New System, 1999-02-28 This report looks at some of the features of the new system1 and identifies how these aspects
of the system compare with the old system.
Changes to Indonesia's electoral machinery
From the General Elections Institute to the General Elections Commission
The first notable difference between the old system and the new is that the political parties
have the right to be closely involved in the whole electoral process from the establishment of
the new General Elections Commission. The old General Elections Institute was essentially a
council of Government ministers which suffered from all manner of ethical challenge in
trying to demonstrate independence and fairness. Indeed there was little possibility of an
independent electoral authority being formed while its public service members were
constantly being reminded of their duty to support the government grouping, Golkar.
The initial Government draft proposed a tripartite membership of the KPU with equal
weighting between Government, the political parties and civil society in order to ensure that
no group could dominate the process. The DPR, without noticeable opposition from parties
outside the DPR, considered it unnecessary and too complicated to include civil society in the
KPU2. The system adopted in the new law consists of equal weighted representation from the
Government (none of whom occupy functional public servant positions, that is there are no
Directors General or Secretaries General) and half from representatives of the political parties
eligible to run in the elections. The new Commission represents a further development of the
institutionalisation of agencies commonly known as Quasi Autonomous Non-Government
Organistions. These agencies are actually official institutions and are publicly funded yet
function independently of the Executive of the day. The first serious attempt in modern
Indonesia to establish such an agency was the National Commission of Human Rights, which
emerged in the early 1990s while the New Order's system of governance remained
insurmountable. Even so this Commission has generally been credited with being far more
independent of the Government than most commentators had expected at the time of its
establishment. The new General Elections Commission inherits a larger bureaucracy than the
Human Rights Commission and a clear mandate. While there will be the old tussle between
the Commission and the Executive over technical and perhaps some policy issues, I
nonetheless expect the KPU to be capable of functioning as an independent elections
management authority {The footnotes in this document were added on 2 December 2008, as I reviewed the
original document – all with the comforting distance of a decade of hind-sight! The
comments are intended to provide both a little historic context that may now have been
forgotten with time and also to provide some auto-criticism of where I believe my analysis
was flawed or perhaps biased. From the original document I have also corrected typing
mistakes and grammatical errors without changing the integrity and substance (be that
accurate or idiotic) of what was initially written. The footnotes therefore do not represent
part of the original document.}
