Measuring The Quality Of Parliament 2019

The quality of parliament in Indonesia cannot be said to be good. The performance of legislative products is still far from being productive, with only one bill being passed, namely the MD3 Bill. On the other hand, members of the legislature also complicate the political situation in the country. Not infrequently members of the DPR RI issue controversial statements that divide the public. There is also a problem from an integrity standpoint. The most recent case, Taufik Kurniawan (Deputy Speaker of the DPR RI) was arrested by the KPK for the Kebumen DAK bribery case. Then, will the 2019 simultaneous general election system produce a parliament with more integrity and productivity?

The Populi Center held the 2019 Election edition of the Populi Forum on Thursday (8/11) with the theme "Measuring the Quality of the 2019 Parliament". The speaker this time was Ruhut Sitompul (Member of the Republic of Indonesia DPR 2014-2019), Lucius Karus (Formappi Researcher), and Afrimadona (Senior Populi Center Researcher). Ruhut Sitompul said legislators often did not understand what their duties in parliament were. Administratively those who sit in DPR seats are the result of support from political parties (political parties). However, when they are elected, the interests of the people must be the top priority.

Therefore, the interests of political parties need to be put aside. "They forget that when they are elected as representatives of the people, they are no longer representatives of the party," he said. According to this former Democrat Politician, the people who vote for legislative candidates are currently looking at the person of the figure in question. Therefore, role models who are clean in a political party play a very important role in the electability of the party. This condition then occurred in the Democrats where the number of seats for the blue party in the current period recorded 61 seats in the DPR, down considerably from the previous period's 148 seats. According to Ruhut, this decline was due to corruption cases that occurred in the Democrats. "If you don't have strong faith, don't try to enter the DPR," he concluded. On the other hand, Lucius Karus sees that the 2019 parliamentary quality picture does not have sufficient positive expectations. There are several reasons for saying that. First, the closedness of legislative candidates to publish themselves through the KPU portal.

Formappi noted that there were 3,531 candidates without profile data at the time the Provisional Candidate List was determined. Then, as many as 2,074 of them clearly stated that they did not want to publish their profiles. Lucius argued that this data was strange because the profiles of the candidates would become a reference for voters to find out their background. “This culture of closure is close to corruption. One of the triggers for corruption is secrecy,” he explained.

Second, the inability of most parties to meet the number of candidates in accordance with the quota for the number of seats in the DPR RI, namely 575 seats. Big parties such as PDI-P and Golkar could not fulfill their quota and they were defeated by PSI which was able to provide a quota of 575 seats. The seriousness of political parties in this case is questionable because it proves the failure of the regeneration process. Candidate recruitment should not be done a week before registration. Meanwhile, Afrimadona gave an overview of the existing parliament in America. According to him, what is very different between the parliament in Indonesia and the parliament in America is that the superpower party is well organized. The party represents its ideology clearly so that people can vote without knowing the candidate. Legislators also stick to their ideology when making policies.

In addition, senior party members have a role and seriousness in the legislative process and the cadre formation of their young members. “I don't know if we can replicate that or not. Even if we imitate, will our party's capacity be sufficient? However, party reform is important,” said Afrimadona. In addition, he continued, public education is needed in this process. Rational voters are what is most needed in elections. People need to be educated not to believe in promises. Media that plays an active role for political education is also very necessary.