Legal Literacy - The discourse on changing the mechanism for electing regional heads from direct to indirect through the Regional People's Representative Council (DPRD) has been going on for a long time. Even in 2014, the House of Representatives of the Republic of Indonesia (DPR RI) succeeded in ratifying Law No. 22 of 2014 concerning the Election of Governors, Regents and Mayors which replaced the process of electing regional heads through the DPRD. However, the law was eventually revoked by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) through the issuance of Government Regulation in Lieu of Law (Perppu) No. 1 of 2014 concerning the Election of Governors, Regents and Mayors. The factions that supported the holding of indirect regional elections at that time included Golkar, PAN, PKS, Gerindra and PPP. Meanwhile, three other parties, namely PDI-P, Hanura and PKB, refused and the Democrats supported the implementation of direct regional elections by offering ten options for improvement.

Resurfacing

Under the leadership of President Prabowo Subianto, the issue of regional head elections through the DPRD has resurfaced. In fact, the proposal was offered directly by Prabowo on several occasions. At the Golkar party's anniversary, for example, Prabowo explicitly stated that regional head elections through the DPRD were more efficient and cheaper without regard to the constitutional impact of revoking the right to vote from the people as constituents. The statement of the Coordinating Minister for Legal Affairs, Human Rights, Immigration and Corrections, Yusril Ihza Mahendra, also supported the effort to change this by saying that regional head elections through the DPRD were constitutionally valid by referring to the fourth paragraph of the Preamble to the 1945 Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia, which reads, “Sovereignty of the people which is led by the inner wisdom in deliberation/representation”. Thus, according to Yusril, whether regional elections are held directly or indirectly, they still meet the constitutional objects regulated in the state constitution. Seeing the current political conditions in the government coalition, revising the Regional Election Law by replacing regional head elections through the DPRD will be very easy because the coalition in parliament is fully controlled by the government's supporting parties. Therefore, this issue easily evaporates to the public because there are almost no political obstacles in parliament, while the political parties that are in opposition are very weak.