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

11. ASSESSING MEDIA IMPACT ON LOCAL ELECTIONS IN INDONESIA

229 Assessing Media Impact on Local Elections in Indonesia 229 11 ASSESSING MEDIA IMPACT ON LOCAL ELECTIONS IN INDONESIA David T. Hill1 INTRODUCTION For most Indonesian citizens, the opportunity to elect not only their members of the national parliament and their president but also their local district heads has been one of the most tangible demonstrations of democratic reform made possible by the resignation of President Soeharto in May 1998 and the withering of his authoritarian “New Order”. Subsequent laws governing the elections of leaders — from district to national level — pushed through parliament by reformist elements mean that instead of being appointed by Jakarta, provincial governors, mayors, and local district heads are directly elected by the constituency to which they are responsible. With 349 districts (kabupaten), 91 mayoralties (kota), and 33 provinces,2 all of which have to elect their heads directly, it is a long and complex process, which has been unfolding across the archipelago since 1 June 2005 when the first elections took place. This paper discusses the relationship between the media generally (and local media in particular) and the outcomes in such local elections. It is exploratory and tentative, being based mainly on secondary materials collected by others, but builds upon and extends previous studies of this relationship (Hill 2008). The hypothesis it examines is that access to local media, and local television in particular, has already become, and is likely to be increasingly, a major factor in local electoral success in Indonesia. By extrapolation, it 229 11 DeepeningDemocracy Ch 11 1/15/09, 11:20 AM 229 230 230 David Hill posits that aspiring local politicians will be seeking to exert greater influence over the media that are available in their local environs. The case studies suggest that such politicians could optimize local media access in a variety of creative ways apart from simply seeking to own it or to intimidate it — the two strategies adopted most commonly during the New Order. This paper attempts to test such assertions with reference to four very different localities, primarily using voter exit poll data collected by local election monitoring organizations. The study is made possible because of the massive election monitoring efforts undertaken by hundreds of thousands of Indonesians, coalescing in a variety of formal organizations and alliances (several of which undertook voter attitude surveys). These election monitoring organizations were born out of a desire to ensure the fairness and transparency of the elections since, at national level, polls had been manipulated throughout the New Order period to ensure a victory for the favoured Golkar party. In the case of the local elections, a major monitoring exercise was supported by the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), which describes itself as “a non-governmental organization based in Washington, DC with a mission to strengthen democracy worldwide”. The NDI maintains a national office in Jakarta and provided training, assistance, and funding to support local monitoring organizations in the 1999 and 2004 national legislative (and 2004 presidential) elections. In 2005, it selected particular localities in which it offered support to grass-roots organizations wishing to monitor elections in their particular communities. One of the most visible aspects of this support was to assist such partner organizations undertake exit poll surveys, dubbed “quick counts”, in order to provide the public with reliable, if unofficial, indications of the likely poll outcomes, and thereby to act as a disincentive to poll manipulation. Over the past two decades the NDI has undertaken such “quick counts” in twenty-five countries including, since 2004, in Indonesia. In the 2004 national legislative elections, NDI collaborated with three partner organizations, LP3ES (Institute for Research, Education and Information on Social and Economic Affairs), Yappika (Foundation for Strengthening Participation, Initiative and Partnerships in Indonesian Society) and JAMPPI (Community Network of Election Monitors) to develop a “standard of election observation” that it referred to as “jurdil” (jujur dan adil- “honest and fair”).3 Such jurdil surveys became regarded as an “independent, accurate, and neutral” method of accurately projecting election results on the basis of an exit poll of a sample of voters. The actual surveys were conducted by local volunteers from various community organizations in each locality, with the assistance and guidance of NDI staff. Each of the surveys tended to 11 DeepeningDemocracy Ch 11 1/15/09, 11:20 AM 230 231 Assessing Media Impact on Local Elections in Indonesia 231 focus on a standard set of...