YOGYAKARTA- Democratization of political recruitment of regional leaders is urgent to be done. The recruitment of candidates should involve members of parties so that the sovereignty of members to the party can be realized as well as to strengthen members with political parties. In addition, the recruitment should stop at the local level. The upper structure is limited to conduct supervision or to veto if there are certain conditions that require their intervention. "Centralization of decision-making process of this nomination is in national level conducted by the elites, agents or party leaders," a lecturer of Department of Government Science UGM, Sigit Pamungkas, S.I.P, M.A., said in political discussion of Recruitment of Regional Heads, which was held at PAU Building East Wing Tuesday (19/7). Another speaker was the General Secretary of DPW PKB of Yogyakarta, Umar Masdar.
What revealed by Sigit is part of his research on nine political parties in Yogyakarta that passed electoral threshold in the election year 2009, PDIP, Golkar, Gerindra, Demokrat, PKS, PAN, and PPP. "For PKB, we get the new data from Mas Umar, while Hanura is still sending one from Jakarta," he added.
He also agreed that the poor leadership of regional leaders partly contributes to poor regional recruitment model done by political parties. The existing model is not capable of ensuring the best people to be regional leaders. Minister of Domestic Affairs even cited the data on governor's status that around 17 suspects and 155 regents/mayors are undergoing legal process. "Not to mention the rise of the nomination of a child or wife of the incumbent into regional elections. It implies the poor recruitment model by the parties to deliver the best individual," he said.
Aside from the issue of centralization of decision making, several other problems encountered in the study are bureaucracy problem in nomination, the failure of party’s cadres, and the spectrum of nomination’s time. So far, according to Sigit, recruitment of candidates is the property of the party’s bureaucracy. Party members who are often referred to as the owners of party’s sovereignty only became the spectator of the processes occurring in the party bureaucracy.
Related to party cadres, political parties seem to fail. Political parties do not have sufficient people or individuals who are ready or even the parties are not willing to promote their own people for some reasons. "So, we can see, political parties overtly nominate candidates from other political parties," he added.
Meanwhile, General Secretary of DPW PKB of Yogykarta, Umar Masdar, admitted that there are obstacles to manage the political parties ideally as expected by many people. Several obstacles are still encountered especially in PKB, among others, the lack of reliable human resources and inadequate funding. "PKB whose base is NUis likely to easily search superior candidates for regional leaders in Java, but outside Java, such as Papua, we are still struggling to have these candidates," Umar who was a member of the monitoring team of DPP PKB said.
Nevertheless, he assessed that currently, PKB is more flexible and open to change than when it was led by Gus Dur. This is quite an impact on the regional election which was won by candidates from PKB. "Yes, although we are not the big 3 parties, but at least now there are 58 governors, regents or mayors in Indonesia from PKB," he concluded.