Indonesian election: Clues to the
future By Gary LaMoshi
DENPASAR, Bali - Barring any last-minute snafus
in the delivery of ballots across this archipelago of
more than 1.9 million square kilometers, Indonesians
will go to the polls on Monday for the first of up to
three elections over the next five months. This initial
election for legislators may be the least important,
particularly since the House of Representatives has
failed to act on 90 percent of the bills brought before
it.
The 22-day official campaign period has not
evolved into an orgy of debate over the crises facing
the globe's fourth-most-populous nation, which includes
more Muslims than any other country (see Indonesia: 24 parties and nothing to
celebrate, March 16). Monday's voting,
however, will give important clues about how the
presidential race will play out. Investors and others
should pay close attention.
For starters, only
parties that receive 3 percent of the votes in this
phase will be eligible to place a presidential candidate
on the ballot for voting in July. Leading figures from
parties that miss the cutoff may be attractive to
rivals, despite their limited popular support, as
vice-presidential candidates, to bring regional or
political balance to a ticket, or for other reasons.
Tutut if you love Suharto Take, for
example, Siti Hardiyanti Rukmana, a former government
minister and leading figure of the new Concern for the
Nation Functional Party, known by the Indonesian
abbreviation PKBP. Siti is better known as "Tutut",
daughter of former authoritarian president Suharto.
Putting Tutut on your ticket may or may not increase a
party's popularity (see below) but it would certainly
unlock vast quantities of campaign funds and goodwill
from segments of Indonesia's rich and powerful that will
stand that party leaders in good stead regardless of the
election outcome.
Vote totals for PKBP will be
an indicator of the strength of Indonesia's current SARS
outbreak. In this case, SARS doesn't stand for severe
acute respiratory syndrome but sindrom aku rindu
Suharto - I miss Suharto syndrome. However, counting
the total SARS vote is complicated.
Tutut's
estranged brother-in-law Prabowo Subianto
Djojohadikusumo, formerly in charge of the ruthless
KOPASUS (Komando Pasukan Khusus) commando unit, is also
campaigning hard for the SARS vote as one of a
half-dozen presidential hopefuls in Golkar, Suharto's
ruling party. Before the Smiling General's fall, in-laws
Tutut and Prabowo were expected to vie for the family
garland; their current tussle may indicate how little
has changed in Indonesia. Prabowo's last boss in the
military, Suharto-era chief of staff Wiranto, is also a
Golkar candidate despite accusations of crimes against
humanity in East Timor.
Prabowo's slick ads
testify to his wealth and sophistication. Some liken the
television commercials to travel promotions, but they
more closely match the ubiquitous cigarette ads in this
particularly unenlightened media domain, showing
breathtaking landscapes, diligent farmers, strong
soldiers, happy children, and a tiger that Prabowo urges
Indonesians to awaken once again.
Most
Indonesians still associate those tiger years with
Golkar, despite PKBP charges that Golkar has betrayed
Suharto's legacy. Golkar is likely to benefit most from
any nostalgia for iron-fisted security and golden
economic growth. Golkar presidential front-runner Akbar
Tanjung represents the spirit of those times, running
after the Supreme Court reversed his corruption
conviction (see Tanjung acquittal: Verdict against
reform, February 14). But some other Golkar
presidential candidates represent clean breaks from
Suharto's time, so not every Golkar vote is necessarily
a SARS vote.
'Red Golkar' The
ostensible reform party, President Megawati
Sukarnoputri's Partai Demokrasi Indonesia-Perjuangan
(PDI-P), has adopted many of the practices of Suharto's
New Order regime and failed to move to punish that era's
human-rights violators and plundering tycoons. In a
striking irony, Megawati herself intervened to overrule
local party activists to ensure the re-election of
Jakarta Governor Sutiyoso, the former general who led a
deadly raid on PDI-P headquarters in Jakarta before the
fall of Suharto (see One year in: Mega
disappointment, July 25, 2002). Pundit
Mochtar Pabottingi has gone so far as to urge voters to
reject scarlet-themed PDI-P as "Red Golkar".
The
Megawati government's economic policies have stabilized
the rupiah and sparked some international interest in
the Jakarta stock market, helpful to local tycoons and
multinationals that repatriate profits. But the stronger
rupiah chokes off investment and exports that could help
put the estimated 40 million unemployed back to work.
Foreign investment plunged again in the first two months
of 2004. If there's a party out there that proposes
reversing these policies - or continuing them - it's
keeping that plan to itself.
Of course the real
problem for Indonesia's economy remains rampant
corruption, which has only worsened since Suharto's
fall. Loosening the grip at the center has enabled more
officials to move in for a cut. Though every party
professes to oppose corruption, those currently serving
and veterans of the Suharto regime are all tainted. The
current campaign's rent-a-crowd tactics underscore the
continued connection between politics and dirty money.
In this atmosphere of unstated policies and
unclean practices, identifying a reform vote will be no
easier than tallying the SARS total. Jakarta cafe
society - most couples in this group include one or
fewer eligible voters - tout Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as
a clean, experienced former general, tough enough and
connected enough to get things done. But Susilo was a
soldier under Suharto and a minister in the two most
recent governments, which hardly qualifies him as an
agent of change.
Crescent of
reform The sad truth is that deposed president
Abdurrahman Wahid, aka Gus Dur, who is running again at
the head of his National Awakening Party (PKB),
squandered the opportunity for reform during his erratic
two-year term, and he's given the idea a bad name.
However, the Muslim parties that maneuvered to put Wahid
in power are the only ones that demonstrated a genuine
commitment to reform, even if it turned out to be
short-lived.
In 1999, PKB finished third in the
voting with 12.6 percent by three more Islamic parties.
Both Vice President Hamzah Haz's PPP and Amien Rais'
PAN, which don't favor imposing Islamic law but do feed
the base with barbs at the West, breached the 3 percent
threshold in the last election, and overall, Muslim
parties drew more than one-third of the vote in 1999,
just about the same total as PDI-P.
Gus Dur's
failed tenure will probably diminish the PKB's vote this
time around, and many reform voters probably would never
consider supporting a religious party. But a rise in
Islamic parties' overall total may prove the best
indicator of real reform votes in 2004, as
counterintuitive as that may seem to Western observers.
(Failure to grasp this point could also inspire stupid
and counterproductive statements from loose-lipped
embassies or foreign ministries.)
There are a
few sure things to expect from Monday's voting. One is
full employment for political analysts charged with
making sense of the results. Another is that no party is
likely to win majority support. That could cow them into
forming lowest-common-denominator coalitions to try to
win the presidency outright in July and avoid a
September runoff vote. Or it could embolden some parties
to try to stand out from the pack by addressing the
issues that really matter to voters.
(Copyright
2004 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved.
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