Promoting peace, human rights and democracy in Indonesia
111 Northwood Road, Thornton Heath, Surrey, CR7 8HW
Tel: +44 (0)20 8771 2904/+44 (0)1420 80153 Fax: +44 (0)20 8653 0322
Email: tapol@gn.apc.org
|
Promoting peace, human rights and democracy in Indonesia |
| Home | Elections | News | Press | Reports | Bulletin | Publications | About | Links |
Contents:
Opposition a Must [17 August]
It would be regrettable if the signs are to be believed: the winners of the election trying to form a government by embracing the major defeated parties. A strong government is a good thing,
but involving all the parties, by sharing power, is less than ideal. There would be an important missing role in the governance of a democratic nation: a true opposition. [full story…]
NGO statement on law and human rights agenda for the elected government [5 August]
Highlighting several law and human rights issues to be addressed in early policy initiatives by the new administration. [full statement…]
JG editorial: The Court Has Spoken; Now Let’s All Move On [13 August]
First, voters handed President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his running mate Boediono a convincing victory in the presidential election with about 60 percent of the vote, confirming Yudhoyono as the country’s leading political figure. Wednesday’s ruling by the Constitutional Court, rejecting the claims of electoral fraud filed by the losers in the presidential election, now removes the last cloud of uncertainty over Yudhoyono’s next term. [full story…]
Also: Constitutional Court Rejects Presidential Election Appeal [13 August] [full story…]
JP editorial: No re-runs, thank God [13 August] [full story…]
Why did the voters vote? [14 August]
The presidential election has come and gone, legal challenges notwithstanding. However it remains interesting to examine the behavior of Muslim voters during the election. [full story…]
JP editorial: Fire the KPU [21 August]
Indonesia's first direct presidential election in 2004 won plaudits from all sides, including the international community. Sadly, this has not been the case with the 2009 election. The Constitutional Court has said that the General Elections Commission (KPU) has been less than professional. Unlike the 2004 KPU, the current commission has come under fire from various parties for its poor handling of the elections. There have been calls to bring the seven KPU members, whose term will end in 2013, to step down and stand trial. [full story…]
also: KPU can be `fired for incompetence' [21 August] [full story…]
Incompetent polling body to blame for fraud: Inquiry [27 August [full story…]
DPD Calls For Constitutional Amendments to Increase Powers [20 August]
The Regional Representatives Council demanded on Wednesday a fifth amendment to the Constitution to give equal authority for the council in guarding the country’s democratic system. The council, known as the DPD, has been struggling for years to have a stronger legal basis so that it can have similar authority to the House of Representatives, or DPR. [full story…]
Women Activists Draw Lessons from Failed Election Bids [20 August]
Four months since Indonesia's legislative elections, Ditah Indah Sari still grapples with her unsuccessful foray into electoral politics. ”We are curious why we did not get elected,” she said. As a labour activist of more than 15 years, Dita thought she had all what it took to win a seat in the House of Representatives: extensive network, wide support base, and full backing from her party, Reformed Crescent Party. Soon after the April 9 national elections, Dita, 38, lost miserably that she did not bother to know how many votes she had garnered. [full story…]
JP editorial: SBY's Dream Team [24 August]
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono today faces a historic opportunity of creating a legacy for himself, following his recent re-election for a second five-year term in office beginning October 20. Yudhoyono and running mate Boediono will need to assemble the best team to put this vision of Indonesia into reality. They have literally around 240 million people to choose from to create this Dream Team, and less than two months to go through the selection. [full story…]
Murder Rap Slows Suharto's Rising Son [25 August]
Under former dictator Suharto, the military linked Golkar party dominated Indonesian politics for decades. Now, in a more democratic era, the deceased Suharto's controversial son, Hutomo Mandala Putri, popularly known as Tommy, has to the surprise of many announced his intention to take over the party's reins. [full story…]
Also: Tommy’s nomination [25 August] [full story…]
The Economist: More of the same, please - A ringing endorsement from the voters [12 September]
ANY young democracy must clear two big hurdles. It must undergo a peaceful transition from a leader to an opponent, and it must see an incumbent win an election without credible cries of foul. Indonesia has now crossed both barriers. In its first direct presidential election in 2004, the incumbent, Megawati Sukarnoputri, lost to Mr Yudhoyono. Miss Megawati, daughter of
Indonesia’s founding hero and leader of a tame opposition under Suharto, went into a sulk and boycotted Mr Yudhoyono’s swearing-in. But power was handed over smoothly enough. [full story…]
Indonesian Court Again Declines to Let Independents to Run for President [15 September]
The Constitutional Court on Monday rejected for the third time a demand to change the Election Law to allow independent presidential candidates to run. The court said the applicant’s demand to overturn some articles in the 2003 election law was unconstitutional. [full story…]
Tempo Magazine
No. 50/IX
August 11-17, 2009
Editorial
The Golkar Party and the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle both seem to be cozying up to the national leadership. Democracy would be weak without an opposition.
IT would be regrettable if the signs are to be believed: the winners of the election trying to form a government by embracing the major defeated parties. A strong government is a good thing, but involving all the parties, by sharing power, is less than ideal. There would be an important missing role in the governance of a democratic nation: a true opposition.
It is true that our presidential system does not recognize an opposition—as in parliamentary democracies—but an opposition group outside the government is still necessary to produce
healthy competition. Indications that the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and the Golkar Party are cozying up to the winning party in order to form a power cartel, are worrying
because this could preclude this healthy competition.
Signs of this dilemma within the Golkar Party can be seen in the increasingly heated race for the chairmanship. The strongest candidate is a man close to the national leadership. And in the
PDI-P, there are the “maneuvers” of Advisory Council Chairman, Taufiq Kiemas.
These two parties were defeated in the legislative election last April, but their votes cannot be ignored. In the House of Representatives (DPR), with the seats they won as a result of their votes, they could be a balancing force, especially if they were joined by the smaller parties. They have the potential to become a rival to the government that should not be underestimated.
Perhaps the meaning of opposition here has already been too reduced, unlike the words of an 18th century British politician, who said that the role of the opposition was to “propose nothing, oppose everything and overthrow the government.” But an opposition must carry out its commitment to the people who voted for it—as must the parties who won and are in power. The role of an opposition in a democracy is as important as that of the government, like two sides of the same coin.
As such, the opposition has at least three roles: as the voice of the people who do not have representatives in the government, as an alternative to the government and as the official opposition. As an alternative, the opposition must continually stress the fact that there are people more competent than the government in power. And as the official opposition, its role is to criticize the government with the aim of gathering enough support to win its own chances at achieving power.
The final role often creates negative perceptions about the opposition, but this is merely a result of the failure of the opposition to enlighten the public with a clear, definite and convincing analysis of the weaknesses and possible shortcomings of the government. Such an opposition does not only fail to produce checks and balances, but also easily falls into the trap of committing abuse of power in the interests of individuals and specific groups.
History shows that democracy comes to an end when there is no critical oversight. To be sure, we should not shy away from this certainty. Whatever happens, there must be an opposition if we still believe in democracy. This should be a noble calling for both the PDI-P and Golkar parties.
----------------------------------------
LAW AND HUMAN RIGHTS AGENDA OF THE ELECTED GOVERNMENT 2009
On 25th July 2009, the national general election council (GEC) had declared Indonesia had a new elected president for the next five years. This occurred not long after elected parliament member who will seat on the legislative bodies period 2009-2014.
