Indonesia:
Democracy flowers, with a few weeds By Richel Langit
JAKARTA - Over 100 million Indonesians have voted peacefully at
around 570,000 polling stations across the sprawling archipelago. Indonesia's
first direct presidential election is being hailed as the final step in the
transition from dictatorship to democracy, though it's an imperfect democracy,
still marred by religious, racial, gender, and patronage issues.
Such an election would have been unthinkable during the 32 years of
iron-fisted leadership by former president Suharto. No election-related
violence was reported throughout elction day, Monday, which was meant to
mark a complete shift to democracy after six rough years of transition from
dictatorship.
"As a country that only for the first time organizes a direct presidential
election, Indonesia has done it very well and democratically," said Ikrar Nusa
Bhakti, a political researcher with the state-funded Indonesian Institute of
Science (LIPI).
Shane Barter, head of the Indonesian Carter Center, said after observing the
election in Martapura, South Kalimantan, on Monday: "I think it is wrong to
think that a Muslim-dominated country is undemocratic."
But a close look at the period leading up to the election suggests that
Indonesia still has a fair distance to go down the path to "pure"
democracy.
Election front-runner retired General Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, for instance,
lost significant support from Muslim communities ahead of the election due to
unfounded allegations that his wife, Kristina, is a Christian and that many of
his party's legislative members elected in the April 5 election are
non-Muslims. Yudhoyono and his campaign managers spent a great deal of time
during the month-long campaign period explaining that his wife is a devoted
Muslim and few non-Muslims are in his legislative lineup. As if to contain the
damage of the allegations, Susilo accepted into his coalition the Crescent Star
Party, a Muslim-based party that has long been associated with struggles to
implement Islamic laws, or syariah, in the country. The decision was
made despite his previous statement that his party would never form a coalition
with any sectarian political party.
Another presidential candidate, Amien Rais, tried very hard to portray himself
as a nationalist leader rather than as a Muslim sectarian aspirant. However,
Rais, who was once chairman of the country's second-largest Islamic
organization Muhammadiyah, asked for support from the group, which has about 30
million members nationwide.
Underlying the allegations is the idea that a non-Muslim cannot become the wife
or husband of a Muslim presidential aspirant and that non-Muslims cannot run
for the country's top posts, either as president or vice president. This
mindset betrays the country's constitution and universal principles of
democracy, namely that each citizen has the right to elect or be elected.
Unless these lines of thought are obliterated, non-Muslims will never have the
chance to become president or vice president in Indonesia.
Racial and gender issues have also weighed heavily on the country's direct
elections. For example, Hamzah Haz, nominated by the Muslim-based United
Development Party (PPP), suggested that it was time for the country to be led
by a non-Javanese president, while Yudhoyono's running mate Jusuf Kalla
capitalized on his being a non-Javanese to garner support from voters outside
Java, which accounted for some 45% of 155 million voters registered for the
presidential election.
Indonesia has had five presidents since it declared independence from Dutch
colonizers in 1945, but only one, B J Habibie, was a non-Javanese. There has
always been an unwritten convention that the president must be a Muslim from
Java, where almost 60% of the country's 215 million people live. Almost 55% of
voters in the presidential election live in Java, the country's fourth-biggest
island.
Just days before the election campaigns started on June 1, some leaders of
Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the country's largest Muslim organization, issued a
controversial religious edict banning women from becoming president. While they
did not name names, the edict clearly targeted incumbent Megawati Sukarnoputri,
who was seeking a full five-year mandate. This religious ruling came just as
non-governmental women's-rights organizations demanded affirmative action to
increase the role of women in Indonesia's political life. Ironically, in the
1999 elections NU was at the forefront in defending women's rights to hold the
country's top posts.
The patronage culture may also affect the development of democracy in the
world's largest archipelagic country. In some areas in Indonesia, including
Java where education and development are relatively better than in other parts
of the country, religious leaders have the final say on virtually everything.
Even within NU, which claims to have about 40 million members, such a culture
still plays a dominant role, and this explains why several parties tried to
coalesce with the National Awakening Party (PKB), which NU leaders established
ahead of the 1999 elections.
Golkar, for example, tried to recruit NU chairman Hasyim Muzadi as the running
mate of its flag bearer retired General Wiranto. But since Muzadi had decided
to run as Megawati's vice-presidential candidate, Golkar enlisted NU leader
Salahuddin Wahid, who is also a noted human-rights activist, as Wiranto's
partner. The nominations of both Muzadi and Wahid have split the solid Muslim
organization. However, many NU members gave up their constitutional rights to
vote after the decision of former president Abdurrahman Wahid, who is also
former NU chairman, to abstain from the election.
Unless these religious, racial and gender issues as well as patronage culture
are resolved, full democracy will remain out of reach in this country of
diverse religious and ethnic groups.
Unfortunately, virtually all of the country's political parties have no clear
platform on how to deal with these sensitive issues. Many of them are built
around personal charisma of individuals and tend to seek short-term political
interests. The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, for example, is very
much dependent on its chairwoman, who is also its standard bearer, Megawati
Sukarnoputri. The National Mandate Party is counting solely on founder and
presidential candidate Amien Rais; a similar situation exists with the
Democratic Party, which fielded Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as its presidential
candidate. Many small parties contesting the April 5 legislative election were
also developed around certain individuals rather than political platforms.
These parties are likely to disappear into oblivion once their charismatic
founders are no longer around.
All this does not mean, however, that Monday's historic election bears no
meaning at all in the democratization process in Indonesia. The election
showcases that democracy can spring up in the world's biggest Muslim country
and that Indonesia, which has about 18,000 islands and thousands of ethnic
groups, can hold a free and peaceful election. That alone is already a big
asset to the country's democratization. Much work, however, is yet to be done
before Indonesians, regardless of their religious and ethnic groups, have equal
rights to hold the country's top posts.
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