On Wednesday, Indonesia’s top court ruled that parties would not need a minimum 20% of representation in their regional assemblies in order to field a candidate.
…
If passed, it would maintain the status quo, which favours parties in the ruling coalition of the outgoing president
How?
… which favours parties in the ruling coalition … As a result, many local elections are expected to be uncontested affairs.
The current “status quo” is that the current ruler gets everything he wants.
I don’t see how removing the 20% requirement could mean this. Wouldn’t that be the opposite? Less restrictions meaning more competition?
While having 20% representation would be trivial for the big parties, smaller parties would have to form coalitions in order to field a candidate — it’s easy to see how this results in much fewer candidates and w.r.t. the cronyism already rampant in parts of the Indonesian political landscape, it’s clear that quite a few people have gotten where they are through nepotism.
Getting rid of the 20% requirement would mean smaller parties being able to put forward their own candidates, giving much more choice instead of, for example, the usual big three which, for the average voter, comes down to picking the lesser evil.
The rapid response by the parliament has left a bad impression all a round because they only seem to ever react this fast when their interests are on the line as opposed to i.e. procrastinating passing the asset seizure bill (which has been pending since 2010 if I recall correctly), which would allow the state to seize assets from government officials convicted of corruption.
At least, this is what I gather hearing from friends and family at home.
edit: spelling
Ah I missed this part of the article:
Yet within 24 hours, parliament tabled an emergency motion to reverse these changes - a move which has sparked widespread condemnation and fears of a constitutional crisis.
This does make sense now. It’s just a very poorly written article :|