Berita

By: Bambang Eka Cahyo Widodo *
 
The Constitutional Court’s verdict in the case of Act No. 8 of 2015 which is listed as a constitutional matter No. 100 / PUUXIII / 2015, invites an interesting debate on the political side as well as from the republican front. From the political party of the Constitutional Court’s decision to affirm democracy without contestation is valid with all its consequences. From the side of the constitution, this decision opens a dead end due to the absence of alternative candidates in the election of the regional head.
This paper invites readers to rethink the phenomenon of this single candidate after the Constitutional Court decision, as well as question the severe implications of the passing of the election without this contestation. The above mentioned Constitutional Court ruling contains essential meaning as learning for a political party which is given the full mandate to carry candidate pairs in election including election, that is decreasing public trust to a political party as the nuclear infrastructure in the political system.
In the general elections including the election, there are two critical constitutional rights which are guaranteed by the general election namely the right to be elected and the right to vote. The right to vote for candidates promoted by political parties is necessary to approve the ideas, ideas, programs and visions offered by the candidate.
Choosing a particular candidate in the election more in-depth is the best of ideas, ideas, programs, and visions offered by candidates who contest vote or election. Therefore, contestation in elections does not merely select candidates but also choose the best ideas and ideas to be a top priority in the next five years.
From the perspective of political education, contestation in this election gives voters the opportunity to weigh, judge and decide which ideas, ideas, programs and visions are most realistic and worthy of support in polls or elections. The debate born from the differences of opinions, ideas, plans and concepts of each candidate is to sharpen these thoughts, ideas, programs and visions so that whoever wins the contest has a comprehensive understanding of the issues of public concern in the area.
Conversely, losers in contestation have the opportunity to be an opposition that continually criticises the ideas run by the contest winners. For society, differences of opinion and political contestation that occur in the public sphere, can be a vital learning arena in understanding and assess the contentious issues.
This condition is removed from the democracy without contestation decided by the Court some time ago. Indeed, we may argue that a single candidate is required to clarify their ideas, ideas, programs and vision through campaigns, but certainly different if there are competitor parties that individually and critically observe it.
From another perspective, contesting candidates’ ideas, ideas, programs and visions will facilitate the democratic accountability process for elected candidates. The sharpening of the mission’s vision in the campaign into ideas that ideas are better understood and understood by voters is the challenge of every candidate who is advancing in elections and elections. The most significant problem of a single candidate in this non-contestant democracy is the process of sharpening mission vision and ideas and ideas are not as intensive as if there were more than one candidate.
There is another candidate’s encouragement to criticise every idea put forward by another candidate. Moreover, the sole candidate has no opportunity to argue and question the details of the proposed program and design. And that particular is often a problem in every program and ideas offered. Democratic accountability of elected regional heads can be prosecuted through detailed records that follow the programs and activities it provides during the campaign.
If politics is defined as the process of prioritising the main priorities to be implemented over a period, then the electoral process is a process of measuring which priorities are more attractive to society as the owner of the highest sovereignty. A single candidate in this non-contestable democracy has the potential to obscure the choice of preference because of the lack of adequate public space to debate every only candidate’s idea.
Senior Lecturer of Governmental Science UMY, former Chairman of Bawaslu, writing was published in the Daily Kedaulatan Rakyat Yogyakarta