level leaders such as mayors and district heads did not have to have the same kind of popular legitimacy in order to work effectively.

"The relevance and significance of retaining direct elections for governors and instating legislative appointments for mayors and district chiefs are based on empirical evidence and [lessons from] the negative aspects of regional elections," he said.

"There's no positive correlation between having direct regional elections and effective decentralization."

Reign of graft

The government also contends that this proposed system will reduce instances of moral and ethical misconduct by those seeking public office. One of its arguments is that because candidates often borrow large sums of money to win elections, they tend to commit corruption once in office in order to pay it back, or rig public contracts in favor of their financial backers.

Home Affairs Minister Gamawan Fauzi has acknowledged the problem, revealing in July that 298 governors, district heads and mayors had been jailed since regional autonomy was introduced in 1999, 251 of them for corruption.

"The tendency by candidates to abandon moral and ethical norms has undermined the quality of regional elections," Djohermansyah said. "Democracy at the local level is distorted by these compromised direct elections, in which anything goes, as far as the candidates are concerned."

He added he was confident that the raft of amendments to the 2004 Regional Governance Law would clear the House later this year, despite legislators' reluctance to banish direct elections for mayors and district heads.

"The House has no problems with the proposal to retain direct elections for governors, but they're not all in agreement on the mechanism for choosing mayors and district chiefs," he said.

Another sticking point is the question of the candidates' running mates. The government is proposing that the candidates run on their own and that the winner be allowed to select their own deputy – contingent on approval from Jakarta.

However, most legislators are against such a system and are holding out for the status quo, in which the candidate and their deputy run as a pair.

"We'll discuss these two points with the legislators during our scheduled hearings with the House this month and next month," Djohermansyah said. "If everything goes smoothly, then we can expect the amendments to be passed by the end of the year."

House opposition

Arif Wibowo, a deputy chairman of House Commission II, which oversees domestic affairs and is deliberating the proposed amendments, said he agreed with the need to keep election costs down and prevent poll-related violence, but added that elections by local legislatures had the potential to be riddled with corruption.

"Electing an official through a regional legislature would, by its very nature, be transactional. So too are direct elections. That's something we need to fix," he said.

He refuted the notion that the system could be changed by the end of the year, saying the issue required lengthy deliberations and could not realistically be introduced for at least another 10 years.

"I think you'd have to wait 10 years before you see a return to the system of elections by legislatures. That's how long it will take to improve the party system and tighten up the mechanism," said Arif, from the opposition Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P).

He also denied that regional elections tended to devolve into violence, saying that those that did were the exception rather than the rule.

"We have nearly 500 regional administrations, and if elections in 300 of them turned violent, then you could safely say that there was a problem with direct elections," he said. "But we don't see that. The violence is limited to just a few regions."

Rahadi Zakaria, another PDI-P legislator serving on House Commission II, said that as flawed as they were, direct elections were still an infinitely better choice than legislative appointments.

"We shouldn't be fixated on the negative aspects of direct elections. We're still making the transition into a proper democracy. We shouldn't revert to the old way of doing things," he said. He conceded that the way elections were held needed to be improved and that this would take time.

However, Akbar Tandjung, a former House speaker and three-time minister under Suharto, said he could understand the desire to give regional legislatures back the power to elect regional heads.

"There are so many issues with direct elections that point to pervasive vote buying, that I often wonder if it wouldn't be better to return to a system of regional legislatures selecting the regional heads," he said as quoted by Kompas.com.

He acknowledged the potential for regional legislatures to also engage in vote buying, but said this could be addressed through greater oversight.