Democracy not working well in gubernatorial election

Bambang Nurbianto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Political analysts say democracy is not working well in the process leading up to the gubernatorial election in the city as the City Council members have been spoiled with too many facilities by the incumbent Governor Sutiyoso.

They said that because of those facilities, council members would feel they had economic security if Sutiyoso was elected as governor for the next five-year term.

"Don't expect the election to be democratic as the city councillors have been bought by Sutiyoso," said Syamsudin Haris, a political expert from the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) last Saturday.

Syamsudin was referring to the huge amount of money allocated for council members. This year, over Rp 83 billion was allocated from the Rp 9.3 trillion city budget for their meetings. Each member of the council received a car last year, outside money allocated in the city budget for buying cars.

He was commenting on the process leading up to the gubernatorial election, in which Sutiyoso appeared to be the strongest candidate on Friday as he was nominated by three major factions in the City Council.

Separately, Kusnanto Anggoro, a political analyst from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) shared Syamsudin's view, saying that Sutiyoso's status as the strongest candidate had nothing to do with his performance during his current five-year term.

According to Kusnanto, as Sutiyoso administration's performance was very poor combined with his alleged role in masterminding the July 27, 1996 attack on the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) supporters, the public had reacted negatively to the decision of Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan) chairwoman Megawati Soekarnoputri to support his candidacy.

Syamsudin said Sutiyoso was the strongest candidate for two reasons.

First, President Megawati Soekarnoputri had issued an instruction to all PDI Perjuangan faction members of the City Council to support Sutiyoso.

The other factor is the probability of money politics influencing the outcome of the gubernatorial election on Sept. 11, Syamsudin said.

Meanwhile, Sutiyoso's opponents at the City Council were still optimistic that their struggle had not ended yet as three main factions -- PDI Perjuangan with 30 seats, the United Development Party (PPP) with 12 seats, and Golkar Party with eight seats -- were not united in their stance.

Sutiyoso and Fauzi Bowo, the incumbent city secretary were nominated by PDI Perjuangan, the Golkar Party, and the Unity and Justice Party (PKP) as governor and vice governor respectively. While Sutiyoso and the chairman of PPP Jakarta chapter were nominated by the PPP faction.

The PDI Perjuangan faction also nominated Tarmidi Suhardjo, chairman of the party's Jakarta chapter, as the second gubernatorial candidate. Tarmidi, who was paired with National Mandate Party (PAN) secretary-general Abdillah Toha, as vice gubernatorial candidate was also nominated by PAN faction.

Chairman of PAN faction Nazamuddin said he was still optimistic that his faction's candidates could compete with Sutiyoso. He said that all 13 seats of his faction and four seats from the Justice Party faction would support Tarmidi and Abdillah.

He still hoped for support from other legislators of PDI Perjuangan faction, PPP faction, the military-police faction (nine seats), the Crescent Star Party (PBB) faction (two seats), and other factions.

Besides Tarmidi, City Council chairman Edy Waluyo is another candidate.