Messing with elections (Indonesia)

Indonesia's Constitutional Court has done it again. A few weeks ago, the Mahkamah Konstitusi announced that it would require national legislative and presidential elections to be held simultaneously. The campaigning for the 2014 elections has already begun, so the decision will not go into effect until 2019 (Indonesia's elections take place every 5 years. However, critics, including elections lawyer Refly Harun, allege that the decision "could" have gone into effect for 2014 if the MK had released it earlier. According to The Jakarta Globe, the MK actually reached its decision last May.

At first glance, it might seem relatively innocuous - and perhaps even efficient - to hold elections concurrently. However, Indonesian presidential elections depend heavily on coalition formation because only parties that had won 20% of the DPR seats or 25% of the popular vote can nominate candidates (the MK allowed this requirement to stand). Most Indonesian political parties do not meet this requirement; after the 2009 elections, only the Democrats, GOLKAR, and PDI-P would qualify. Thus, many of the smaller parties would need to form coalitions to gain a seat in the administration, often by putting forward the vice-presidential candidates.

So the biggest remaining question seems to be how will the process of coalition formation change with the simultaneity requirement if they cannot form coalitions after having seen the DPR results? This might lead to parties forming coalitions based on previous election results and polling. Or, it could lead to parties taking greater account of ideology and policy platforms to form stronger policy-based identities before elections.