Eventhough disputes is still on air, even the inter presidential/vice presidential candidates fued upon the GEC announcement, we as the representatives of the civil society wants to gave meaning towards the result with a positive spirit, including when the dispute between candidates post GEC announcement had arrived to the Supreme court and Constitusional Court jurisdiction. We respects the ongoing legal process.
We pledge ourself to delivered our aspiration long predates for two reason :1) The people of Indonesia had trusted their future to the elected government for the next five years. 2) During the campaign period every candidate had delivered their promises of strategic or operational policy that could be implemented promptly. Thus we place ourself as the guardiaon of the public trusts given. We realize not all campaign promises can be implemented. Despites of the foundation of the promises can be reflected from the first 100 days. Within that period no real measures done that could lead to optimism, than the governance will run in a mediocre manner.
In this opportunity we would like to highlights several policy need to be taken and implemented by the new government as a foundation if they want to build people spirit and optimism of a newly elected President and the new cabinet. Therefore the agenda of the elected President and legislators to formulates early policy to tackle several major issues in terms of rule of law and Human Rights, namely;
First, end the hot mud tragedy in Porong, Sidoarjo, caused by PT Lapindo operational defaults. The measures we recommend is that the government along with the law enforcer to confiscate Lapindo’s assets to ensure the reparation and fulfillment of the Lapindo victims especially for woman and children that has been forgotten through all this time, and conduct a prompt mobilization to close the spurs. This should tackle PT Lapindo’s obligation to pay the entire lands and houses of the victims.
Second, Protection of migrant worker. Elected President to instruct the Minister of Workforce to seriously protects the worker, especially they whose sent abroad. The related minister must conduct field supervisions to handle violence cases and violations of migrant workers rights. In line with this, Ambassadors in the destination country of the migrant workers could be instructed to form a holistic services to protect the migrant workers rights, including providing an adequate shelter facility;
Third, publicly announce their commitment to follow up the recommendations of past Human Rights violations reports published by the Komnas HAM, Komnas Perempuan or any other independent mechanism of Human Rights enforcement that was set up by the state. Afterwards to take a strong operational measure upon the completion of those past Human Rights violations cases. For Human Rights trial, the President as the head of the state needs to issued a Presidential decision on establishment of Ad Hoc Human Rights trial to scrutinizes every cases that had been delivered to the Attorney General by the Komnas HAM, they are 1) Tragedy TSS (dossier 2002); 2) Tragedy May (dossier 2003); 3) Tragedy Wamena and Wasior (dossier 2004); 4) Tragedy of the disappeared and involuntary disappearance (dossier 2007); 5) Tragedy of Talangsari (dossier 2008). The Attorney General always declined with reason there are no Ad Hoc Human Rights trial established to handle the cases. If the President issued a presidential regulations on the establishment of Ad Hoc Human Rights trial, thus there will be no more reason for the GA to turn down the cases. Or the President to point a new GA for the next cabinet. For reconciliation, the President has to immediately finish the new Bill on KKR so the measures taken for unvealing the truth and reconciliation can be taken and bring justice for the victims and family and became a foundation of Aceh and Papua reintegrations. Victims and their family had suffer too long due to the absence of regulation on reconciliation after the Constitution Court cancelled it last 2007.As the head of state, calls the Indonesian to make past experience, including Human Rights violations as a milestones in building a dignified, just and prosperous Indonesia by ensuring it would not repeated;
Fourth, in order to ends above problems, the elected president had to complete the Legal Aid Bills as a form of fulfilling states obligation towards providing legal aid for all Indonesians, especially those who are unfortunate. This measures depends on the operational policy which are allocation free legal aid budget in the state budget (APBN) and initiating the bills to be discussed by the DPR RI accompanied by the presidential mandate to discussed it.
Fifth, President must issued presidential regulation on the Agrarian Reform National Commite (KNKPA) which mandates is to prepared legal and institutional foundation on agrarian reform implementation and forming an institution to carry out the agrarian reform. Strategic measures need to be done is to implement the agrarian reform mandates by the TAP MPR No. IX annum 2001on the Agrarian Reform and management of natural resources that gave access and controls of the natural resources to the people, including woman and ensure food sovereignity.
Sixth, President to form a team to review the policy of natural resource exploration and places community safety as a primary terms. There are a lot of permission on HPH, HTI, mining, gas and oil exploration, commercial fishery and massive scale plantation issued by the central government or areas that begets disputes between the community, the corporation and the government, even leads to social conflicts and Human Rights violations. Up to 2008, there are 576 conflict on palm oil plantation. The inclination leads ot fulfilling foreign needs instead of the local needs. Worse, it even deepened poverty, lost of jobs, home and property also a degradation of surroundings livelihood quality.
Seventh, protection of woman and children rights. Publishing a presidential regulations on permanently institutionalizing the gender mainstreaming in education workgroups up to the regencies levels; woman are vulnerable for discrimination and need affirmative action by the elected Indonesian President, based on the data and accurate research through active participation process, those social groups are poor woman (urban and rural), woman migrant worker, minority woman (religion, ethnicity and sexual), indigenous woman, and diffable woman. The elected President as the head of state with elected legislators of DPR RI must withdrawn regulation and policy that discriminates the constitutional rights of the citizen especially the minority, woman and the vulnerable.This should be kept in mind to bring justice and balance between carrying constitutional mandate, preserving national law integrity and respecting the nations diversity;
Eight, Corruption eradication. Elected President and DPR to published a Regulation substituting a Bill on Corruption Criminal Offences (Tipikor) trial because we are worried until the end of the DPR 2004-2009 period is over, the Tipikor trials bill could not be passed. President must audit the general attorneys bad performance in eradicating corruptions as shown in the case of BLBI and Asian Agri, also to finish the revision of the Tipikor bills draft in line with the United Nations Conventions against Corruption and reaffirms the existence of KPK institution to be preserved, without depriving their authorities. Paralelly, the President must have a clear target upon which department that the bureaucracy need to bureaucracy so it can be more efficient and effective in serving the public and deter corruption criminal offences.
Hereby the statement delivered.
Jakarta, 5th August 2009
ELSAM-ICW-JATAM-KONTRAS-KPA-LBH APIK-PBHI-WALHI-YLBHI
---------------------------------------
The Court Has Spoken; Now Let’s All Move On
The Jakarta Globe
August 13, 2009
Editorial
The people spoke on July 8. The Constitutional Court spoke on Wednesday.
First, voters handed President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his running mate Boediono a convincing victory in the presidential election with about 60 percent of the vote, enough to guarantee
a one-round victory. On top of the strong showing by his Democratic Party in the April legislative elections, the results confirmed Yudhoyono as the country’s leading political figure.
Wednesday’s ruling by the Constitutional Court, rejecting the claims of electoral fraud filed by the losers in the presidential election, now removes the last cloud of uncertainty over Yudhoyono’s next term. There was “no massive violation in the registration of eligible voters,” the court’s president said.
We know that there were problems with the handling of the voters list by the General Elections Commission (KPU) for both polls, but the court found that the irregularities were not enough to overturn the results.
We are certain that former President Megawati Sukarnoputri, who finished second with 27 percent of the vote, and outgoing Vice President Jusuf Kalla, who earned just 12 percent, acted reasonably and with good faith in their claims that as many as 28 million names were incorrectly recorded on the list. That amount of votes could have swung the election, they said, and led to a second round. They were well within their rights to try to convince the court to act in their favor.
