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.