Indonesian Elections: Party Hearty

Posted by John

Anyone lamenting the monopoly Republicans and Democrats maintain over American politics might want to visit Indonesia to see what can happen when party creation rages out of control. The presence of 44 parties on Indonesia’s parliamentary election ballot might appear to indicate healthy competition in the political marketplace. But if this is healthy competition, I’ve yet to detect anything resembling a party platform, let alone 44 of them.

It’s enough to make the Lesser of Two Evils seem not so bad.

Under these crowded electoral conditions, it’s hard for a party to become more than a name, number and logo on the ballot. Even the election itself has a logo, an anthropomorphic pencil (see photo at left) that's gone door to door to explain idiosyncracies with the ballot. With so many choices, voters and politicians rely on political shorthand that privileges personalities over policy.

Consequently, each day of press coverage focuses on which politically minded former Army general has joined forces with a former president or a disenchanted former cabinet member. There’s little talk—yet, anyway—about what the government should do to improve public schools, protect workers’ rights, or lift Indonesians out of poverty.  

The presence of so many national parties means a walk through the neighborhood can turn into a voyage of political discovery. In Surabaya last night, I noticed a huge political party flag fluttering atop a building next to a mosque. Probably a Justice and Welfare Party (PKS) flag, I thought. That’s the biggest Islamic-oriented party in Indonesia. Or maybe it’s a National Awakening Party (PKB) flag—that’s the biggest Islamic political party here in East Java.

Instead, it turned out to be a flag for the Patriot Party—a new island on my Indonesian political map. I wasn’t confident the Patriot Party even existed, until I went home and checked the parliamentary results. There they were, those plucky Patriots—hiding in the 30^th slot on the list of parties, with 0.5% of the vote.  As far as Indonesian parties go, it’s still hard to tell the players without a scorecard.

In the interest of bringing this party free-for-all into some sort of order, Indonesia’s election law stipulates that a party needs more than 2.5 percent of the votes to gain representation in parliament. This rule has winnowed 44 pretenders down to 9 contenders.

But the intrigue doesn’t stop there. Any candidate for president needs to represent a party (or group of parties) with at least 20 percent of the seats in parliament. Only one party—current President Yudhoyono’s Democratic Party—reached that threshold by itself, so now other party leaders have started courting each other.  

Under these conditions, Indonesians could get a case of whiplash trying to follow party realignments. So far in May, two months away from the presidential election:

• President Yudhoyono jettisoned Vice President Jusuf Kalla, a holdover from Golkar, the party that ruled Indonesia during the authoritarian Suharto era. It’s not clear whether there were major policy disagreements between Yudhoyono and Kalla or if they’ve just grown tired of each other. Try to imagine Dick Cheney and George Bush or Al Gore and Bill Clinton parting company two months before Election Day.

• Kalla, convinced he’s ready to be president, has teamed up with Wiranto, a former Army general that formed his own political party. Nobody gives Kalla much of a chance, but that’s not stopping him from trying.

• >Party of Democratic Struggle (PDIP) leader and former president Megawati Sukarnoputri is probably teaming up with Prabowo, another former Army general with his own political party. Or she might cast her lot with President Yudhoyono, her once (and possibly future) archenemy that defected from her presidential cabinet and defeated her in the 2005 presidential election. It wouldn’t quite be a Clinton-Bush ticket, but it’s certainly a case of opposites attract.

• A trio of Islamic parties—PKS, PKB and PPP—have served as part of Yudhoyono’s ruling parliamentary coalition since 2005 and endorsed his re-election. Some of the parties are talking about deserting the coalition, however, now that Yudhoyono chose the leader of Indonesia’s treasury as his new vice presidential partner. These Islamic parties each put forth their own vice-presidential candidates, only to lose out to a dour (if capable) bureaucrat.

As if the proliferation of parties and political alignments didn’t create enough problems, there’s still the question about how many of Indonesia’s 170 million eligible voters were left off the rolls. Initial estimates suggested that as many as 40 million Indonesians were disenfranchised. But now it may turn out that some of these 40 million were just people who didn’t vote. In any event, tens of millions of voters were definitely left off the list, potentially changing the outcome of the election.

In addition, the state’s election commission was supposed to certify the results of the parliamentary election on May 9. They appeared to do so at the time, but now there’s talk that they might have to take a seat or two away from a party here, add a seat to a party or two there...

An election with 44 parties, 40 million ghost voters, and a game of musical chairs in parliament — it makes the Democrats and Republicans’ 2000 battles over butterfly ballots, hanging chads and manual recounts in the Florida recount seem tame in comparison.

Three cheers for two parties.