The process of airing the drawn out grievances, first in the media, then in court, was at times tedious and time consuming. But in a democracy it is important that all candidates be able to exhaust any legal avenues to challenge an election result. Only through such a system of checks and balances can we be assured that the people’s will is fairly expressed. In response to the grievances, though, it is also important that the KPU take concrete steps to remedy any future problems with the voters list and therefore avoid raising clouds of doubt over something as vital as the electoral process.
Now that the court has said there is not enough evidence to back up their allegations, however, we trust that both losing candidates and their supporters will join the rest of the nation in wishing the president well during his second term. There is no other alternative.
With the process now at an end, the future well-being of the country requires that the losers accept the results and move forward — as either avid opponents of the government or tactical allies. We are facing a renewed terrorist threat, economic uncertainty and other challenges ranging from climate change to natural disasters and epidemics of disease. We can meet these challenges if we are united in our desire to build a strong and secure country and if we remain principled in our political disagreements.
Wednesday’s ruling is an opportunity to heal divisions and put the nation on a course for progress over the next five years.
----------------------------
Constitutional Court Rejects Presidential Election Appeal
The Jakarta Globe
August 13, 2009
Camelia Pasandaran
The Constitutional Court has rejected two losing candidates’ demands for a new presidential election, saying the candidates could not prove significant irregularities in the August 8 vote.
“We reject all the plaintiffs’ demands,” said Constitutional Court Chairman Mahfud MD.
Former President Megawati Sukarnoputri and sitting Vice President Jusuf Kalla complained to the court after losing the election in one round to incumbent President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. They pointed to problems such as irregularities in the official voter list and voter information banners that some viewed as biased.
These problems, Mahfud said, “though some of them proven, could not be claimed as structural, systematic and massive.
“The election was not flawed by law,” he concluded.
“We feel relieved with the court decision,” said KPU member Andi Nurpati. “All the allegations were unproven because all stages of the election were carried out according to correct procedures.”
While the Election Supervisory Board (Bawaslu) has joined the chorus of KPU critics, its chairman, Nur Hidayat Sardini, said he agreed with the court decision.
“Though there were many violations during the election, we have to think that they are not massive and systematic as the plaintiffs claimed,” said Nur.
Megawati's campaign argued there were 28 million fictitious voters on the list; Kalla’s said it had found 25 million.
Kalla’s team also claimed that a reduction in the number of polling statons may have depressed voter turnout, possibly costing Kalla 24 million votes.
The Vice President's team said it would not press any further legal action, though it is disappointed with the outcome of the case.
“The Constitutional Court verdict is final and binding,” said Kalla campaign representative Chairuman Harahap. “In country of laws, we have no other option but to accept the result. We were ready to win, and we are also ready to lose.”
A representative of Megawati’s team said they accepted the outcome but had not yet decided whether to pursue further legal claims.
---------------------------------------------
Editorial: No re-runs, thank God
The Jakarta Post
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Perhaps it is no exaggeration to say most Indonesians felt relieved Wednesday to hear news of the Constitutional Court verdict — binding and final — rejecting the lawsuits of the two losers in the July 8 presidential election.
All the petty squabbling over the results of the election ended Wednesday when the court announced its verdict, upholding the General Elections Commission’s (KPU) earlier decision to name Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono the winner of the July 8 election.
“While it can be proven in court that there were cases of election violations, there is not enough evidence to support the allegations that those violations were massive and systematic — a prerequisite to declare the election invalid,” Constitutional Court chief Moh. Mahfud M.D. said as he read the verdict.
The verdict nullified earlier claims made by the legal team of presidential candidate Megawati Soekarnoputri; that the July 8 election was full of violations, and that 28.6 million votes for
Yudhoyono were not valid.
“The 28.6 million votes came from voters registered more than once, underage voters and even dead voters,” a member of Megawati’s legal team had said. “We believe the KPU awarded
these invalid votes to Yudhoyono.”
The verdict also confirmed that despite all its weaknesses, the KPU had organized the July 8 election in a lawful and transparent manner. At least the KPU’s official results were on par with tallies provided by five separate survey groups offering quick count calculations.
The Wednesday verdict also came as a relief to the nation because it prevents an election re-run or run-off from being held. Feared by the general public, such a scenario could have potentially created a power vacuum since there would be no guarantees results could be finalized before October 2009 — the deadline for the new government to take up office.
-------------------------------------
The Jakarta Post
Friday, August 14, 2009
Sunny Tanuwidjaja, Jakarta
The presidential election has come and gone, legal challenges notwithstanding.
However it remains interesting to examine the behavior of Muslim voters during the election.
It seems to be commonly accepted that there has been a trend among Indonesian voters towards rationality; they have left behind primordial (religious and ethnic) and abstract aliran (which literally translates as stream) considerations.
Aliran politics is a term developed by Indonesianists such as Gertz, Feith, and Hiddley, which points to the influence of sociological factors such as ideology, religion and social and political groupings in Indonesia in the 1950s-1970s.
The Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI) has claimed several times that primordial factors are no longer influential in Indonesian politics and that aliran politics is dead. This view is shared by many political analysts and observers.
However, the LSI's own exit polls from this year's election tell a different story. These numbers weaken the above argument and should be interpreted in a different way.
Let me review the evidence from the LSI's last exit poll and show how primordialist factors remain very influential. First is the distribution of choice for president among Muslims. The argument goes that because the choice of this sector of society was similar to the public as a whole, we can conclude that religion is not an important factor in voting.
This argument is problematic simply from a mathematical perspective. If more than 85 percent of the respondents of an exit poll are Muslims, it is more likely their behavior and choice closely resembles the behavior of the respondents in general.
We can see from the results of the exit polls that there is a significant difference in the distribution of the presidential choice between religious groups. For example, among Muslim respondents, SBY enjoyed 63 percent of support, while Megawati only got 24 percent. However among Catholics, Megawati got just 2 percent less support than SBY.
Then there is the ethnic factor. Among Javanese respondents, SBY enjoyed 61 percent support. However if we look the Bugis ethnic group, Jusuf Kalla received the majority of the votes, gaining ground 70 percent. This shows that ethnic sentiments still play a major role in voting.
One might argue against this by saying that if we look into other ethnic groups such as the Sundanese, Minangese, and Malay, SBY received the majority of support.
However, this can also mean that because there is no candidate that explicitly represent these ethnic groups, voters from these groups do not think about their ethnic identity when they vote. This does not mean that ethnicity is no longer important.
Then there is the economic factor. Various surveys have shown that the economy is the top issue in this election. Poverty, welfare, and employment are the major issues that concern voters. Many conclude that from this fact, voters have become more rational.
One thing that has to be underlined is that the current economic uncertainty in the country means Indonesians tend to think more on about the economy. This however does not mean that other issues such as politics, security and religion are no longer important. They are still important, they are just not at the forefront of voter's minds.
The importance of primordial factors and aliran politics is again contradicted by the fact that respondents in the exit poll said their primary consideration in deciding who to vote for was the programs the candidates offered. We have to note however that it is difficult to admit that primordial factors influence our decision.
In addition, it is possible that our judgment as to who among the candidates offered the best and most promising programs and policies is influenced by primordial and aliran factors.
Aside from this problematic evidence against primordial and aliran influence, we should not fall into the trap of seeing primordial and aliran motivations as diametrically opposed to rational decision making processes. The fact of the matter is, voters can be highly rational while at the same time remain highly influenced by primordial and aliran factors.
For example, voters can choose a candidate because that candidate has a similar religious identity, because similarities in identity can mean similarity in interest and aspiration.
It is true that the exclusive influence of primordial factor can be very dangerous for democracy. Instead we are aiming to educate voters so that they can become more rational and focus on programs and policies when they vote.
