Autonomy at local party level urgent, expert says

Autonomy at local party level urgent, expert says

Ati Nurbaiti, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Autonomy of political parties at the local level was urgent given
the legacy of centralized patterns in political party management,
political analyst Arbi Sanit said on Tuesday.

During a one-day discussion on political parties, Arbi cited
the interference of the central board of the Indonesian
Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan) in the decision of
its Jakarta chapter regarding its candidate for Jakarta's
governor.

Chairperson and President Megawati Soekarnoputri favored
incumbent Governor Sutiyoso despite his involvement in a string
of scandals and alleged human rights abuses.

Arbi said autonomy of political parties at the local level was
more urgent than debating the need of local-level parties, which
seemed unlikely given the short time to deliberate new laws on
elections and on political parties.

"Local political parties are necessary but they are not yet
feasible. But we need to revive the people's political struggle;
non-governmental organizations are not enough."

A good example was the West Java chapter of the National
Mandate Party (PAN) which was given enough autonomy to represent
its constituents, Arbi said.

An absence of autonomy at the local level of political parties
had also contributed to the failure of regional autonomy, and was
a basic problem of reform, he said.

Other speakers at the talks held by the Jakarta-based
Institute for Policy and Community Development Studies (IPCOS)
were Alvin Lie of PAN, part of the Reform Faction in the
legislature, Hans Anker of political consultants Anker Solutions
and Lisa Jordan of the Ford Foundation.

Alvin said the main problem with the political parties
included a persistent "top down" pattern of relations with
constituents, poor management and immature behavior.

Ideally members should first choose chairpersons at the
district level; but political parties here first chose their
national chairpersons under the direction of the party elite, he
said.

Party platforms and programs were forgotten, with parties
relying merely on a leaders' charisma, and ethnic and emotional
ties, the speakers said.

Anker said Indonesia must be the only country where election
conferences were held after elections instead of before.

In normal election planning the writing of a party manifesto
would take 18 months, recruiting candidates 12 months and the
final preparations during the election conference itself were
usually held three months to six months prior to elections, he
said.

There are at least 205 parties in the lead up to the 2004
elections, with few having clear platforms. "They don't even care
how many votes they win as long as the leaders get a position," a
speaker said.

The reliance on emotional and ethnic ties worsened the
situation, speakers said.

"It's enough to buy a kiyai (religious teacher) a Kijang (van)
and whether the people get anything is irrelevant," Arbi said.

Financial management in parties was also urgent, Alvin said,
citing the "high vulnerability" of legislators at the local and
national level to material temptations.

He blamed this on the perception that legislators were rich,
leading to "frightening" daily queues of people seeking financial
aid from legislators. There were various excuses, like a dying
wife or a child in need of school costs, while further checking
proved the wife was quite well and the child was non existent.

Without proper internal checks and balance mechanisms within
parties Alvin warned of possible "heavy distortion" although the
National Election Commission may succeed in laying down a good
infrastructure for the new elections.

Arbi said the weak role of parties in democratization was
indicated, among other things, as "its entrapment into
cooperation with forces of the former New Order; its tendency to
use the paradigm, approach and mechanism of the authoritarian New
Order..."

Lisa Jordan, who spoke on civil society, said one needed to be
very clear on the differences of "civil society" and "political
society" when choosing to be active either in private
organizations or as part of the political establishment.