Political Parties
For many years I have been a member of Columbia University’s
Southeast Asia seminar, a fantastic group of scholars, writers, and a few
private sector representatives. We
recently hosted a young scholar from the Australian National University, Marcus
Mietzner, who has lived in Indonesia and closely follows the development of
political parties. Mietzner is very
concerned that although political parties have begun to mature, they still have
a long way to go to operate as full representatives of the aspirations of their
members. Compared to other emerging
democracies, Indonesia’s is doing fairly well.
Surveys indicate that people are still very confident of democracy as
the their form of government, and as might be expected, since 1998, less
identify with a political party. Voter
turnouts remain high, above 70%, but Islam has become a dividing line among
parties and within parties. Parties
differ in how strong a role Islam should play in public life.
The most pressing issue for Indonesia, according Mietzner,
is party financing. Up until 2005, the
Indonesian government still appropriated funds to help parties with organizing
their infrastructure for the large increase in the number of local direct
elections.
Since then, the government has severely cut its support, and parties are
now plagued by the outsized influence of wealthy patrons or the corruption of
party leaders steering projects or government funds to party campaign
funds. President Yudhoyono is thought
to have agreed to reinstate the party subsidy program but because his own party
would be a leading beneficiary he backed away from the plan.
The Next President of Indonesia ?
Mietzner asked a question that many Indonesians have been
asking me recently: Is the US ready for Prabowo (a former top general and son-in-law of Suharto) as Indonesia’s next President
? Prabowo tops most polls with 20% of
the vote and is considered decisive and disciplined, the type of President many
Indonesians say they would like. But
although his countrymen may overlook allegations of human rights abuses when he
was an Army commander, US leaders in Congress may not. Some have told me that he may be on a “do
not enter” list.
Indonesia’s first civilian Minister of Defense,
Dr. Juwono Sudarsono, told Stanley Weiss, the head of Business Executives for
National Security that "Prabowo
leads the pack because he projects grit, firm leadership and
decisiveness--which are seen to be lacking in our current
leadership." In a September 2012
Huffington Post piece, Weiss recalls a conversation at the White House with
General Wayne Downing, a top counter-terrorism official in the Bush
Administration and a long time instructor of foreign soldiers at Fort Bragg who
said “Of all the foreign soldiers he ever trained, two stood out. One was
Abdullah II bin Al-Hussein, the reigning King of Jordan. The other was Prabowo
Subianto."
There is a long way to go until the Presidential elections
next year. First the country must go
through Parliamentary elections. From
those numbers, it will be clear which parties can nominate candidates. The current system is that a political party
must have members and offices in all Indonesia’s provinces and achieve a certain threshold
of seats in Parliament to nominate a Presidential candidate. It is unlikely that Prabowo’s party, Gerindra, can
nominate him on his own and they are seeking alliances with other larger
parties. Also, the slump in party
identification among voters always leaves room for a “dark horse”
candidate. Even more popular than
Prabowo in some current polls is the Governor of Jakarta, Jokowi, who is not
currently a declared candidate. Others
will no doubt come forward in the months ahead.
For Mietzner and the legions of political observers of Indonesia,
2013-2014 will be a busy year.
