Deepening Democracy in Indonesia?: Direct Elections for Local Leaders (Pilkada)

3. POLITICAL PARTIES IN PILKADA: Some Problems for Democratic Consolidation

53 Political Parties in Pilkada 53 3 POLITICAL PARTIES IN PILKADA Some Problems for Democratic Consolidation1 Pratikno INTRODUCTION On Saturday 29 April 2005, the city of Tuban, East Java province, was burned. A huge crowd consisting of more than 5,000 supporters of the defeated pilkada2 candidate went down to the street angry.The crowd destroyed and burned the local electoral commission’s (KPUD) office, district government offices and vehicles, and the pilkada winner’s property, including two luxury houses, a hotel, eighteen vehicles, and two factories. A state of emergency was declared by the government, and thousands of police officers were mobilized with a licence to shoot disturbers. This may be an example of what the government feared would be “unsmooth and disorderly” local head elections throughout the country. Since public pessimism over the implementation of the pilkada had been increasing from early on, the Minister of Home Affairs announced the success of pilkada in 2005 in influential mass media across Indonesia on December 2005. “Since June 2005, pilkada has been executed in 198 regions, 92 per cent of them were run in a smooth and orderly manner.”3 Of course, this used a minimum standard to define a “successful pilkada”. Theoretically, the direct election of governors, district heads, and mayors is expected to further deepen democracy at the regional level. By this new 53 03 DeepeningDemocracy Ch 3 1/15/09, 11:16 AM 53 54 54 Pratikno electoral system, the heads of regions are no longer elected by regional assembly members, but are elected by individual citizens. Instead of taking a role in regional legislatures through their representatives, individual citizens now have direct access to vote for their governor, bupati (district head) or mayor. It will be argued in this chapter, however, that the path toward deepening democracy has not been significantly furthered by these direct elections, because of the electoral and party system which constrains grassroots participation. Nevertheless, it is suggested that voters at the grass-roots level are finding their own way to respond. Whether this response will have a positive effect towards the furthering of the democratic transition in Indonesia will be something to be examined further in the future. The purpose of this chapter is to map out the role and limitations of political parties in the local regional head elections towards widening the space of grass-roots control in local political systems. It starts by elaborating on the rationale for, and debate on, the formulation of the law on local elections; through this we can see the dominant role of political parties in the electoral processes. I argue that the role of political parties is problematic since, as has been shown by several previous studies as well as in the polling, political parties in Indonesia have made little effort to democratize themselves. Some evidence nationwide is examined. It will be shown that coalitions among political parties are purely pragmatic; the role of money is important and at the same time grass-roots participation has been marginalized. This is evident in the widespread conflicts between levels of party organizations, and between party leaders and the masses. Grass-roots voters have tried to challenge such oligarchic local political structures in their own way. This chapter argues that the high rate of nonparticipation in the elections, traditionally seen as a way of protesting against the political system, is evidence of the reluctance, pessimism, and resistance of the grass-roots voters toward the elite-dominated pilkada processes supposedly accessible to the people. It is further emphasized by the nationwide fact that the proposed candidates of the largest parties have been defeated in many of the pilkada. With this as one type of evidence, this chapter argues that the grass-roots voters have tried to find a way to limit the elite domination of local elections. This resistance reflects the ambition and strength of the general population in demanding more democratic local elections in the future. THE RATIONALE FOR DIRECT REGIONAL ELECTIONS The direct election of executive heads is not a new practice for Indonesians. Historically, village heads in Java and some other parts of Indonesia were directly elected by the people. During the New Order government, this 03 DeepeningDemocracy Ch 3 1/15/09, 11:16 AM 54 55 Political Parties in Pilkada 55 tradition was formalized in 1979 (Law No. 5/1979) for application throughout villages in Indonesia. The first step was sub...