Indonesia’s Regional Elections (Pilkada) as Democracy’s Last Line of Defence

Without warning or prior public debate, in late December 2025, the chairs or executive chairs of four government coalition parties — the president’s Gerindra, Golkar, the National Awakening Party (PKB), and the National Mandate Party (PAN) — declared their support for abolishing direct local elections (also called “regional head elections”, or pilkada). Their plan was to replace pilkada with the indirect selection of regional heads through Indonesia’s local legislatures (DPRD). Soon after, the National Democrats (NasDem) and the party vehicle of former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his son, Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono, the Democratic Party (DP), also joined the initiative. This group does not formally include the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), which has not taken a firm position but would likely find it difficult to resist if the president were to request its support, since PKS is also part of President Prabowo Subianto’s ‘grand coalition’.

Indonesia’s fifth president Megawati Sukarnoputri’s Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) stands as the only party that has clearly and consistently rejected the abolition of direct local elections.

Prabowo has for years expressed his opposition to direct local elections, arguing that they are costly and inefficient. In 2014, he and his ‘Red-and-White’ (Merah-Putih) Coalition succeeded in passing legislation to abolish pilkada. However, it caused a barrage of public protests and widespread criticism; the scale of public backlash ultimately compelled then-president Yudhoyono to issue an emergency regulation in lieu of law (Perppu) to reverse the move and reinstate direct elections.

A recent Tempo video panel suggested that Prabowo’s opposition to pilkada is driven by additional political considerations, namely, that the system has produced many regional heads who are not politically aligned with the ruling president. By shifting the selection of regional leaders to the DPRD, Prabowo’s coalition, which already controls seven of the eight parties in parliament, would be well positioned to dominate the appointments of regional heads. According to this account, Gerindra’s leadership conveyed this plan to other parties, framing it as a directive. Two DP elites told the author that their party leaders had received direct calls from a presidential aide urging them to adhere to the agreement.     

To what extent do these elite preferences reflect public opinion? How many citizens support indirect elections or favour direct elections?

A nationally representative face-to-face survey by Indikator Politik in early August 2025 showed extraordinarily high public support for direct local elections. The survey used face-to-face interviews with 1,220 respondents selected through stratified, multi-stage probability sampling across Indonesia’s 38 provinces. The sample closely reflects the adult Indonesian population in age, gender, region, urban–rural residence, religion and ethnicity, based on the 2020 census. Some 94.2 per cent of respondents wanted the people to directly elect district heads and mayors; only 4.4 per cent preferred selection through the DPRD. Similarly, 94.4 per cent wanted governors to be elected directly, with 4.5 per cent supporting indirect elections. From surveys by three different polling outlets over time, the data from different samples show that this support has been consistent over time (Figure 1).

What is striking is the significant disconnect between elite preferences and their constituents. The August 2025 Indikator survey asked respondents which political party they would vote for if a legislative election were held (at the time of the survey), and then cross-tabulated these responses with their preferences regarding pilkada.  Supporters of all major parties exhibited a uniform stance, strongly in favour of direct local elections, even among Gerindra’s voter base.

Indonesians’ support for direct elections is clearly multi-partisan, cutting across party and presidential preferences. Across all voter groups, including Prabowo supporters, an overwhelming majority favoured direct local elections (Table 2). If Indonesian society is theoretically divided into just two polling groups, however, comprising the elites and the public, the contrast is stark: elites lean toward abolishing pilkada, while mass public opinion is strongly and consistently in favour of maintaining them.

The extraordinarily high and consistent level of public support for pilkada suggests that Indonesians perceive their right to choose local leaders as democracy’s last line of defence. Many citizens feel that elites have already curtailed most of their political and economic rights, leaving them one remaining right: the ability to directly elect their leaders. If this right were also taken away, public resistance would be substantial. This was evident in 2014, as mentioned earlier. An abolition of pilkada now would signal a further weakening of democratic institutions established during the Reformasi (post-1998) era, reinforcing a broader pattern of democratic regression.

The Indonesian public remains unconvinced by elite arguments that direct local elections should be abolished due to their high costs. An LSI survey conducted in November 2014 found that although 45.5 per cent of respondents acknowledged that direct local elections were expensive, 66.8 per cent preferred to retain them, while only 9 per cent believed that elections were too costly and should therefore be replaced by indirect selection through the DPRD. This indicates that most citizens prioritise the right to directly elect leaders over costs.

What is striking is the significant disconnect between elite preferences and those of their constituents.

Another argument advanced by proponents of abolishing pilkada is that direct local elections encourage vote-buying, which typically draws on earlier studies showing permissive public attitudes toward money politics. However, Indonesians remain sceptical that shifting to indirect elections would actually reduce vote-buying: LSI found that 52.3 per cent of respondents did not believe that indirect elections through the DPRD would curb money politics (28.9 per cent believed that they would be effective).

As can be expected, the plan to abolish pilkada has encountered strong public resistance. Civil society groups and the public have voiced widespread opposition. A December 2025 Kompas survey showed that 77.3 per cent of 510 respondents from across the country continue to support direct local elections, while only 5.6 per cent favour selecting regional heads through their DPRDs while a further 15.2 per cent view the two systems as equivalent.

Concerned that such strong public opposition could trigger political instability and further erode the popularity of Prabowo’s administration, the government and the DPR have decided to postpone their plan to abolish pilkada. This, however, should not be interpreted as an abandonment of the proposal but as a strategic decision to wait for a more politically conducive moment.

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