Exploring the Idea of Recall Election in Indonesia

This past month, we have been occupied with People’s Representative Council special committee on KPK investigation (Pansus Hak Angket KPK). The majority of public reject this special committee as it was seen as an attempt to weaken the anti-graft body. But, DPR, who are supposed to represent the voice of the people, seem unconcerned and plow through with their plan.

The betrayal from DPR towards their most sacred duty became more apparent after vice-chairman of the special committee, Teuku Taufiqulhadi (Nasdem, East Java IV), denied the notion that the cancellation of special committee’s plan to visit Pondok Bambu Detention Center to meet convicted corruptors was caused by stream of critics from the public. “What about (the critics)? We don’t care about public’s request,” said the legislator as quoted from detikX. That statement is a slap in the face for his constituents and public in general.

In normal circumstances, if there is an elected official, including representatives, who does not carry out his/her duty accordingly, then the voter will punish that elected official by not voting for him/her again in the next election. Problems with this are Indonesian voters tend to forget easily and not all voters are well-informed in political news. There are a lot of precedents where a problematic elected official (i.e. convicted corruptor) got re-elected into office.

To punish the special committee, we have to wait at least until the 2019 general election, that is two more years from now. We have no idea how many voters who will still remember about the special committee in 2019. So, it is not a surprise to see the special committee acting so arbitrarily as if their action will bear no consequences.

We need a new mechanism that is able to correct and punish elected officials in a short time. I see the answer in recall election. Even though DPR already has a recall mechanism through PAW (penggantian antar waktu), this recall mechanism is controlled by each party and lot of its usage in the past were politically motivated. It is entirely different with recall election mechanism that I am proposing.

What is recall election?
We often heard the term ‘recall’ in a context when there was a product from a company discovered to be malfunctioned and potentially dangerous to its users, in this case then the company will recall that faulty product.

This is more or less the same with recall election, but in this case, it is a problematic elected official that will be recalled rather than a faulty product. In short, if voter feels that a certain elected official performs badly in office or has done a serious misconduct, then that elected official can be removed from the office before the end of their term through a direct vote by a mechanism called recall election.

How does recall election works?
In general, if public feels there is a certain elected official merited to be removed from office before the end of their term, then their constituents can initiate a petition proposing a recall election to be held. If that petition able to garner enough support and surpass a certain number of signatures, then a recall election will be held within a short amount of time. Then, in the recall election, if the votes for recalling an elected official outnumber the votes against, that elected official will be removed from office immediately.

With this recall election, it does not automatically mean that every lacking or faulty elected officials will always be recalled. But at the very least, with the implementation of recall election, voters will have a leverage against elected officials that represent them. With that leverage in place, the representatives seated in Senayan will be easier to be held accountable for their action and no longer able to act as they please. Maybe after that, we will finally have a legislative body that is interested and invested in furthering a cause that their constituents actually care about.