Successful elections important for revitalization of RI democracy

The Jakarta Post, Hyginus Hardoyo, Jakarta | Mon, 12/21/2009 10:19 AM

JP/R. Berto Wedhatama

For the second time since 2004, Indonesia, an archipelagic nation with 240 million people from different races, ethnicities, cultures and languages, was able to show the world that it could hold general elections that were direct, fair and — most importantly — free of violence.

Despite disputes over the electoral roll, the government should be given credit for the procedures used in the legislative election on April 9.

Different from the elections in 2004, when the people only voted for political parties at the expense of the majority of votes, in 2009 voters were given more freedom to elect their desired individual candidates or parties, under the principle of majority rule.

Nearly 12,000 legislative candidates from 38 parties took part in the elections, with a further six parties contesting in Aceh alone, vying for 132 seats at the House of Regional Representatives (DPD) and 560 seats at the House of Representatives (DPR).

Besides from the huge number of competing candidates, there was much cause for concern in the elections other than the complicated voting system — which confused not only city dwellers, but also rural voters.

People were also concerned about ballots arriving late, particularly in remote areas, the electoral roll being rigged, and alleged vote buying.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s Democratic Party won the largest share or 20.85 percent of the votes, followed by the Golkar Party with 14.45 percent and the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) with 14.03 percent.

With the victory, the Democratic Party became the only party to have fulfilled the requirement to nominate its own candidates for president and vice president in the July election.

The party won 150 seats at the House, far more than the minimum requirement of 112 seats needed to nominate a presidential candidate. No party met the alternative criterion of achieving 25 percent of the popular vote.

In the presidential election on July 8, the incumbent President Yudhoyono won more than 60 percent of the votes in the first round, defeating two other candidates: outgoing vice president Jusuf Kalla (who garnered only 12.41 percent of the votes) and former president Megawati Soekarnoputri (with 26.79 percent).

Yudhoyono and his running mate, former Bank Indonesia governor Boediono, were backed by the Democratic Party’s coalition that included several Islamic parties. Golkar and the People’s Conscience Party (Hanura) nominated the ticket of Kalla and Gen. (ret.) Wiranto as his running mate, while the coalition led by the PDI-P and the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra) nominated the ticket of Megawati and Gen. (ret.) Prabowo Subianto.

Yudhoyono’s landslide victory, which was made official by the General Elections Commission (KPU) on July 23, enabled Yudhoyono to secure re-election without a second-round runoff.

The popularity and strong image Yudhoyono had built since the April 2009 legislative elections, and his position as the incumbent, were believed to be the decisive factors for voters.

This popularity and image did more than any party’s political machine could do to whip up support for the candidates. No significant role was played by political machines contributing to Yudhoyono’s victory.

The PDI-P, with its disciplined and solid party line, was consistent in trying to get its candidate in the runoff, while Golkar under Kalla failed due to the woeful lack of support from the party’s highly fragmented voter base.

Golkar’s defeat was blamed on indecisiveness on the part of Kalla in the presidential election, even though Yudhoyono was considered to be more consistently hesitant and timid.

Due to his rock-bottom popularity, Kalla was busy weighing up whether to challenge or run with Yudhoyono again. Any chance to bargain, however, did not materialize, as Golkar failed to show an improved performance in April’s legislative elections.

Moreover, Kalla could not separate himself from Yudhoyono’s government because a separation would ruin his relationship with the incumbent and wipe out any chance of running with Yudhoyono again.

Kalla forgot that by not separating himself as early as possible from Yudhoyono, he allowed the latter to take all the credit for the latter’s populist policies.

Just as in the legislative elections, the presidential election was also marred by various problems, including the KPU’s gross incompetence in managing the entire electoral process.

The most outstanding of the problems, which dealt with the electoral roll, was finally settled thanks to a last-minute intervention by the Constitutional Court.

The court ruled all eligible voters were allowed to vote simply by presenting their ID cards, even if they were not registered on the electoral roll.

Allegations of widespread fraud, in which Megawati and Kalla claimed that many people had been registered multiple times on the electoral roll, could not be proven, thereby handing Yudhoyono a decisive victory.

This year’s successful elections in Indonesia have been enthusiastically hailed far and wide for demonstrating convincingly that pluralist societies in Southeast Asia can be trusted with expressing their popular will without resorting to violent conflict.

This achievement is expected to produce a kind of a revitalization of the country’s democracy – a means to achieve certain political goals in line with the general will of the nation as a whole.

Such a victory also gives Yudhoyono a much greater chance of pushing ahead with his reform programs aimed at attracting greater foreign investments in Indonesia to enable the country to speed up its development.

The author is a staff writer at The Jakarta Post.