Democratic disconnects in Indonesia
By Jacqueline Hicks
JAKARTA - As Indonesia's politicians and powerbrokers tentatively begin to
cobble together a new ruling coalition, there is a great deal of optimism both
here and abroad about the country's democratic future, much of it surrounding
the personality of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the incumbent president and
provisional winner of last week's polls.
The country's first directly elected president in 2004, Yudhoyono this year
became the only head of state in the post-Suharto reformasi era to serve
a full term of office. Now, he is the first president in the same era to be
democratically re-elected. So what do the historic polls say about the broader
state of Indonesian democracy?
Procedurally, Indonesia has shown that its institutions are capable of staging
a largely free and fair election. The National
Election Commission's (KPU) failure to register tens of millions of potential
voters was certainly a problem, but its roots are deeper than just the KPU's
competence.
Runner-up and former president Megawati Sukarnoputri has indicated she plans to
legally challenge the validity of the results, despite earning less than half
of the 60% Yudhoyono appears to have won. Incumbent Vice President Jusuf Kalla,
who appears to have placed a distant third at around 10%, could also mount a
challenge to the results.
Few have acknowledged that the same problem occurred in 2004. In November of
that year, the previous KPU was found guilty in court of not registering some
30 million potential voters. Then the political parties showed little interest
in the issue, unlike this year when it was ruthlessly exploited for political
gain.
The voter list problem cannot be separated from the wider difficulties the
Indonesian government has in registering its citizens, whether for tax
purposes, births and deaths or voting in elections, across the massive
archipelago. What counts is that, in the end, the results of both this year's
legislative and presidential elections were considered legitimate by most of
its participants as well as by the vast majority of the population - a notable
achievement in such an administratively complex country as Indonesia.
Looking back over the substance of the campaign, there was certainly no
shortage of the usual vague rhetoric and personality driven politicking. But
there was also evidence of substantially more policy detail compared with the
2004 campaigns. For instance, Megawati said she would set up health insurance
for students, abolish outsourcing contracts for workers and throw out an
education bill that allows for private investment into schools.
Yudhoyono also made some fairly specific promises, such as vows to extend
micro-credit facilities, to keep the present labor-friendly manpower law
intact, and to maintain oil subsidies and direct monthly government payments to
the poor. To be sure, sometimes there were crossed wires: while Yudhoyono's
campaign team claimed their candidate would not sell state assets, his running
mate and former central bank governor Boediono was giving speeches detailing
why privatization was a good policy idea.
Nevertheless, the usual characterization of these being personality-driven
political platforms completely without substance was a misleading analysis in
this year's legislative and presidential campaigns. Concrete differences
between candidates and parties did exist, one indication of a maturing
democratic process.
Mass electoral movement
However, the elections also highlighted a more fundamental weakness in
Indonesian democracy, one that may prove hard to shake. Sustaining a trend that
started in 2004, this year showed just how divorced political party elites have
become from their grassroots constituencies. Unlike in the past, elections are
no longer won or lost on the support of local party chapters or mass
organizations linked to political parties.
Sometimes called by their Dutch name onderbouws, these mass
organizations are traditionally religious, explicitly political or ostensibly
for other purposes such as youth organizations or farmers' associations.
Ex-president Suharto's party, Golkar, was founded on affiliation to many such
grassroots groups while outlawing similar ties to other parties.
It was these organizations, along with local branches of political parties,
that brought out the vote in 1999 and to a lesser but significant extent in
2004. This year their role was much reduced. Suhardi Suryadi, head of research
organization LP3ES, and Muhammad Qodari, director of pollsters Indo Barometer,
are two analysts who have detected just such a sea change in voting behavior.
"There are no longer any parties based on grassroots activities," they told a
seminar in June. "Onderbouws that are not supported in between elections
will not make much effort at election time."
Surveys have shown that Islamic parties cannot count on the support of mass
Islamic organizations to win them votes. Even when the leaders of Islamic
organizations set up political parties or publicly supported candidates, only a
tiny minority of their organizations' members actually voted the way they were
encouraged.
The relations between political party leaders and their local branch members
are also weakening. Heads of some parties heard criticism and dissent from
their own grassroots members for supporting particular presidential candidates.
The Partai Amanat Nasional (PAN), Partai Bintang Reformasi (PBR) and Partai
Persatuan Pembangunan (PPP) had particular internal problems, but there was
also a marked lack of enthusiasm from within former powerhouse Golkar for their
own candidate and chairman, Kalla, who was essentially chosen by the party
elite.
With such disjuncture between the top and bottom of political organizations, it
is the media which now connects the grassroots to the political elites. The
political advertising spent for each election is well-documented by Nielson
Media Research, which counts the party advertising in newspapers and on
television all over Indonesia before calculating the cost from the media
outlets' published rates.
Nielson's survey estimated that political parties spent 97 billion rupiahs
(US$9.6 million) for the 1999 elections and 494 billion rupiahs in 2004. The
total amount for the 2009 elections has not yet been made public, but with the
figure for January to March already standing at 1.06 trillion rupiahs, it is
likely to be many times what it was in 2004.
In some ways, the triumph of the media over political organizations is simply a
sign of the times, a more modern method of political communication. But its
effects can also be detrimental for a democracy, especially one that is only 10
years old. Without robust political organization at the grassroots level,
people are only heard in the political process at election time - anathema to
democracy in which the whole raison d'etre is to channel the aspirations
of ordinary people to those in power.
Grassroots political organizations are also essential to developing strong
party ideologies and identities - two components that are sorely missing from
Indonesian politics. All too often, political parties seem to represent the
interests of the party elite rather than their members, making for volatile
coalitions in parliament and difficulties in passing legislation.
Until the links between the grassroots and those in power are strengthened,
Yudhoyono may find the political stability he has been elected to provide
elusive and the much-cheered consolidation of Indonesian democracy more shallow
than deep.
Dr Jacqueline Hicks has written on Indonesian politics for newspapers,
journals and institutions over the past 10 years. She is currently in Jakarta
researching mass political organizations and may be reached at hicks.jacky@google.com
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