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)