Democracy not working well in gubernatorial election

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.