0 Few interested in running in Bali’s gubernatorial race

Bali’s upcoming gubernatorial election will be a quiet one, as only a few candidates are likely to run for the post, a political analyst has said. “The governor’s post is no longer attractive,” I Dewa Gede Palguna, a legal expert from Udayana University, said during a discussion in Denpasar on Friday. Under the nation’s system of regional autonomy, Palguna said, the real authority was with mayors and regents, and not with provincial governors. 

“A governor is only acting as a coordinator, with less power than in previous period, especially during the centralized government system of the New Order,” he said. However, governors were usually blamed when things went wrong, despite their diminished authority, he said. “It is the governor that bears the burden when a regent does something unfavorable,” he said. Gubernatorial positions were only seen as prestigious political jobs, nothing more, he added. 

“People are getting more and more rational, with smarter political and financial calculations. It will be too expensive for someone to get to such a position through a draining and financially consuming election process,” Palguna said. With candidate registration for the election only a few days away, only incumbent Governor Made Mangku Pastika has publicly declared his readiness to run. The next gubernatorial election, slated for May, will not have independent candidates, since registration for independents with the Regional Election Commission (KPUD) closed in December. 

The reelection bid of Pastika, who was endorsed by the Indonesia Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) in 2008, has received the support from a coalition of parties comprised of the Golkar Party, the Democratic Party, the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra), the People’s Conscience Party (Hanura) and the National Mandate Party (PAN). Palguna said that the PDI-P, which has not yet announced its candidate, has failed to recruit a suitable internal candidate. 

“A political party should not be looking for a candidate outside the organization. Why? A political party is supposed to nurture their own candidates as leaders.” However, Palguna said that political system in Indonesia faced crucial problems, as many parties were established without strong grassroots membership. “A political party is supposed to be formed once they have an adequate number of members. But in Indonesia, a party can be formed first, then they later recruit people as their cadres,” he said Gede Sumarjaya Linggih, Golkar’s deputy-secretary-general, denied that the party’s decision to support Pastika showed that Golkar did not have any internal candidates. “We are thinking about how to endorse a figure that has a high electability. Most Balinese people really want him,” Sumarjaya Linggih said.

source : bali daily