“The price adjustment was made due to the strengthening of the rupiah against the US dollar,” Pertamina’s spokesman Basuki Trikora Putra said.

I’m no economist but even a primary school student should be able to spot the obvious problem with that statement. If the Rupiah is strengthening it should take less of them to buy something with a dollar price base.

Not mentioned is the near doubling of crude oil prices since the government’s last reduction in price for the subsidized fuels. With an election coming up it is not time for the incumbent to raise the prices with the precedent set by the previous incumbent, Megawati.

Simple conclusion, either the spokesman is lying or he is stupid. For a national newspaper to let that sort of thing slip by unquestioned is also indicative of either collusion or incompetence by the press.

Pertamina raises non-subsidized fuels prices | The Jakarta Post

Only nine parties managed to get more than the 2.5 percent electoral threshold which means that the rest either have to disband the party or merge with other parties to achieve the threshold. Of course the next elections will again have a large number of parties because it is profitable to do so. It would be a good idea if the KPU made a rule whereby those party officials who already failed in one election were not allowed to hold similar positions in a new party but I would not try holding my breath until that happens.

With ballot papers sometimes larger than broadsheet newspapers it will take some time before the final tally can be made as simply unfolding and refolding the paper takes a considerable amount of time. The reason that the papers are so large is that there were so many parties and each party fielded as many candidates as possible so that the campaign funds would be easier to raise. In at least one district the party funds were generally less than two hundred dollars per party but many of the candidates contributed from their own pockets in the hope of securing themselves a seat.

One of the weird things about the way that seats are allocated is that a party can get less than one percent of the vote in every district and still get seats in the house. This is, ostensibly, to ensure that all of the people are represented in the government. This is a noble intention but does not work out in practice as those elected generally do not represent anything but their own interests.

A preferential voting system with seats allocated by district would do much to ensure that the people knew who was supposed to be representing them and had somebody they could contact with their aspirations and grievances. The current system puts the political parties above the voters which is not how a healthy democracy works.