JakartaPost-Aug 8
With the early stages of the 2024 general elections underway, the creation of three new provinces in Papua still left plenty of legal holes to fill as policymakers have only until mid-October to decide how the elections will be run in the new provinces. In July, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo officially signed a controversial legislation that split the provinces of Papua and West Papua into five new administrations, via the creation of South Papua Province, Central Papua Province and the Papua Central Highlands Province. The split came after the House of Representatives, which is dominated by pro-government parties, fast-tracked the deliberation of the bills and passed them into laws in late-June, to pave ways for local voters to elect for the first time the new provinces’ regional leaders and legislative representatives in the 2024 general elections. Government officials have described the decision as an effort to accelerate the development of the outlying region, which has long lagged behind the other, more densely populated islands. Critics, however, feared that doing so would give the central government more power over the resource-rich region. The split will inevitably set forth a redrawing of electoral districts and reallocation of legislative seats for the new provinces in Papua, a requirement that election watchdogs called the most complex and taxing consequence for the organizing of upcoming polls in the country’s easternmost region. Such requirements are stipulated in a transitional provision in the new laws, which states that these changes are “to be regulated in the Law on the General Elections”, hence a revision to the General Elections Law is needed. Read more at: https://www.thejakartapost.com/paper/2022/08/07/legal-hurdles-found-in-redrawing-of-papuas-electoral-districts.html.
