Jakarta (ANTARA News) - President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said on Wednesday direct elections are the best way to elect governors, district heads and mayors despite a number of shortcomings.

Speaking at a limited cabinet meeting with the Presidential Advisory Council (Wantimpress) at the presidential office here, the President admitted that direct regional head elections still had many negative impacts.

But this did not mean that the direct elections must be debated again whether or not they were better than indirect elections, he said.

"Some time ago we must choose whether public officials would be elected directly or indirectly. And the best choice was direct elections," he said.

He said direct elections were better than indirect elections on the ground constituents could know well candidates. Whoever won the direct elections would get mandates from the people who had elected them, he added.

"In practice, we realize there are many excesses including money politics and high political cost which we must actually avoid," he said.

In addition, direct elections very often could not make a distinction between popularity and capacity, he said.

"Yet there is no need to change direct elections into indirect elections. But we must overcome the negative excesses, prevent them as far as we can so as not to cause complication and new problem that actually must not happen," he said.

For this part, the president asked the council to make a study of how to deal with the negative impact of the direct regional head elections. (*)

Editor: B Kunto Wibisono
COPYRIGHT © 2012

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