Is decency in election too much to ask for?

By Mochtar Buchori

JAKARTA (JP): The victory was expected and predicted. But no one, not even Tony Blair, I think, thought it would be such a huge victory.

When the final result was announced, everyone was astounded. It was far beyond the most optimistic prediction. It was predicted that Labor would have a majority of 179 seats in the House of Commons.

In reality, Labor got 417 seats and the Conservatives only 163 -- thus a majority of 254 seats -- and political analysts began to talk about a "political avalanche", not a mere landslide victory.

Prof. Tony King called it "an asteroid hitting the planet and destroying practically all life on earth". (The Guardian, May 3, 1997).

In terms of percentage points, Labor's victory was not so astonishing, at least not to those accustomed to general election results in Indonesia. Labor's share was only 44.7 percent of the popular vote, much lower than what we in Indonesia, and people in Malaysia, are accustomed to: 63 percent, 68 percent, and next time possibly 70 percent, or perhaps even 90 percent as in Malaysia.

What is so special about the Labor Party in the eyes of the British electorate, and what went wrong for the Conservatives?

Political analysts generally attribute Labor's big victory to two factors. First, the success of the Labor Party in projecting itself as a "new Labor Party", and second the failure of the Conservative Party to prevent division and to restore unity before and during the election campaign.

The image of the Labor Party as a transformed party was instrumental in winning the acceptance and support of the people at the center of the British political spectrum. It was also instrumental in winning the trust of the business community.

Labor entered the general election campaign with a strong sense of being young and vigorous, capable of achieving the unachievable and the unthinkable. It also managed to create the impression that it had moved from left to the center. It eradicated its "radical leftist" image and instead projected what Blair called "radical center" image. What that precisely means, no one knows for sure. But as we all know, in political campaigns meaning is not important. Sound is important, and "radical center" sounds very nice indeed.

Labor also managed to eliminate its image of being the antipode of everything conservative. It instead gave the impression of being radical and conservative at the same time!

And Blair has all the necessary ingredients to project this conservative image. He comes from an affluent family. His father was a Tory member of parliament, and only recently turned Labor. He went to a "public school" -- the English term for what other countries call private school -- and later, like his father, went to Oxford.

The unthinkable thing is that with this kind of background he was able to find his way into the highest leadership of the Labor Party, and managed to "discipline" the left wing of the party, the trade union section.

All these images plus campaign promises that Labor would govern as a "New Labor Party", that it would rebuild a nation reunited, with no one excluded, that it would extend educational opportunity for every young person, and improve the existing health service system -- all these images and promises were apparently sufficiently powerful enough to draw a broad section of the British electorate toward the Labor Party. And not to be overlooked in this case was the support that came from the younger generation. In his victory speech, Tony Blair said it was "a great thing that today's young come back to support the Labor Party".

According to political analysts, the Conservative Party made three big mistakes which helped make the Labor Party's remarkable victory possible. The first mistake was to misjudge the mood of the electorate, misjudge the Europeans, and misjudge the economy.

Its second mistake was to evolve into a party of people with too much self-interest. The controversies around Tory senior personalities -- Neil Hamilton, Malcolm Rifkind and Michael Portillo, among others -- were caused by unrestrained self- interests.

John Major is quite a decent person who has not been afflicted with this self-interest disease. But he is too weak and too gentle a person to effectively control his unruly colleagues. For his decency, he was reelected by his constituency in Huntingdon.

The Conservative Party's third mistake was to enter the general election badly divided. Sir Jeoffrey Archer warned his colleagues two years ago that no party could ever win an election if it entered the race divided.

One interesting outcome of this general election was the humiliating defeat of Neil Hamilton by Martin Bell, a popular BBC war correspondent, who is a very apolitical person. Bell has no political ambition whatsoever. He entered the race simply to illustrate that Hamilton was "unfit to hold the office of MP for Tatton".

He said he would not have entered the race had Neil Hamilton been willing to withdraw his candidacy. Bell ran as an independent candidate, but got tacit support from Labor and the Liberal Democrats. Bell said he had long felt there was something amiss in British politics. People were uneasy about corruption in public life, in which "the reputation of the few taints the many".

Looking at the recent British election while Indonesia is in the midst election campaigns forces me to ponder some fundamental questions.

Blair mentioned several times the word "decency". He said that decency was one of the fundamental values which supported his struggle. In his tribute to Major he also said decency was the mark of Major whose courage he admires so much. Martin Bell entered the political arena reluctantly for the purpose of keeping decency in British political life. And in spite of all the political sniping and insults during the campaign, it must be said that the entire British election was a decent affair. No violence or intimidation, and reasonable opportunities were provided to the contending parties to present their electoral platform.

After 51 years of independence in Indonesia, and after six general elections, would it be too much to expect that this time we should have a decent general election? One without intimidation, threats or coercion?

The writer is an observer of social and cultural affairs.