Daring the middle classes

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.