The Fear of Independent Candidate
Last week after Supreme Judicial Court of Indonesia ruled out that it is possible for independent candidate to run for government office, things became pretty interesting. For independents that was a fresh and cooling breeze while political parties do not seem very happy about the ruling. How about general population, what do they think about independent candidate being able to run for office?
Ok let's take a look and maybe just maybe we can see if this is good news of bad news. Not so long ago Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam people have elected their first governor after the end of prolonged conflict in the province. Perhaps not many people in Indonesia realize that it was for the first time also that a province allowed independent candidates to run for office and as we can see it went well in the end the most popular candidate was elected. So if you ask me the people have spoken their mind.
Now why should it be different anywhere else in Indonesia? Well in my opinion it's quite simple the main opposition to the idea of independent candidate are in fact political parities, perhaps they fear that they would loose grip on who gets to run for the government office and who does not. Government office in question being a regent (bupati), governor and ultimately the president.
We can see that many of political parties do not have their own candidate who are credible enough to run for office and as such they open doors to any candidate to that wants to be sponsored by the party. However that comes with a price but of course, some candidates stated that they were required to pay large sums of money to the party to be sponsored. All political parties of course deny this kind of allegation. Besides that if elected these candidates would also have to deliver party's agenda instead of their own. Problem was if one didn't have party backing he or she could not run for the office.
Now this changes with independent candidate being able to run for the office and that's perhaps what bothers the parties the most. As for the people it should be good because ever since the 'New Order' regime was deposed and the reformation kicked in we haven't seen any drastic changes towards improving life of common people in Indonesia. Ironically corruption has became even worse because many of who came to power in years of reformation wanted to become rich fast.
So if there is an independent candidate running for office with a clear agenda and has a wide support of the grass root that should be a good thing right? Well at least that's how I see it. This nation has many competent and able individuals out there with clear reputation and known credibility.
One thing is sure if there was such an independent candidate with agenda to make Indonesia a better place I would vote for this person. How about you?