Rational voters will help the consolidation of democracy and encourage government to perform better. However, we should also get a realistic picture of what is motivating voters. This is very important to understand the challenges ahead of us in improving democracy in Indonesia.
The writer is a researcher at the Department of Politics and International Relations at CSIS Jakarta. He is a PhD candidate at Northern Illinois University.
----------------------------------------
The Jakarta Post
Friday, August 21, 2009
Indonesia's first direct presidential election in 2004 won plaudits from all sides, including the international community. Sadly, this has not been the case with the 2009 election.
The Constitutional Court has said that the General Elections Commission (KPU) has been less than professional, as reflected in a series of election problems, from the April 2007 gubernatorial elections in East Java through to July's presidential election.
Unlike the 2004 KPU, the current commission has come under fire from various parties for its poor handling of the elections. There have been calls to bring the seven KPU members, whose term
will end in 2013, to step down and stand trial.
Unless we change the commission's personnel, who might be honest, but lack competence, no guarantees can be made for the 2014 presidential election. The law stipulates that members of the KPU can be terminated if they are found to be incompetent.
Among this year's problems was the incessant controversy over the electoral role, something that took an 11th hour intervention by the Constitutional Court to resolve. The court's decision to allow unregistered voters to cast a ballot using their identity cards made the KPU look like a battered boxer, saved by the bell.
The validity of the electoral roll has been the center of dispute between the commission and former presidential candidates - former president Megawati Soekarnoputri and incumbent Vice President Jusuf Kalla - both before and after the election.
The problems stem from the commission's poor planning, administering and monitoring of voter registration for the July 8 polls.
Both Megawati and Kalla's campaign teams have claimed to have found millions of irregularities with the electoral roll in more than 100 regencies, including the multiple registrations of a single person, the registration of dead people and the registration of children. In an absurdly preposterous move, the commission vowed to rectify these irregularities in one day - the day before the election.
No wonder the two losing candidates refused to acknowledge the results of the election when the commission announced on July 25 that incumbent President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono would have a
second term.
Another problem relates to the legality of the updates made to the electoral roll. The Elections Supervisory Body once accused the commission of lying to the public when it said it had received a legally binding, official recommendation from the body to update the electoral roll. The body said it only done so on three occasions, and this wasn't one of them.
The Constitutional Court resolved there problems when, on Aug. 12, it issued a verdict in support of the KPU's decision that SBY won the election.
As people breathe a sigh of relief, the two loosing presidential candidates deserve high praise for pursuing legal avenues to channel their dissatisfaction over the election, as well as for accepting the Court's decision. Now that the election problems are behind us, the door is open to legally change the personnel in charge of running the next show.
One way to do it is to change Law No. 22/2007 on Elections, as proposed by legal experts. This can be done by the new government and the new House of Representatives, which will be installed in October.
------------------------------------------
KPU can be `fired for incompetence'
The Jakarta Post
Friday, August 21, 2009
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and the House of Representatives have the power to dismiss members of the General Elections Commission (KPU) for their incompetence, an expert says.
Refly Harun, from the Center for Electoral Reform (Cetro), said Thursday that whether or not they would ever choose to go down that path was debatable.
"There is no direct mechanism under the 2007 on the General Elections Commission that states the President or the House can fire KPU members for incompetence. However, that could be resolved if the House decided to issue a `limited revision' of the law," he told The Jakarta Post.
"For example, the revision could stipulate that the current KPU members term will end on April 10. That way the KPU members will have to be replaced with new ones."
Refly added that a government regulation-in-lieu of law issued to replace the general elections law could also be used to remove KPU members from their seats.
"However, the President must then discuss the regulation with the House," he said.
"It really comes down to whether the President and the House agree to fire [KPU] members."
Refly said the current law already contained stipulations about firing KPU members.
"However, a honorary board needs to be established first, and that can only take place through a KPU plenary meeting. So, it's a little difficult," he said.
Ida Fauziah, the deputy chair of the Houses' Commission II, which oversees the KPU, said there was no mechanism to fire any KPU member unless they had committed a crime.
"Neither the President nor the House has the authority to fire KPU members because it is an independent body."
The KPU has been under fire from civil society groups, expertsand political parties due to its mismanagement of the legislative and presidential elections, which led to countless court cases and violations.
Following the April 9 legislative elections, several political parties alleged nearly 40 million eligible voters were unable to cast their ballot due to problems with the registered electoral roll.
The problems with the electoral roll were not resolved and re-emerged in the July 8 presidential election.
PDI-P legislator Eva Kusuma Sundari alleged at the time that the KPU had failed to amend the electoral roll, with nearly 50 million eligible voters remaining unregistered. As a result, the Constitutional Court ruled that voters could use their ID cards to verify their identity on voting day.
The KPU announcement that Yudhoyono had won in a landslide led to his rivals questioning the legitimacy of the election. While the court dismissed their challenges, it did state that the KPU was incompetent and failed to carry out its duties satisfactorily.
Despite the pressure, KPU chief Abdul Hafiz Anshary has said he feels no obligation to resign and believes the KPU did its best. (hdt)
---------------------------------------------
Incompetent polling body to blame for fraud: Inquiry
The Jakarta Post
Thursday, August 27, 2009
The incompetence of the polling body caused widespread fraud in the recent elections, which cast doubts on the legitimacy of the results, legislators said Wednesday.
Several members of the House of Representative's committee investigating alleged fraud in the recent general elections, said the General Elections Commission (KPU) — along with its provincial and regency offices — failed to perform its duties adequately.
They added that most KPU staff lacked the necessary experience to carry out their main tasks, such as verifying and upgrading the electoral roll handed down by the government.
"Many [provincial, regency and municipal] polling bodies received data from the provincial, regency and municipal administrations that had not been verified or updated, neglecting millions of eligible voters unregistered in the electoral roll," Eva Sundari Kusuma of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.
Eva said a significant part of the electoral roll the government handed down to the polling body consisted of voters registered for the 2004 general elections and local elections held in previous years.
"That is why so many eligible voters had identical identity numbers, and why the names of children and deceased individuals appeared on the permanent electoral roll used for the April 9 legislative elections and July 8 presidential election," she said.
She added her committee would continue investigating the alleged fraud.
Legislators also criticized the polling body for lacking the political will to manage the elections professionally.
On the eve of the presidential race, it is believed that up to 40 million eligible voters remained unregistered, and were therefore unable to vote.
The Constitutional Court subsequently let voters use their identity cards to cast their ballot.
Agus Purnomo, a member from the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), concurred with Eva, stating that the delay in announcing the new House seat allocation highlighted the polling body's incompetence.
"The House will likely recommend the replacement of the polling body's seven members in the inquiry's conclusion," he said.
He added his committee had not yet found evidence of government involvement in the chaotic organization of the elections.
Many parties accused incumbent President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's Democratic Party of manipulating the electoral roll to win the elections, although his party had actually won 20 percent of votes in the legislative elections, and SBY and his running mate Boediono garnering more than 6o percent of votes in the race.
Gayus Lumbuun and Hasto Kristianto, two other members from the PDI-P party, said their committee would draw conclusions only after it questioned the director general of population administration and the Election Supervisory Board (Bawaslu), on Wednesday night.
KPU chairman Abdul Hafiz Anshary welcomed the amicable atmosphere at the meeting held with the investigating committee.
He said the commission had organized the elections not only in accordance with the law, but also in the best possible way. (hdt)
--------------------------------------------
DPD Calls For Constitutional Amendments to Increase Powers
The Jakarta Globe
August 20, 2009
Febriamy Hutapea
The Regional Representatives Council demanded on Wednesday a fifth amendment to the Constitution to give equal authority for the council in guarding the country’s democratic system.
