The more, the merrier?

The 2009 general elections are still about 1.5 years away but the events look sure to be “merry” because so far no less than 79 political parties have registered themselves to take part in them.

The chairman of the General Elections Commission (KPU) Abdul Hafiz Anshary said of the 79, it seemed that at least 50 would be able to fulfill all the legal requirements, thus would be able to contest both the legislative and presidential elections.

In the 2004 general elections, “only” 24 parties took part. But even then, many people already said that the number was too big.

They must have made very good observation over the parties because it was proven later that out of the 24 parties, only seven could find their way to the 550 seats at the House of Representatives (DPR) and it was the seven which later were used as political vehicles by some candidates to try to grab the top executive seat in this country.

We could understand that there was an eagerness to set up political parties in the early days of the reform era. However, today, almost ten years have passed since we toppled an authoritarian regime. The euphoria, in our opinion, should have ended.

Today, we should have been able to see clearly that too many political parties will only lead to unnecessary fragmentation in the society although of course the parties can also be seen as the “representatives” of the country’s democratic system.

But democracy actually is just a tool, not an objective in itself. Therefore, if in the last nine years we already learned that there was hardly any compatibility in the multi-party legislature and the presidential system of governance, we should at least refrain ourselves from having too many parties.

After all, we have always been so fond of talking about quality instead of quantity. If our objective is to turn out quality—instead of “merry”—general elections, the first step that we must adopt obviously is to “limit”, through the existing legal system, the number of participants.

We must do it now, before the 2009 general elections. There is no need to wait any longer because it seems only the parties, and their activists, which benefit the most from their presence.

A recent survey clearly showed that the general public do not feel that the parties can channel—let alone fight for—their aspirations.