Indonesia is undergoing a huge electoral experiment to choose its president and parliament on the same day (Anatolia)

Jakarta -

In the largest single-day elections in the world, next Wednesday, February 14, Indonesians will go to the polls to elect a new president, vice president, a central parliament, and others at the regional and provincial level, with 20,000 deputies and representatives for these parliaments being elected.

To simplify the mechanism of holding complex and large-scale elections in one day in a large country like Indonesia, which is the first time that presidential and parliamentary elections are held simultaneously, and the cost of holding elections this year is estimated at about 71 trillion rupiah (about 4.7 billion dollars).

Ballot boxes prepared for the upcoming general elections in Jakarta (Reuters)

Features of the electoral process:

First: holding elections

  •  Anyone who has reached the age of 17 has the right to vote, and approximately 205 million voters have been registered, including 1.5 million registered voters abroad. Voting will take place in 823,220 polling stations.

  •  Due to the vast geography of the Indonesian archipelago, which includes more than 13 thousand islands and about 270 million people, it has 3 time zones, so the time difference between eastern and western Indonesia is two hours. Therefore, ballot boxes open in the east of the country two hours before the capital, Jakarta, and in the west of the country.

  •  Each voter votes on 5 different ballots, which he places in 5 ballot boxes, in the following order: the first for the president and his deputy, the second for the central parliament, the third for the regional parliament, the fourth for the provincial parliament, and the fifth for the Senate.

  • Elections are held in 38 provinces, 514 provinces, and 7,277 municipalities.

  •  Voting is done by using a nail to puncture the ballot paper to indicate the party or candidate for which he wishes to vote, then dipping his finger in ink to avoid voting again.

  •  The official counting of votes continues until late on polling day, February 14, and the rapid counting process conducted by independent survey agencies provides preliminary results on the same night, and is usually close to accuracy. As for the Election Commission, it will announce the final results after at least 35 days. . During which appeals are submitted to the Election Commission for decision. 

Second: The presidential race

  •  A presidential candidate is required to have the official support of a political party or party coalition that constitutes either 20% of the central parliament or 25% of the votes in the previous elections (2019).

  •  A presidential candidate must be at least 40 years old, reside in Indonesia for at least 5 years, and not have foreign nationality, whether at the time of the election, or at any previous time.

  •  A presidential candidate needs 50% + 1 of the votes cast, and at least 20% of the votes in more than half of the 38 provinces to win the presidency.

  •  If no one is able to achieve the required percentage, a runoff will be held for the presidential elections next June between the two candidates who received the largest number of votes. The next president will take office next October.

Posters of the three presidential and vice-presidential candidates and the list of participating parties in Surabaya (French)

Third: Participating parties

  •  Political parties are required to participate in the elections to have branches in every province in Indonesia, and 75% of the cities in those provinces. The number of parties eligible to run in the legislative elections this year reached 24 political parties (18 national parties and 6 local parties in Aceh).

  •  The number of parties eligible to run in the legislative elections this year reached 24 political parties, which submitted 9,919 candidates to fill 580 seats in the central parliament.

  •  Parties participating in the elections are required to have at least 30% of their list of candidates be female.

  •  A political party needs to secure 4% of the electorate (election threshold) to enter the central parliament (580 seats). This condition does not apply to regional and governorate parliaments, as it is sufficient to secure the necessary votes to win the parliamentary seat there.

  •  Candidates will enter a period of electoral silence between February 11 and 13 to vote on the morning of election day, February 14.

  •  Senate candidates are required not to be members of any political party. 4 senators are elected from each of the 38 regions, for a total of 152 members.

Source: Al Jazeera