Golkar set to maintain its political domination

Golkar set to maintain its political domination

JAKARTA (JP): No major political changes are expected to come
out of today's election with Golkar almost certain to maintain
its rule as it has done in the last five elections since 1971.

Golkar, the political instrument of the New Order under the
incumbent President Soeharto, is eying the lion's share of nearly
125 million votes.

Four hundred and twenty-five of the 500 seats in the House of
Representatives will be at stake in this year's election,
considered crucial for ushering in a greater, more important role
for the future vice president. The other 75 seats will be
occupied by the Armed Forces, whose members do not vote. The
Armed Forces' quota of seats has been slashed by 25 from the 100
it was awarded in 1987.

There is no doubt that Indonesia's widely acclaimed economic
performance lies in Golkar's election success. Golkar is readily
exploiting the issue of a tough 21st century to legitimize
another five-year term in power.

Golkar's victory in the past five elections was conspicuously
different from the country's first election in 1955, in which not
one of the 28 contesting parties won an absolute majority.

The bureaucracy-backed Indonesian Nationalist Party (PNI), two
Moslem parties, Masjumi and Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), and the
Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) dominated the 1955 election.

More than 43 million people, almost 88 percent of registered
voters, cast ballots at that election.

The absence of a dominant party meant there was no stable
government and unproductive debates hampered the national
legislative body which had been created to draft a new
constitution after the election.

The then ideal democracy -- but a trial and error one, as one
political scientist put it -- proved short-lived. In his decree
dated July 5, 1959, then president Sukarno dissolved the
legislative body on the grounds that the acrimonious debates
could endanger national unity. The monumental decree also marked
the start of guided democracy.

Sukarno, who once proposed to groom the PNI as Indonesia's
vanguard party within a single-party system shortly after
independence in 1945, reduced the number of parties from 28 to
only 10 in 1961.

The legislative body was completely under Sukarno's control
during the guided democracy which ended following an abortive
coup attempt blamed on the outlawed Indonesian Communist Party
(PKI) in September 1965.

Soeharto and his New Order came to power and worked cautiously
to prepare another election in 1968, one which would not
sacrifice political order and national consensus on the pure
implementation of state ideology Pancasila.

However, lack of technical preparations forced the government
to postpone the election to 1971. The rescheduling gave Golkar,
the new face of the functional group which was given House of
Representatives seats during the guided democracy era, time to
grow strong.

While Golkar was building up its strength for the first
election under the New Order, the government began economic
rehabilitation. Election was then aimed at giving the New Order
popular support for its economic programs.

The election law passed by the House in 1969 prescribed a
mechanism which was favorable to bureaucracy- and military-backed
Golkar.

It rules that the General Elections Institute and the National
Elections Committee are placed administratively within the
Ministry of Home Affairs. All top officials of the committee, who
administer both national and local elections, are bureaucrats.

It was a remarkable debut for Golkar, anyway, that it won 62
percent of 55 million votes. Islamic party Nahdlatul Ulama
finished a distant second with 18.7 percent, followed by the PNI
which gained 6.9 percent and another Moslem-oriented party,
Parmusi, which garnered 5.4 percent. Each of the remaining six
parties obtained less than 2.5 percent.

The government passed a law in 1973 which restricted the
number of parties allowed to contest the election to only three
parties. They are Golkar, the United Development Party (PPP) and
the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI). The second is a merge of
four Moslem parties, while the latter unifies tiny Nationalist
and Christian parties.

Golkar took advantage of disputes within each of its rivals
following the 1973 law, and scored landslide victories in the
next elections in 1977, 1982, 1987 and 1992.

Except in the 1977 polling, in which the PPP put internal
rivalry aside for the sake of election, the dominant group Golkar
enjoyed a comfortable majority of more than 64 percent of votes.

The year 1987 saw Golkar under chairmanship of Sudharmono
scoring the largest win ever with 73 percent of 85.8 million
votes. Sudharmono was then elected vice president in the People's
Consultative Assembly in 1988 to replace Umar Wirahadikusumah.

The PDI stole the show in 1992, although it failed to move
from its regular bottom place. Parading family members of
founding president Sukarno, the PDI took 15 percent of 97.8
million votes to become the only party to enjoy a major hike of
vote earning.

Golkar under Harmoko has set a target of 70.02 percent of the
vote, after sliding down to 68 percent in the last elections in
1992.

With the election result being a foregone conclusion, key
issues which will be watched included the growing size of the
poll boycotters.

The government put the figure of the poll abstainers between
three and four percent in the 1992 elections.

Analysts have predicted that the boycotters could exceed 10
percent of eligible voters this time, thanks in part to public
reaction against the ousting of PDI chairperson Megawati
Soekarnoputri last year. (amd)