Legal and Democratic Uncertainty in the Mechanism of Electing DPRD Leadership Based on Party Seat Acquisition: A Study on the Principle of Majority Vote and Fairness of Constituent Representation
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Law Number 17 of 2014 on the MPR, DPR, DPD, and DPRD (Law on MD3), particularly Articles 327 and 376, stipulated that the leadership of provincial and regency/municipal Regional House of Representatives (DPRD) was drawn from the political party with the highest number of seats, rather than from the individual legislative candidate who obtained the highest number of votes. This provision stood in contrast to the principle governing the determination of elected DPRD members under Article 422 of Law Number 7 of 2017 on General Elections, which based individual electability on the highest number of votes obtained within an electoral district. This article examined this normative inconsistency and its implications for legal certainty and the quality of local democracy, focusing on two problems: first, the shift of DPRD leadership legitimacy from voters' will to the decisions of political party elites; second, the disparity in institutional support, including the recess-activity budget, between members who obtained the highest votes without holding leadership positions and those who held leadership positions through the party-seat mechanism, even though both bore an equally significant burden of constituent representation. Employing normative legal research through statutory and conceptual approaches, the article concluded that norm harmonization and a reconfiguration of the criteria for electing DPRD leadership were needed to align the mechanism with the principle of voter sovereignty and the proportionality of constituent representation.
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