The council, known as the DPD, has been struggling for years to have a stronger legal basis so that it can have similar authority to the House of Representatives, or DPR.
“DPD supports efforts for the fifth amendment, which is expected to finalize several unsolved issues,” DPD speaker, Ginandjar Kartasasmita, said in the special plenary meeting.
The DPD so far can only propose its initiative to the DPR, but it is not allowed to join the decision-making process.
“There’s no clear follow up about our initiative bills,” Ginandjar added.
Ginandjar said that he hoped the DPR and DPD could join hands in the future to further build the country’s democratic system.
In contrary, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has said previously that the Constitution should not be frequently amended.
“The Constitution should be applied for a long term period and should not be amended all the time,” Yudhoyono said.
---------------------------------------------
Indonesia: Women Activists Draw Lessons from Failed Election Bids
Richel Langit-Dursin
JAKARTA, Aug 20 (IPS) - Four months since Indonesia's legislative elections, Ditah Indah Sari still grapples with her unsuccessful foray into electoral politics. ”We are curious why we did not get elected,” she said.
As a labour activist of more than 15 years, Dita thought she had all what it took to win a seat in the House of Representatives: extensive network, wide support base, and full backing from her party, Reformed Crescent Party. Soon after the April 9 national elections, Dita, 38, lost miserably that she did not bother to know how many votes she had garnered.
”The voters seemed to be very pragmatic. They chose candidates who gave them money, and activist candidates simply had no resources,” said Dita, as she tried to make sense of her failed political bid and those of thousands of other pro-democracy activists who ran in this year's legislative elections.
Participating in this electoral exercise was in keeping with her lifelong advocacyùfighting for workers' rightsùa passion shared by all the other like-minded political activists, comprising mostly women, who also ran in the said elections, the third since the fall of Indonesian dictator Suharto in 1998.
The former political prisoner became the recipient of the 2001 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership for her resolute determination to uplift the lives of the working poor in her country. As a labour leader, she had lobbied for reforms in Indonesia's labour laws.
Compared to past political exercises, the number of activists, including women, running in the recently concluded legislative elections had increased significantly. Dita said that until the 2004 elections, most civil society activists were too critical of political parties that they shunned elections. It was a different story all together in April.
Ani Soetjipto, a political science professor at the state-owned University of Indonesia, said at least 3 percent of the candidates who vied for seats in the House as well as provincial and district councils were civil society advocates for specific platforms.
One of a number of reforms that Dita and her fellow activists wanted to pursue as aspiring lawmakers was outlawing the practice of outsourcing jobs, which is widely believed to deprive affected workers of standard benefits like pension and health insurance.
”We realised that civil society movements were not effective in pushing for reforms and that civil society activists had to be part of policymaking if they wanted to see significant changes [in the political realm],” said Dita of the sudden surge of political interest among pro-democracy activists in Indonesia.
The number of women running for legislative seats across the country also rose significantly, thanks to the so-called affirmative action that required political parties to allocate at least 30 percent of their slates to women in an effort to increase their participation in the country's political life.
”All political parties tried to meet the 30 percent required [allocation for women candidates] under election laws,” said Ani.
”Political parties have opened themselves up to activists and women as the high number of parties eligible to [participate] in the legislative elections only heightened political competition,” said Hadar Gumay of the Centre for Election Reform, a non-profit organisation focusing on voter education and election monitoring. A record number of 44 parties, including six local ones, participated in the April elections, compared to just 32 in the 2004 elections.
The increased political interest among civil society activists and women, however, was soon confronted with the hard reality of Indonesia's political life û primarily nepotism and money politics û that effectively reduced their chances of winning.
Ani estimates that less than 3 percent of the thousands of political activists who made a bid for the national legislative elections were elected. Information on the number of women elected to legislative councils at the national, provincial, and district levels is still sketchy, but Soetjipto said it could not be higher than 5 percent.
Most parties, according to Dita, accommodated activists to exploit their networks and skills in mobilising public support. In some cases, activist candidates, including women, were asked to give campaign donations to the parties they had affiliated with. By election day, ”we were very much on our own, without financial assistance or facilities, including party attributes, from political parties,” Dita said.
”We, activists, were not ready to compete with other candidates, especially those who were financially more stable,” she said. ”We simply did not have the resources to compete.” Describing most parties as ”feudalistic,” she complained that they gave key positions to senior cadres willing to dig deeper into their pockets, while the activists were not only young and politically inexperienced but also had no money to finance their own campaigns.
According to Hadar, most activists were neither ready to fight nor persistent enough to win the election, especially when they learned that money was a major consideration in getting elected. ”Money talks,” she said.
To ensure women's participation in politics, the country's election laws require parties to allocate 30 percent of their slates to women. Many parties put women as their first, second or third candidate to improve their chances in the 2009 elections. However, a binding Constitutional Court ruling issued in mid-March stipulated that candidates with the highest number of votes would be declared winners regardless of their ranks on the candidates' list or gender.
While the ruling may have leveled off the playing field, Ani said most women candidates in the April elections found themselves ill equipped to compete with their male counterparts.
Being poor, many women candidates had no proper education and were bereft of the needed resources, since they had considerably less income than men. ”Women are not considered as breadwinners and thus have no financial resources to finance their campaign,” said Ani, adding that women's public speaking and debating skills were inferior to those of their male counterparts.
To make matters worse, ”most of the women elected were recruited based on political dynasty and popularity, and as such they may not represent the interests of Indonesian women such as high maternal mortality rate, low education, high unemployment and illiteracy rates,” said Ani.
She added that a dilemma confronting those in the pro-democracy movement is whether to support these women ”even though we know that they don't deserve the [legislative] seats,” and as such will only become a liability amid efforts to increase women's involvement in politics. Not to support them means to teach them a lesson that women who do not possess the needed qualifications should not run for legislative posts in the first place, she said.
Among the winning women candidates were Puan Maharani, daughter of former Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri. Until her election bid, Puan was a political neophyte, not having run for any legislative post. Still another was Okky Asokawati of the United Development Party, a model who had neither political nor social involvement before going into politics. There were also actresses like Rieke Diah Pitaloka and Nurul Arifin.
According to Ani, most parties treat women in political parties as tools to achieve men's political goals. This was particularly true of long-standing political parties such as Vice President Jusuf Kalla's Golkar Party and Megawati's Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle. Both Kalla and Megawati ran but lost in the country's July 8 direct presidential elections.
Despite her election defeat, Dita said she and fellow activists would not quit politics. If anything, she said, their failure has only heightened their resolve to get into the Legislature.
”We have learned our lessons and will continue to play major roles in politics,” vowed Dita. Already, members of the pro-democracy movement are talking of fielding their candidates for the 2014 elections.
---------------------------------------------
The Jakarta Post
Monday, August 24, 2009
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono today faces a historic opportunity of creating a legacy for himself, following his recent re-election for a second five-year term in office beginning October 20.
His state of the nation address on Aug. 14 sets out a grand vision that takes Indonesia further than the one envisaged by our founding fathers. He added self-reliance, globally competitiveness and civilization to Soekarno-Hatta's vision of an Indonesia that is just and prosperous.
Yudhoyono and running mate Boediono will need to assemble the best team to put this vision of Indonesia into reality. They have literally around 240 million people to choose from to create this Dream Team, and less than two months to go through the selection.
