THE GENERAL ELECTION FOR THE MAYOR OF CITY OF DENPASAR, COVID-19 AND THE BENEFIT OF DEMOCRACY

THE GENERAL ELECTION FOR THE MAYOR OF THE CITY OF DENPASAR, COVID-19 AND THE BENEFIT OF DEMOCRACY[1]

IB Wyasa Putra[2]

The term 'democracy' has been introduced for the first time by Cleisthenes in the 5 B.C. in the City State of Greek. It has been opposed to the term aristocracy, absolute monarch and oligarch. Democracy means governmental power in the hand of the people, aristocracy means the governmental power in the hand of elites, absolute monarch means oligarch mean the governmental power in the hand of few individuals. It may also in more extreme be contradictory with term dictatorship or tyranny.        

The term democracy has been risen up in the 16 AD in France as a term for representing the ideal type of people expectation regarding a governmental system valued as a just system. The degree of democracy of a governmental system has mostly been measured under four components of democracy, i.e.: (1) the replacement of a government leader under a general election which shall be just and fair; (2) the degree of people participation in the governmental system and the process; (3) the degree of Human Rights protection; (4) the Rule of Law.

Democracy has been absorbed into the Indonesian Governmental System. It has been posed as the fourth component of the Indonesian State Ideology (the Pancasila) and has been implemented through Act and regulations, such as: the Indonesian State Constitution of 1945 (Article 6A regarding direct Presidential Public Election), and The State Emergency Act Number 2 of 2020 Concerning on All at One General Election (the Governmental Regulation of Emergency Act Number 2 of 2020 Regarding The Third Change of Act Number 1 of 2015 Concerning The Government Regulation on State Emergency Act Number 1 of 2014 Concerning on Election of Governor, Regent, and Mayor to Become an Act).

The most important aspect of democracy is the quality of democracy. Under whatever the Acts it is conducted, whenever it is carried out, in whatever situation of the state it is conducted, the most important thing of the general election as a measurement instrument of the quality of democracy is the quality of the general election achievement which determines by five main stakeholders: (1) the quality of the candidate of the leader; (2) the degree of the maturity of the supporting political party of the candidate; (3) the degree of knowledge and consciousness of the peoples the electors; (4) the degree of the owrk of the Public Election Committee; and (5) the degree of readiness of budget and bureaucracy of teh government as the main supporter of the system. The degree of quality of achevement of the general election would fully determine by the works and achievement of all stakeholders.

The conduct of the public election for the Mayor in the time of pandemic may not a serious issue or a big challenge for the Government, the people, the Political Parties, and the Committee of election of Denpasar, even though if in a certain situation the election should be performed in online. The pandemic has make the people of Denpasar use with online media and so the Local Governement of Denpasar has been recognized widely in Indonesia as a pioneer of Government providing onlne public services. Therefore, there would be one more thing left, it is education for all parties involved with regard to the role of each of stakeholder in the use of democracy and general election for developing an accountable governemntal system would determine the successfulness of the election as such successfulness my not determined by the number of the visiting of the people, but the quality of the leader resulted from the election. 

there are a lot more thing need to be discussed with regard to the degree of the quality of the Candidate that should be choosen, the supporting political parties, the degree of the knowledge of the people the elctor, the degree of the works of the Committee, and the degree of the readiness of budget and the bureaucracy. However, the limitation of the time would stop us here.