Abstract
This article scrutinizes the phenomenon of Local Government Election (Local election) of a regency at the easternmost province in Indonesia, Jayapura Regency of Papua. During the election period, there was a great number of violations against election rules which were not only sporadic but also designed on a structured, systematic and massive scale – using the term of Indonesian Constitutional Courts. The violations were related to the role of the oligarchs who cooperatively worked hand in hand to win the political contestation. The activities of the oligarchs which involved clerical-technical issues are undoubtedly prohibited by the Law of Pilkada. The clerical-technical issues include unlawful activities such as replacing some officials of polling station a day before the election, manipulating the official report documents like voting and the calculation of the votes forms, certificates of results and holographic forms of the votes calculation details and records of the results of valid vote calculation at the polling stations in massive numbers. In the Jayapura Regency Election, it is found that the practice of the election administration regime is defied by an electoral shadow structure played by the Oligarchs. Thus, this article argues that the political decentralization results in a powerful control of the local oligarchs on the Local Elections which must be solved for the sake of Indonesia’s democratization.
Highlights
In the year of 2017, Indonesia held the Local Elections (Pilkada) simultaneously in 101 autonomous regions, including 8 provinces, 76 regencies, and 18 cities
The explanation of the Jayapura Regency Election in 2017 is the imagery description of the official electoral structure run by the election administration regime, alongside the operation of the shadow structure run by the local oligarchy regime
Even though the election administration regime was designed with independent structures, regulated by work functions in the law, and provided with a code of ethics, it was mercilessly attacked by the actions of the oligarchy regime as seen in the case of Jayapura Regency Election
Summary
In the year of 2017, Indonesia held the Local Elections (Pilkada) simultaneously in 101 autonomous regions, including 8 provinces, 76 regencies, and 18 cities. The mechanism of direct elections in Indonesia’s regions raised a number of issues, especially outside the land of Java which mostly was facing social problems such as educational lags, economic gaps, and social group tensions. With those occurring problems, they were forced to practice the political liberalization, resulting in the practices of manipulative supports by the local political elites in the implementation of Local Elections. The practices of political manipulations had decreased significantly at local elections in the following years. At some regions like the province of Papua, the easternmost province of Indonesia, those kinds of political manipulations still stained the practice of local elections in Indonesia
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