SBY has the political capital that would be the envy of any democratically elected leader anywhere: 60 percent of the votes in the July 8 election. His Democratic Party controls more than 25 percent of the seats in the House of Representatives and has forged a coalition that brings their combined strength close to 60 percent of the seats.
Yet, somehow we get the impression that SBY is about to make the same mistake that he did in 2004 when he included a number of problematic figures in his first-term Cabinet and gave away seats more than he should have to his coalition partners. He virtually squandered the huge political capital he had then within less than a year and many members of his Cabinet became a political liability.
In a speech last week accepting his election victory, SBY indicated that he will again include politicians from the coalition partners as rewards for their role in getting his re-election, as well as professionals, in his next Cabinet. His party is even open to the idea of one of the other two nationalist parties, either the Democratic Party of Struggle or Golkar, joining the camp that would allow the coalition to control over 70 percent of the House seats.
One could almost predict that his next team would be named The United Indonesia Cabinet II as a sequel to the first. But his fixation with unity could come at the expense of the effectiveness of the government in doing its duties and in pursuing the SBY vision.
If 2004-2009 yielded any lessons, it is that national unity could not be assured by forging the biggest coalition in government or in parliament. On many occasions in the last five years, the staunchest opposition to SBY's policies came from his coalition partners in parliament while their representatives in the Cabinet became Trojan Horses.
Lessons from more mature democracies show that unity is assured by having a credible government and healthy relations with the oppositions in parliament. Indonesia's political system is already built to accommodate divergent views and these differences should be settled through democratic means, including periodic elections.
A much bigger threat to Indonesia today is in having a democratically elected but ineffective government that cannot deliver on its promises. This is the story of the United Indonesia Cabinet and could be the story of the next government, unless SBY plays his cards right this time around.
Instead of going for a united government, he should go for a strong and effective cabinet. He should pick people because he truly trusts them first and foremost, and who have the expertise and the capacity to contribute to his endeavor. If trust is the most important criteria, then he can almost eliminate politicians from his coalition partners, who contributed little to his re-election campaign anyway.
The next five years will be a defining time for SBY to leave behind his legacy. How will the nation, who twice gave him the opportunities, remember him? He could be the leader that translates his dream into reality, but he could just end up like one of those big-talk phony leaders who let the nation down. The answer lies to a large extent on how SBY picks his next Cabinet.
-----------------------------------------------
Murder Rap Slows Suharto's Rising Son
Asia Times
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Patrick Guntensperger
JAKARTA - Under former dictator Suharto, the military linked Golkar party dominated Indonesian politics for decades. Now, in a more democratic era, the deceased Suharto's controversial son, Hutomo Mandala Putri, popularly known as Tommy, has to the surprise of many announced his intention to take over the party's reins.
While still influential but no longer all-powerful, Golkar is in disarray after the poor showing in July of its presidential candidate, incumbent Vice President Jusuf Kalla, who finished last among three competing candidates. Even in the legislative polls, Golkar candidates made a poor showing compared to its 2004 win, giving ground to upstart parties and not taking sufficient seats to form a credible opposition against recently re-elected President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his upstart Democrat Party.
Golkar's upcoming convention, where a new party chairman will be selected, is thus critical to the party's future, analysts say. Before last month's presidential election, when the polls showed that Kalla was headed for a landslide loss, there were already intra-party calls for a leadership change. Observers believe that unless the party embraces young charismatic candidates instead of shuffling the old New Order faces, the party risks being reduced to little more than a historical footnote after another national election cycle.
Until last week, most analysts believed Coordinating Minister for Welfare and billionaire businessman Aburizal Bakrie was the front runner to become chairman. Bakrie has major support inside the party, including that of influential former party chairman Akbar Tandjung, himself a former close associate of Suharto. It is also well known that Indonesian president Yudhoyono is in some ways still beholden to Bakrie for his previous financial support, for which he was apparently rewarded with two powerful cabinet positions. As Golkar clearly wishes to remain close to the new Yudhoyono administration, Bakrie's connections are perceived as a political asset.
Thus Tommy's announcement that he feels a "duty" to assume the leadership of the party his deceased father dominated has reset the political calculus. Some analysts believe that Tommy's move is at least partly inspired by his desire to thwart Bakrie's ambitions. It has also been interpreted as an indirect way of striking out at Akbar Tandjung and other Bakrie backers, a group that Tommy, 47, has long believed were responsible for his father's street protest-led ouster in 1998.
After Suharto fell and Indonesia began the process of incremental democratization, Golkar functionaries carried on largely as though nothing had changed. Although there are now over 130 political parties and elections are as free as any in Southeast Asia, one-time Golkar members still dominate the political landscape. Virtually every major player in the last two elections has strong ties to Golkar and the enormous and still-powerful civil service still largely sees itself as carrying on in the Suharto tradition.
That gives Tommy's unexpected bid for the party leadership some legitimacy, though legally there are impediments. Party regulations require chairman candidates to have held a party leadership position within the last 10 years, a qualification Tommy, due in part to a period of incarceration, notably lacks.
His advocates note another party regulation that states there are no restrictions on a party member's right to nominate himself for the chairmanship. Tommy has apparently taken that to mean that, as a card-carrying Golkar member, he has a right to run. And, out of deference, it's not clear yet that anyone in the party will seriously object to his nomination.
But the greater impediment to Tommy launching a career in national politics will be his criminal conviction for murder in 2002. After being convicted of graft in 2000, Suharto's youngest and favorite son arranged the contract assassination of the Supreme Court judge who handed down the ruling. He was also implicated, but never charged, in a bomb attack against the Jakarta Stock Exchange.
Tommy was tried and convicted for the judge's murder, but as a Suharto relative he was given a lenient sentence of 15 years, which Yudhoyono later commuted "out of respect for his family's good name". The initial corruption charges were later overturned and in total Tommy served four years for the contract-style, drive-by killing. That those months were spent playing golf while surrounded by friends and a team of bodyguards is an open secret reported widely in the press.
Since his release, Tommy has been occupied with running his global business empire through his 60% controlling stake in the Humpuss Group, which has more than 60 subsidiaries in industries ranging from construction to five-star hotels to pharmaceuticals. Some business analysts believe the group's total holdings could be worth as much as US$35 billion.
Those businesses were in the main founded and expanded from monopoly concessions granted to Tommy by his late father, including various spice monopolies and timber rights in outlying provinces. Many analysts have speculated those businesses have also been propped in part by the billions of dollars allegedly embezzled from the national coffers by Suharto. (Suharto has never been convicted for the alleged embezzlement.)
Tommy claims now to be imbued with a duty to country and often describes himself as a risk-taker who sets and achieves high goals. There is little question among analysts that his ultimate goal is the presidential palace occupied for 32 years by his father. And Suharto's shadow is still so long over the political scene that Tommy's candidacy is being taken seriously.
Part of his father's legacy is the still strong fealty of his supporters, which has apparently in some measure been passed on to the next generation. There is little question that a politically ambitious Tommy will be a force to be reckoned with at the upcoming convention, and there is a strong possibility that he will win, analysts say.
But while Tommy may hold some sway inside the party, it's not clear to most whether a convicted murderer would have the same pull with voters at democratic ballot boxes.
Patrick Guntensperger is a Jakarta-based journalist and teacher of journalism. His blog can be found at
http://pagun-view.blogspot.com
---------------------------------------------
Tempo Magazine
No.52/IX
August 25-Sept 01,2009
Editorial
Tommy Suharto is vying for the Golkar Party chair. Aside from his extensive funds, what asset does he have?
