Dian Erika Nugraheny, Jakarta – Association for Elections and Democracy (Perludem) researcher Heroik Pratama says that the increase in the number of sole candidate tickets (paslon) this year represents a strategy being used by the political parties to ensure victory in the 2020 election of regional heads.
Based on General Election Commission (KPU) data, there are 25 sole candidate tickets registered as contestants in the regional elections spread across 25 regencies and municipalities.
“We see that in 2020, aside from the factor of the difficult requirements for nomination, the presence of (many) sole paslon has also become a strategy for victory”, said Pratama when sought for confirmation by Kompas.com on Monday September 14.
The indication of this, he said, can be seen from the number of sole candidate tickets which have received almost 100 percent support from Regional House of Representative (DPRD) members. In other words, many political parties are backing these sole candidate tickets.
The other indication is that these sole candidates are either incumbents or have family relationships with the incumbent or political parties.
“This is the initial capital, which can be used as a shortcut to smooth the way to garnering the most votes”, he said. “So potential sole paslon have become a strategic trend to gain victory”, he said.
Earlier, the KPU released data showing that 25 regions will be fielding sole candidate tickets in the 2020 simultaneous election of regional heads.
KPU Commissioner Ilham Saputra said that in these 25 regions, only one candidate ticket has registered to contest the elections. This remained the case even after the KPU extended the deadline for registration in regions with sole candidates, namely on September 11, 12 and 13.
Based on the KPU recompilation data, the sole candidate tickets’ registrations have already been accepted by the KPU. The majority of sole candidates are in Central Java province covering six regencies and municipalities.
According to data from Kompas.com reports meanwhile, in the 2015 regional elections there were only three regions with sole candidate tickets. This increased to nine in the 2017 regional elections and then increased again in 2018 to 16.
[Translated by James Balowski. The original title of the article was “Perludem: Fenomena Bakal Calon Tunggal Jadi Strategi Menangkan Pilkada”.]
