Indonesia's politicians and powerbrokers tentatively begin to cobble together a new ruling coalition, there is a great deal of optimism both here and abroad about the country's democratic future, much of it surrounding the personality of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the incumbent president and provisional winner of last week's polls. The country's first directly elected president in 2004, Yudhoyono this year became the only head of state in the post-Suharto reformasi era to serve a full term of office. Now, he is the first president in the same era to be democratically re-elected. So what do the historic polls say about the broader state of Indonesian democracy?
Procedurally, Indonesia has shown that its institutions are capable of staging a largely free and fair election. The National Election Commission's (KPU) failure to register tens of millions of potential voters was certainly a problem, but its roots are deeper than just the KPU's competence. Runner-up and former president Megawati Sukarnoputri has indicated she plans to legally challenge the validity of the results, despite earning less than half of the 60% Yudhoyono appears to have won. Incumbent Vice President Jusuf Kalla, who appears to have placed a distant third at around 10%, could also mount a challenge to the results. Few have acknowledged that the same problem occurred in 2004. In November of that year, the previous KPU was found guilty in court of not registering some 30 million potential voters. Then the political parties showed little interest in the issue, unlike this year when it was ruthlessly exploited for political gain. The voter list problem cannot be separated from the wider difficulties the Indonesian government has in registering its citizens, whether for tax purposes, births and deaths or voting in elections, across the massive archipelago. What counts is that, in the end, the results of both this year's legislative and presidential elections were considered legitimate by most of its participants as well as by the vast majority of the population - a notable achievement in such an administratively complex country as Indonesia. Looking back over the substance of the campaign, there was certainly no shortage of the usual vague rhetoric and personality driven politicking. But there was also evidence of substantially more policy detail compared with the 2004 campaigns.
For instance, Megawati said she would set up health insurance for students, abolish outsourcing contracts for workers and throw out an education bill that allows for private investment into schools. Yudhoyono also made some fairly specific promises, such as vows to extend micro-credit facilities, to keep the present labor-friendly manpower law intact, and to maintain oil subsidies and direct monthly government payments to the poor. To be sure, sometimes there were crossed wires: while Yudhoyono's campaign team claimed their candidate would not sell state assets, his running mate and former central bank governor Boediono was giving speeches detailing why privatization was a good policy idea. Nevertheless, the usual characterization of these being personality- driven political platforms completely without substance was a misleading analysis in this year's legislative and presidential campaigns. Concrete differences between candidates and parties did exist, one indication of a maturing democratic process. Mass electoral movementHowever, the elections also highlighted a more fundamental weakness in Indonesian democracy, one that may prove hard to shake. Sustaining a trend that started in 2004, this year showed just how divorced political party elites have become from their grassroots constituencies. Unlike in the past, elections are no longer won or lost on the support of local party chapters or mass organizations linked to political parties. Sometimes called by their Dutch name onderbouws, these mass organizations are traditionally religious, explicitly political or ostensibly for other purposes such as youth organizations or farmers' associations. Ex-president Suharto's party, Golkar, was founded on affiliation to many such grassroots groups while outlawing similar ties to other parties. It was these organizations, along with local branches of political parties, that brought out the vote in 1999 and to a lesser but significant extent in 2004. This year their role was much reduced.
Suhardi Suryadi, head of research organization LP3ES, and Muhammad Qodari, director of pollsters Indo Barometer, are two analysts who have detected just such a sea change in voting behavior. "There are no longer any parties based on grassroots activities," they told a seminar in June. "Onderbouws that are not supported in between elections will not make much effort at election time." Surveys have shown that Islamic parties cannot count on the support of mass Islamic organizations to win them votes. Even when the leaders of Islamic organizations set up political parties or publicly supported candidates, only a tiny minority of their organizations' members actually voted the way they were encouraged.
The relations between political party leaders and their local branch members are also weakening. Heads of some parties heard criticism and dissent from their own grassroots members for supporting particular presidential candidates. The Partai Amanat Nasional (PAN), Partai Bintang Reformasi (PBR) and Partai Persatuan Pembangunan (PPP) had particular internal problems, but there was also a marked lack of enthusiasm from within former powerhouse Golkar for their own candidate and chairman, Kalla, who was essentially chosen by the party elite. With such disjuncture between the top and bottom of political organizations, it is the media which now connects the grassroots to the political elites. The political advertising spent for each election is well-documented by Nielson Media Research, which counts the party advertising in newspapers and on television all over Indonesia before calculating the cost from the media outlets' published rates. Nielson's survey estimated that political parties spent 97 billion rupiahs (US$9.6 million) for the 1999 elections and 494 billion rupiahs in 2004.
The total amount for the 2009 elections has not yet been made public, but with the figure for January to March already standing at 1.06 trillion rupiahs, it is likely to be many times what it was in 2004. In some ways, the triumph of the media over political organizations is simply a sign of the times, a more modern method of political communication. But its effects can also be detrimental for a democracy, especially one that is only 10 years old. Without robust political organization at the grassroots level, people are only heard in the political process at election time - anathema to democracy in which the whole raison d'etre is to channel the aspirations of ordinary people to those in power. Grassroots political organizations are also essential to developing strong party ideologies and identities - two components that are sorely missing from Indonesian politics.
All too often, political parties seem to represent the interests of the party elite rather than their members, making for volatile coalitions in parliament and difficulties in passing legislation. Until the links between the grassroots and those in power are strengthened, Yudhoyono may find the political stability he has been elected to provide elusive and the much-cheered consolidation of Indonesian democracy more shallow than deep.
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