Indonesia’s House of Representatives postpones plan to scrap direct regional elections

JAKARTA - Indonesia’s House of Representatives has shelved a plan to

revise the law on regional elections

in 2026 amid mounting public pushback against a renewed proposal by President Prabowo Subianto’s ruling coalition to end direct elections for regional heads.

Support has been growing among pro-government parties to scrap direct polls after Mr Prabowo floated the idea several times of returning to an old system used during the New Order authoritarian era, when governors, regents and mayors were selected by regional legislative councils (DPRD).

Observers and pro-democracy activists have warned that such a change could reverse the country’s hard-won democratic reforms, noting that the indirect system would ultimately shift power to vote away from voters and back into the hands of political elites.

House Deputy Speaker Sufmi Dasco Ahmad, a politician from Mr Prabowo’s Gerindra Party, said on Monday that the legislature has no plan to discuss such a proposal in the near future, noting that the revision to the Regional Elections Law was not included in the 2026 list of priority Bills.

“So far, the House has no plan to discuss revising the law, and the ideas circulating outside, that regional heads should be appointed or selected by the DPRD, have neither been placed on the agenda nor considered for discussion,” Mr Dasco said.

He made the remark following a meeting earlier that day with State Secretary Prasetyo Hadi and leaders of House Commission II overseeing home affairs.

They included commission chair and deputy chairs who represented the pro-government parties and a deputy chair from the quasi-opposition Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), the only party in the House that had previously rejected the return to the old indirect polling.

The move came amid growing public opposition to such a change. The latest public opinion survey released by the Research and Development Department (Litbang) of Kompas on Jan 12 found that 77.3 per cent of respondents favored maintaining direct local polls, with nearly half citing democracy and public participation as the main reasons.

State Secretary Prasetyo clarified on Jan 19 that the government did not initiate or endorse the proposed return to indirect regional elections, adding that it would remain open to dialogue and consider opinions from the public and political parties.

“Following the President’s instructions, the government’s priority is to act in the interest of the nation. While political parties may have different perspectives, the President emphasises that decisions should serve the public and the country,” Mr Prasetyo said.

Shifting focus

Then the Jan 19 meeting came amid plans among lawmakers and the government to revisit all election-related laws at once, either by combining the revisions altogether into a single new law or maintaining the revisions as separate laws.

But Mr Dasco said that the House and the government would instead focus on revising the General Elections Law, which governs presidential and legislative elections, this year to adopt a series of Constitutional Court rulings that have remained unaddressed by policymakers.

These include the 2024 ruling that revoked the threshold for political parties to nominate presidential candidates and the 2025 rulings that nixed the threshold to gain seats in the House and ordered separate direct polls for the president and regional offices starting in 2029.

The Gerindra politician also dismissed speculations about any attempt to reintroduce indirect presidential election in the upcoming amendment to the General Elections Law, stressing that “the president will continue to be elected directly by the people”.

With revisions to the Regional Elections Law being pushed back, House Commission II chairman Rifqinizamy Karsayuda of the pro-government NasDem Party confirmed on Jan 19 that the plan to use the omnibus method to review all laws on electoral systems and political structures at once have been dropped.

Mr Haykal from election watchdog the Association for Elections and Democracy (Perludem) criticised the House’s sudden decision to drop plans to revise elections-related law simultaneously, slamming the legislature for being “inconsistent” after months of pushing for the omnibus method.

He also warned against the possibility of the House later changing its mind and reviving the proposal to return to indirect regional elections, citing the past precedent of the nontransparent and rushed deliberations of controversial Bills.

“We are particularly concerned about opaque lawmaking practices that often catch the public off guard, as laws are drafted in secrecy, hurriedly and without meaningful public participation,” Mr Haykal told The Jakarta Post. THE JAKARTA POST/ASIA NEWS NETWORK