The Drama of 2024 Simultaneous Regional Elections and the Irony of Anies Baswedan

The stages of the simultaneous regional head elections (Pilkada) which will take place on November 27, 2024 have officially closed on August 29, 2024. Several surprises occurred during the pre-registration period, the registration period until the seconds before the closing of the registration of candidates for regional head candidates. For example, seven days before the registration for the 2024 Simultaneous Regional Elections opened, the Constitutional Court (MK) made a big breakthrough by issuing Decision Number 60/PUU-XXII/2024 which stipulated that the minimum registration requirements for regional head candidates submitted by political parties or a coalition of political parties were the same as the requirements for independent or individual candidacy.

The Constitutional Court also issued Decision Number 70/PUU-XXII/2024 regarding the age limit for candidates to register for the 2024 Regency / City / Provincial Elections. Through the Constitutional Court's decision, the political map of the 2024 Pilkada has changed 180 degrees. Political parties that were previously threatened with not being able to nominate their cadres or heroes due to not meeting the registration requirements must have 20 percent of legislative seats in the DPRD - with the Constitutional Court's decision, political parties or a combination of political parties, whether they have seats in parliament or non-parliament, can easily nominate cadres or whoever they will propose in the 2024 Pilkada contestation.

Source: ANTARA FOTO/Fakhri Hermansyah

The Constitutional Court's lowering of the threshold for regional head candidacy requirements to be equivalent to the requirements for individual candidacy - where the minimum requirement for a political party or a coalition of political parties to register a regional head candidate must have 6.5-10 percent of the valid vote in the legislative elections - closes the gap for a single candidate in a region due to the accumulation of a combination of political parties in one large political axis to support certain candidates and avoid certain candidates or political axes. The Constitutional Court's decision is undoubtedly a breath of fresh air for lower-middle political parties, especially for non-parliamentary political parties that do not have legislative seats.

They can nominate candidates in the 2024 elections as long as their valid votes or their combined valid votes meet the minimum nomination requirement of 6.5 percent. They can nominate their best candidates either independently or by cooperating with other political parties. The Constitutional Court's decision must be recognized as making Indonesia's democracy healthier even though previously the decision was threatened due to the fast movement of members of Commission II of the House of Representatives who wanted to revise the Pilkada Law without following the Constitutional Court's ruling. 

Another impact of the issuance of the Constitutional Court's decision above is the cancellation of the plan of Kaesang Pangarep, the youngest son of President Jokowi, who previously had the ambition to run as a candidate for deputy governor in the 2024 Central Java Regional Election. He could not run because of the minimum age limit of 30 years for Indonesian citizens who want to register as candidates for governor / deputy governor. He was not yet 30 years old when he registered for the Central Java Regional Election.

And among the hundreds of simultaneous elections that according to the schedule will be held on November 27, 2024, the DKI Jakarta elections have become sexy and interesting to discuss. The political magnetism in the 2024 Jakarta elections has captured the public's attention. The puzzle about who the candidate figures who will fight can only be answered ahead of registration even before the closing of registration. Even popular figures with the highest chances of being elected, such as the former governor of DKI Jakarta Anies Baswedan, were eventually thrown out of the map of competition in the 2024 DKI Jakarta Pilkada. Anies did not get a ticket of political party support to participate in the 2024 DKI Pilkada contestation so that his hopes of returning to lead DKI Jakarta in the next five years (2024-2029) must be buried deeply. Anies Baswedan, who was originally going to be supported by his three supporting parties in the 2024 presidential election (Nasdem, PKS, PKB), was apparently left alone. The three parties turned right and then turned their backs on Ridwan Kamil, who had previously pocketed the support of the political parties that are members of the Advanced Indonesia Coalition (KIM) consisting of the Gerindra Party, Democrat, Golkar, PAN, PPP, PSI Gelora, PBB. Prima, Garuda, Perindo, PKN. In the context of the 2024 Jakarta elections, PDI-P is the only parliamentary party that is not part of the KIM axis.

