Daring the middle classes

Leonard Simanjuntak and Sugianto Tandra, Staff, IMPARSIAL (Indonesian Human Rights Monitor), Jakarta

It is a fact that the current government is a coalition government and a pragmatic one at that, led by pragmatic politicians. Naturally, it is a government desperate to hold onto power for as long as it can, regardless of its obliviousness to its moot performance.

As the general elections draws closer, these politicians are making every effort to enable the current administration to stay in power. At the same time, many politicians on the periphery of government are ready to join those in power in aiming for the same goal. If those in power do have principles, they seem ready to compromise these for the sake of some stake in the future division of power.

Thus, it is reasonable to assume that strategies and tactics for the upcoming general elections are being carefully tailored, both by pragmatic forces within government and those aspiring to join government, but who are currently on the outside.

The nature of electoral politics being played out in Indonesia appears to be based on monopolizing the demands for security and stability within urban society, especially among its middle class -- thanks in large part to the ongoing U.S. war on terrorism.

Indonesia's middle class has been estimated by various sources at between 8 and 10 percent of the country's total voting public. This is roughly a constituency of 10 million voters. Given that the elections will be contested by 24 parties, this is a significant figure. If these votes are added to the number of traditional voters, the parties of the present government -- and those aspiring to join them -- look set to retain the status quo when middle-class votes are fought over in April next year.

To date, various surveys indicate that the middle class is still largely undecided in their preferred party, let alone legislative candidates. The question is: How can the status quo win these middle-class votes? What are their electoral politics? What do the parties of the status quo have to offer the middle class, supposedly the swinging voters of the general elections?

It seems the electoral strategy is worryingly hinged on what we call here a security-and-stability approach to politics. If our swinging voters buy into this approach, then Indonesia is certain to slide back into authoritarianism and another repressive political era.

However -- at least until now -- the middle class still holds the agency of power. If they realize the dangers of voting for the status quo forces, then they should resort to what we call protest voting. This is in contrast to the recurring calls for non-voting, or golput in Indonesian parlance.

We believe protest voting -- if exercised -- could be tantamount to public recall voting against a poor-performing government, one which seems to be using our longing for stability and security as a justification for repressing our political and civil liberties. This is the conclusion we have arrived at after examining the creeping tendency in government toward a return to authoritarianism.

Take the recently passed Antiterrorism Law. This is a law purposely intended to strengthen the roles of the National Intelligence Agency (BIN) and the military -- in particular, the Army -- in fighting "terrorism". But, as many observers have repeatedly forewarned, the law would be prone to abuse. These warnings now appear to be vindicated.

In the name of "national security", a number of human rights and environmental activists in Garut, Porsea and Manggarai have been threatened with arrest based on this draconian law. Several others, including South Sulawesi farmers protesting what they believed to be illegal occupation of their land by state-backed corporate actors, have been added to the police's wanted list. Ironically, these occurrences all happened -- and are indeed still happening -- amid the nation's transition toward democracy.

Many human rights activists have been targeted simply because they have helped to voice the plight of the powerless who have been deprived of their social, economic and cultural rights by state actors. Lamentable though it may be, it is probably only a matter of time before activists of the Urban Poor Consortium (UPC) or the Sanggar Ciliwung are arrested for siding with the poor.

The above cases are not unique. There are many others, such as the fatal shooting in Bulukumba district, South Sulawesi, of two farmers -- who, along with hundreds of others, were lawfully demonstrating against publicly listed PP London Sumatra Indonesia rubber plantation -- by the police.

More blatantly, a case that has received significant attention from concerned sectors of the middle class -- especially the mass media and intellectuals -- is the case of evictions by the Jakarta administration. Yes, Jakartans do crave order and cleanliness for their city, but claiming to be providing this by evicting the poor from their ramshackle homes is certainly beyond any thinking person's comprehension. "Sort out the root causes, stupid!", has, we believe, been the general public response to the Jakarta administration's action. Again, the evictions are far from unique, and occur regularly across many cities in Indonesia.

If this is the case, then there must be something terribly wrong with this country's development strategy. Indeed, we believe that Indonesia's development strategy is one that is by nature anti-poor, not anti-poverty. Simply put, the above incoherent policies are aimed at rooting out the poor from the cities while simultaneously targeting poverty reduction.

This, then, is the backdrop to the unfolding electoral politics of the status quo. The government appears to be -- perhaps deliberately -- missing the point in believing that human rights activists should be treated as terrorists. Furthermore, neither should radical Islamist activists be treated as terrorists. What needs to be tackled are the roots causes of public dissatisfaction with what is still a corporate- or elite- biased development strategy. That is, assuming Indonesia does actually have a development strategy.

So, should we resort to non-voting, or voting the status-quo forces back in, or should we instead resort to protest voting? We recommend the latter. It is worth considering the academic findings of Ronald Inglehart in his 1997 book, Modernization and Postmodernization: Cultural, Economic, and Political Change in 43 Societies, by Princeton University Press.

Inglehart found in his research that the voting behavior of growing numbers of the world's middle classes was based more on postmodern values such as freedom, democracy, beauty and the importance of ideas than on purely economic or materialistic concerns.

The oppression of civil and political liberties in the name of economic growth and political stability should therefore be consistently rejected. A government that resorts to these strategies should be voted out.