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Bivitri Susanti as the expert for Petitioner after giving her statement in judicial review hearing of Law Number 7 of 2017 on General Elections on Monday (12/11) in the Courtroom of the Constitutional Court. Photo by Humas MK/Ifa.

The Constitutional Court (MK) held a further judicial review hearing of Law No. 7/2017 on General Elections on Monday afternoon (12/11). The session was to hear the statement of the expert for the Petitioner, Bivitri Susanti as founder of the Center of Indonesian Legal and Policies Studies (PSHK) and the Indonesia Jentera School of Law.

Bivitri read out the points of a paper entitled "The Idea of Crafting Democracy and Quality Legislature." Bivitri started by stating the fact that the professional and ethical legislature is not only professional can certainly be a tool for the state in providing justice and welfare for the people.

"However, we also really understand that democracy is in the political world so it must go through challenges to gain power to achieve a narrower goal. I see the inclusion of legislative candidates recruited by political parties for the purpose of gathering votes. I think this is something that is widely expressed in many research reports. This is a very common thing in Indonesia. This phenomenon is often highlighted because it is seen as a reflection of the desire of political parties to simply get as many seats as possible," Bivitri explained to the panel of justices led by Chief Justice Anwar Usman.

Second, Bivitri added, was the failure of political parties to carry out political education. This continues to happen; especially now that parliamentary threshold is higher at 4%. It is important for political parties to get as many votes as possible and it does not seem to be too important to make a long-term strategy on how to get votes according to the goals of these political parties.

"What is more important is meeting the parliamentary threshold so that no seats will be wasted. We have seen many surveys that show that certain parties will indeed not [go to] Senayan [House of Representatives] because they have not reached the parliamentary threshold," said Bivitri.

Therefore, said Bivitri, the paper she presented covered two things. First, the importance of designing a democratic mechanism in such a way as to achieve a democratic model that is appropriate to the context. In relation to this, she uses the perspective of crafting democracy. "Second, according to the case being reviewed, it is necessary to review the requirements for candidates for House of Representatives and Regional Legislative Council in the context of the reference used, namely Article 28D paragraph (1) of the 1945 Constitution. In short, I saw this crafting democracy framework, I use it to be able to come to an understanding of constitutional law that is not merely textual, but a way of understanding the law to design a model of contextual democracy. If we only look at the text in the constitution in this case, we will tend to be trapped in a model that is decided only by people who have a direct interest in the model. So, the crafting democracy approach is used," she explained.

Bivitri hoped that the Indonesian people will be able to have broader horizons. "Behind what is desired by the political elite towards the important ideal of democracy. This ideal is actually similar to the phrase that is often used in constitutional law discussions popularized by Giovanni Sartori, constitutional engineering. So, the terms crafting democracy and constitutional engineering are often used to see how constitutional design needs to be made with careful consideration of the results to be achieved. How to achieve these results and the context of political actors and civil society who will implement the constitution," Bivitri added.

The Petitioner had registered as a legislative candidate (bacaleg) of the House of Representatives in the electoral district of West Sumatra II through the Golkar Party. He felt disadvantaged by the enactment of Article 240 paragraph (1) letter n of Law No. 7/2017 regarding the absence of regulations on the time limit of political party membership to become a legislative candidate.

As an ordinary member of the Golkar Party, the Petitioner cannot immediately arrange the requirements for legislative candidate recruitment in political parties, that regional legislative candidates must be members of the party within a certain time limit. According to Petitioner\'s knowledge, there is no new membership opening in the Golkar Party at the time of the registration of legislative candidates. 

The Petitioner observed that many legislative candidates were actually not cadres from the parties who registered them. He suspected that these candidates were recruited as legislative candidates because they have something other than qualifications and understanding of politics. (Nano Tresna Arfana/LA/Yuniar Widiastuti)

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