Prior to the issuance of Constitutional Court Decision No. 60/PUU-XXII/2024, PDI-P was not eligible to carry their candidates because their legislative seats in the DKI Jakarta DPRD were only 15 seats, while if following the old laws and KPU regulations, political parties must have a minimum of 22 DPRD seats or 20 percent of DPRD seats to carry a regional head candidate pair. With the Constitutional Court's decision to change the nomination requirements in the 2024 regional elections based on the acquisition of a minimum of 6.5 percent of the valid votes, PDI-P DKI Jakarta, which in the 2024 Legilative Elections obtained 850,196 votes/14.01 percent of the votes, can carry its candidates independently without having to form a coalition with other political parties that had previously formed a giant coalition to support the Ridwan Kamil-Suswono pair while hoping that PDI-P would not be able to participate in the 2024 DKI Jakarta elections.

The life of PDI-P's political card to participate in the 2024 DKI Jakarta elections then made Anies Baswedan approach. Anies, who had previously been abandoned by Nasdem, PKS, and PKB, made political maneuvers by approaching the party with a nationalist ideology. Exploration, political communication, and political safari by meeting PDI-P political figures and visiting the PDI-P DPP office have been done by Anies to get political support from PDI-P so that he can advance in the 2024 DKI Jakarta Pilkada. Unfortunately, until the last day of registration, Anies Baswedan never received a recommendation to be nominated as a candidate for DKI governor 2024-2029 from PDI-P.

PDI-P Chairperson Megawati Sukarnoputri instead appointed Pramono Anung-Rano Karno to run in the 2024 Jakarta elections. The question is, why Anies Baswedan, who according to the findings of the June 2024 Kompas R & D electoral survey, has an electability rate of 29.8 percent, aka the highest among other figures, but in the end, no political party is interested in nominating him in the 2024 DKI Jakarta Pilkada? The answer is that the political parties feel that they do not share the same vision with Anies. If seen from the perspective of PDI-P, Megawati's party declined to nominate Anies because ideologically they felt there was no match with Anies as well as past factors such as the precedent of the 2017 DKI Pilkada experience where at that time the Ahok-Djarot pair carried by PDI-P was defeated by Anies-Sandi with all its controversies.

The position of Anies, who is not a PDI-P cadre and then suddenly comes close to being supported to advance in the DKI Jakarta political contestation, according to common sense logic, will certainly surprise PDI-P, especially for Megawati, the Chairperson, who at an open meeting said that she was surprised to receive pressure for PDI-P to support Anies in the 2024 DKI Pilkada. Even so, Megawati threw the condition that PDI-P is open to the possibility of supporting Anies if Anies is willing to obey what is the ideology and line of political struggle of PDI-P. Unfortunately, until the final seconds of registration, neither Anies nor PDI-P showed any common ground or mutual consensus so that in the end PDI-P decided to carry its own cadre, Pramono-Rano, to be nominated in the 2024 DKI Jakarta Pilkada.

Meanwhile, from the perspective of the Advanced Indonesia Coalition (KIM), they are reluctant to support Anies Baswedan because their political idealism is like oil and water, difficult to reconcile. Anies' idealism, which is consistent with the grand narrative of change and is eager to massively overhaul the country's political policies that have been running, contradicts the idealism and political work being carried out by the current government. It is not surprising that the coalition parties that are members of the KIM and are proxies of the government are trying hard to make the DKI Jakarta Pilkada without Anies' participation by, for example, pulling the three political parties supporting Anies in the 2024 Presidential Election to become part of the KIM to succeed the candidacy of Ridwan Kamil-Suswono as candidates for governor-vice governor of DKI Jakarta 2024-2029. They feel more comfortable working with a figure who is considered to have the same political vision in implementing the national development agenda in the coming years rather than working with someone who has an opposing political vision.