WHAT will Hutomo Mandala Putra, alias Tommy Suharto, have to do to win the Golkar Party chairmanship?
First, he would have to sell his ability as a feared leader. After all, even though he spent almost five years in jail, his competitors were unable to prevent his businesses from growing. He should immortalize such a success, for example in a book entitled How to Run a Business from Jail. Moreover, he did all this after Suharto, his father, was no longer in power.
Secondly, Tommy will have to prove that he still has influence. Last August, PT Timor Putra Nasional, one of his companies, beat Bank Mandiri, a government owned bank. The Supreme Court ruled that Timor Putra had the right to Rp1.3 trillion.
If these two examples are not enough, Tommy can employ another "weapon" i.e. money. He has more than enough money to contest the race. It is, after all, an open secret that in electing political party leaders, money is a key factor in succeeding.
The "sweeteners" that Nurcholish Madjid once complained of when he took part in the Golkar convention a few years ago, for example, are clearly no problem for Tommy. He could even make a
bigger offer than Aburizal Bakrie, who has enough to establish a Rp1 trillion permanent fund. Tommy does not have to worry as much as his competitor, who is busy explaining where the money came from. In the meantime, many victims of the Lapindo mudflow disaster still wait for their compensation.
Perhaps Tommy's opponents are worried, or perhaps they are not. But clearly candidates such as Aburizal Bakrie and Surya Paloh, who are both rich, now have an opponent who is their equal. And
Yuddy Chrisnandi, the long shot in the race and who has much smaller pockets, has an opponent his own age Tommy is 47, Yuddy is 41.
Yuddy was once a member of the House of Representatives (DPR) and Tommy was a member of the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR).
And we must not forget that it was his father who established the party and guided it to become strong. For 32 years Golkar was the main support for his father's authority. When the change in power came, the party was not prepared to join the ranks of the opposition. It fought to share power.
Politics is about more than money and the return of favors. But in a place that does not allow for healthy competition, leadership is much like an inheritance, in which "ownership" is handed down to heirs. When Golkar Chairman Jusuf Kalla, responding to a question, said that Suharto had the soul of a leader, and that he "did not know" Tommy, he meant that Tommy was not yet ready to lead Golkar. However, one cannot be sure whether Kalla spoke for the majority in the party.
Perhaps many Golkar members no longer care that Tommy left the party more than 10 years ago. Perhaps it is no longer important to note that Tommy was absent from politics because he was
serving a 10 year sentence in Nusakambangan jail after he was found guilty of involvement in the murder of Supreme Court Justice Syafiuddin Kartasasmita. And perhaps it does not matter that Tommy never sat on the party's central board, which is one of the conditions laid down in the party's regulations if one is to be a party chairman.
Let Tommy's nomination be food for thought for the Golkar Party-which lost many votes in the last elections. Let them decide whether the party a legacy of Suharto will sink or swim to political safety.
--------------------------------------------
More of the same, please: A ringing endorsement from the voters
The Economist (UK)
Saturday, September 12, 2009
ANY young democracy must clear two big hurdles. It must undergo a peaceful transition from a leader to an opponent, and it must see an incumbent win an election without credible cries of foul. Indonesia has now crossed both barriers. In its first direct presidential election in 2004, the incumbent, Megawati
Sukarnoputri, lost to Mr Yudhoyono. Miss Megawati, daughter of Indonesia’s founding hero and leader of a tame opposition under Suharto, went into a sulk and boycotted Mr Yudhoyono’s swearing-in. But power was handed over smoothly enough.
On July 8th this year Mr Yudhoyono won re-election in a landslide. This time both Miss Megawati, his main rival, and the also-ran, Jusuf Kalla, mounted formal challenges to the result. But few seriously doubted that it reflected the popular will. Mr Yudhoyono won 61% of the vote, compared with 12% for Mr Kalla, who had been his vice-president, and 27% for Miss Megawati. This dispensed with the need for a second-round run-off.
Indonesia’s electoral system is impenetrably complex. In April, for the election of members of the parliament in Jakarta, known as the DPR, 171m voters across more than 900 inhabited islands had 38 national parties to choose from. To run for president, a candidate needed nomination by parties commanding at least 20% of the DPR or 25% of the popular vote. Only Mr Yudhoyono’s Democratic Party had the numbers to nominate its man without outside help (see table 1, next page).
Miss Megawati’s Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, or PDI-P, went into league with Gerindra, a party led by Prabowo Subianto. Mr Prabowo was once married to Suharto’s daughter, and as one of the former dictator’s special-forces commanders is accused of human-rights abuses. Mr Kalla, of Golkar, Suharto’s political vehicle, teamed up with another controversial former general, Wiranto.
There was much to admire in the presidential election. The campaign was largely peaceful and the press coverage was vibrant and fair. The three presidential platforms were clearly different. Mr Yudhoyono offered “more of the same”: stability tempered with modest reform. Mr Kalla promised (or, to judge from the voters’ reaction, threatened) faster reform. Miss Megawati and, especially, Mr Prabowo cast themselves as nationalist populists, proposing to reschedule Indonesia’s foreign debt to release money for the poor. Turnout, though low compared with the previous democratic elections, was high by international standards: about 70%.
The SBY effect
Moreover, in the eyes of most Indonesians as well as foreign observers, the best man won. Miss Megawati was not much of a president. Mr Kalla fought a sharp and good-humoured campaign, but he could not quite shake off his image as a Suharto-era business crony dabbling in politics.
By contrast, Mr Yudhoyono, widely known as “SBY”, seems both competent and hugely popular. Sound economic management has left Indonesia in a strong position to withstand the global downturn. His policy of giving direct cash handouts to the poor made economic as well as electoral sense. Separatist and sectarian conflicts in Aceh, Ambon and Sulawesi have abated. Terrorist attacks, until July’s bombing in Jakarta, had been rare.
To foreigners, Mr Yudhoyono can seem rather aloof and ponderous, but many Indonesians see a decent man with a presidential manner. His critics charge him with being a ditherer, but his supporters say he will now prove them wrong. In his first term the Democratic Party needed the support in the DPR of Golkar and some smaller parties. Now the Democrats have become the biggest party, and their coalition partners—four small Islamic parties—will have less chance of holding the government to
ransom. Mr Yudhoyono’s position will be even stronger if Golkar, never comfortable in opposition, also decides to rejoin the government. He has promised to include more technocrats in his cabinet. His choice of running-mate, Boediono, was an earnest of his intentions.
Mr Yudhoyono, too, was a general under Suharto. But unlike Mr Prabowo and Mr Wiranto, he emerged without being credibly accused of complicity in extra-judicial killings or torture. Indeed, most criticism of his time in the army echoes that of his first term as president: that he was too indecisive. According to one possibly apocryphal story, the soldiers under his command in East Timor lost patience as they waited for his orders to attack a rebel-held hill, and took it without him.
Under Mr Yudhoyono’s presidency the army shows little sign of such insubordination. Remarkably, only a short time after the end of a military dictatorship, a coup seems rather unlikely. Such judgments can be wrong: much the same was said, and soon disproved, of Thailand in the late 1990s. The Indonesian army played an even more pivotal role than the Thai one. Under Suharto it had dwifungsi, the “dual function” of helping to run the country as well as defending it. Now serving soldiers are barred from political office; indeed, the 410,000 members of the armed forces do not even have votes.
The defence minister, Juwono Sudarsono, an academic whom Mr Yudhoyono befriended in the early 1990s, argues that since Indonesia at the time of “reformation” in 1998 lacked a civic tradition, the only institution with “overarching reach and capacity” was the army, the “fulcrum of political life”. But the army’s relative lack of clout has been reflected in a budget that Mr Juwono describes as covering just 30% of what is needed, though it is now being beefed up.
Nor can the army any longer supplement its official budget so lucratively with the income from myriad businesses. It has gradually divested itself of its prominent role in much of the economy—from plantations to supermarkets, from office blocks to airlines. Mr Juwono says that of more than 1,500 army enterprises, only five “viable” businesses are left, and these will be disposed of by October, leaving only a few “low-level” co-operatives. But the army remains accused of informal, corrupt links with business, demanding protection money or providing security services to companies for chunky fees.
The scaling-back of the army’s role is just one of many surprising achievements of Indonesian democracy. But it remains hard to feel entirely comfortable about a system that, 11 years after what looked like a revolution against a corrupt autocracy, produced a presidential contest of three tickets headed by, respectively, the incumbent, his deputy and his predecessor, and each featuring one of Suharto’s generals.
Most Indonesians seem content to shrug off any doubts about the process and to congratulate themselves that democracy seems to be working. But there are grounds for concern. Adam Przeworski,
a political scientist, once defined democracy as a way to institutionalise uncertainty. In Indonesia, the complex election process might have been designed to endorse a foregone conclusion.
The biggest worry is the electoral system itself. Evolving electoral law has sought to reflect the country’s diversity while keeping the number of parties to a manageable level, so parties have to win at least 2.5% of the national vote to take seats in the DPR. Votes for parties that fall below this threshold are redistributed among those that exceed it—a total of nine this year. So some candidates who won the popular vote in their constituencies are excluded from the DPR, and parties that between them garnered 18% of the national vote ended up with no representation at all, which may alienate some voters.
One party that did make the grade is Mr Prabowo’s Gerindra, which spent a lot of money on perks to supporters and on advertising. Mr Prabowo’s brother, Hashim Djojohadikusumo, made a fortune in oil in Central Asia and has ploughed some of it into politics at home. H. Zulkieflimansyah, of the Prosperous Justice Party, or PKS, the most successful of the Islamic parties, cites Gerindra’s rise from nowhere as evidence of a depressing trend: “People will vote for those who give them money.”
This sounds like sour grapes. Money does play a big part, and at the village level many voters are subject to blandishments or intimidation from the local headman, who may in turn have been promised rewards or threatened with sanctions by politicians in higher tiers of government. But many Indonesians will take whatever freebies are on offer and cast their secret ballot as they would have done anyway.
A more serious concern is the absence of a national, computerised register of voters. The list for the parliamentary elections produced by the independent election commission was flawed. Millions may well have been excluded, including many migrants in big cities such as Jakarta. But nobody has produced compelling evidence of a conspiracy as opposed to incompetence. It was, says one analyst, “equal-opportunity disfranchisement”.
Registering a complaint
For the presidential poll the list was improved somewhat, and the Constitutional Court helped by ruling that unregistered voters could cast ballots if they produced their identity cards. What really saved the day, however, was the margin of Mr Yudhoyono’s victory. According to Marcus Mietzner, an expert on Indonesia at the Australian National University, “with a tighter field of candidates the electoral system would collapse.” He points to three closely fought regional elections in recent years—in North Maluku, South Sulawesi and East Java—that resulted in fiercely contested outcomes.
Indeed, it was the scandal this year over a governor’s election in East Java, won by a candidate backed by the Democratic Party, that did most to raise doubts about the integrity of the system. More than a quarter of the names on the list were found to be duplicates or bogus. The police commander who unearthed the irregularities was shunted into early retirement, giving a strong impression of a cover-up.
The parties themselves lack any clear ideological or social base. Mr Mietzner contrasts this with Indonesia’s failed experiment with democracy in the 1950s, when politics was dominated by three powerful forces with different visions: nationalists, Communists and Islamists. Now all the parties accept the basic contours of the Indonesian state. They differentiate themselves by their distinctive cultures and by the personalities and lineages of their leaders.
The Democratic Party, for example, in Mr Zulkieflimansyah’s scathing but not wholly unfair analysis, is simply “an SBY fan-club”. Formed in 2001 to back Mr Yudhoyono’s presidential aspirations, it relies on his popularity for its success but still lacks a substantial grassroots organisation or clear policy programme. This explains why Mr Yudhoyono felt the need, soon after winning this year’s election, to deny that his family had plans for his wife to succeed him when he reaches the end of his second and final term in 2014. Some members of his party had indeed hoped she might; others speculate that, with a parliamentary majority large enough to amend the constitution, he may in time face pressure to abolish term limits. Mr Yudhoyono claims his family has no political ambitions beyond 2014, but his failure to build up the party, or let another strong leader emerge from within it, opens the way to such
speculation.
The opposition PDI-P’s dynastic ambitions are clearer. Among Miss Megawati’s likely successors are her daughter and her brother. Many of the smaller parties are also family concerns. Of the big three parties, only Golkar combines a grassroots organisation with some non-hereditary leadership competition. With its origins in the Suharto “new order” regime, Golkar seems a waning force, but its big-business backing and nationwide reach mean it is unlikely to fade away.
Defending the failure of the system to come up with new faces, Indonesians often argue that the Suharto years inhibited the development of a generation of political leaders. But 2014, they say, will be different, as politicians emerge from the new DPR or from popular regional or local government. It is true that the DPR is full of new faces—two-thirds of members are newly elected and 60% are under 50—and that decentralisation has produced impressive local leaders, some of whom may aspire to the national stage. But few observers would rule out a presidential contest in 2014 fought out among the present incumbent’s wife, the opposition leader’s daughter, a Suharto-era general with a human-rights problem and a Golkar businessman recycled from the 1990s.
-------------------------------------------
Indonesian Court Again Declines to Let Independents to Run for President
The Jakarta Globe
September 15, 2009
Camelia Pasandaran
The Constitutional Court on Monday rejected for the third time a demand to change the Election Law to allow independent presidential candidates to run.
The court said the applicant’s demand to overturn some articles in the 2003 election law was unconstitutional.
Sri Sudarjo, chairman of the National Council Independent Committee for People’s Governance, lodged a judicial review after the court had already twice rejected the idea of independent candidates.
The court also rejected a demand for a judicial review filed by eight applicants in October 2004. Earlier this year, the court rejected a similar demand, this time on the 2008 election law, filed by Fadjroel Rachman, a political activist who announced his independent candidacy.
The 2008 presidential election law states that presidential and vice presidential candidates should be nominated by a political party or a coalition of political parties that hold 20 percent of House seats or receive 25 percent of the votes in the legislative elections.
Sri Sudarjo claimed the particular articles limited an applicant’s constitutional right to nominate himself as a presidential candidate.
“There is a process [mandated] in the Constitution that requires [candidates] to be nominated by a political party or coalition of political parties,” said Achmad Sodiki, one of the judges.
Achmad also said the original intent of the Constitution’s framers was clear enough, that candidates should be nominated by a political party or coalition of parties, reflecting a political system with a communal rather than individual base.
The court also emphasized that the minimum 20 percent of seats or 25 percent of votes requirement was to show that the political parties were strongly supported by voters.
Achmad also said that although people may believe a law is wrong, the Constitutional Court could not just strike it down.
“What is seen as being bad is not necessarily unconstitutional,” he said. “Unless the legal policy is clearly against morality and rationality or is intolerably injust.”
Outside the court Sri Sudarjo said, “This kind of ruling is based on conspiracy with no clear consideration. I believe that the court is just afraid.”