No more 'buying cats in a sack' in 2004

No more 'buying cats in a sack' in 2004

Reforms to the Constitution make the voters more responsible
for who leads the country as they will now vote for the president
as well as regional representatives. The electoral system has
also been changed.

For the first time in history Indonesians will actually vote
for human beings, not merely party symbols.

The old days when the people had to select a pig in a poke or use
the Indonesian expression "to buy a cat in a sack" are gone. The
candidate "cats" will now be out of the sack and listed on the
ballot papers for all voters to see.

The implications of this change is both less and more
significant than meets the eye. Much popular thinking believes
that if the people can vote for a particular candidate from their
party, rather than getting stuck with whoever the party machinery
puts up, "bad" candidates can be thrown out of parliament.
Unfortunately a few twists in the electoral laws pretty much
guarantee this won't happen. Without getting into statistical
details, it is highly improbable that candidate number 2 or 3
will be elected if candidate number 1 is not also elected.

However this is not to say that changes will not take place.
What we will see is that when voters look at the candidate list
of the parties and see people they do not like, they will
actually move their vote to another party with less odious
candidates. Alternatively a party with popular candidates can be
expected to see these people attract voters away from other
parties. For parties, therefore, these new laws will actually
start to force changes in the way they operate. The days when
Central Party Boards sitting in smoke filled rooms in Jakarta
could unilaterally decide who would be a candidate and, in which
district, are now numbered.

Parties that don't get this message and continue to stuff
their candidates lists with members and friends of the Central
Party Board in Jakarta will suffer the consequences by receiving
less votes than they could. The answer for the parties will be
for the Central Party Boards to accept information on who will or
will not be effective candidates. This information is only
available locally. This means Central Party Boards will have to
rely on the advice from their branches. This change in
relationship between party HQ and its regions can support the
emergence of genuinely democratic and decentralized structures
within parties. This will remove the dangerously top-heavy power
structures that have brought about so much party division,
conflict and collapse throughout Indonesian history.

This will also mean the election of more "local lads" and
hopefully "local lasses". While the intellectual elites in
Jakarta will lament this development, which has also accompanied
regional autonomy, they are quick to forget that until now the
House of Representatives (DPR) has been dominated by "Jakarta-
based lads". Indeed of the 11,000 candidates for the DPR in
1999, almost 50% came from the Jakarta region while the number in
"winnable" positions was actually even higher.

One further crucial development will be smaller electoral
districts. This means that to win a seat parties actually need
to demonstrate a reasonable base vote. Gone are the days when a
party could win a seat with less than 1% of the local vote. In
the future if you want to win a seat in some district, your party
will need to pull in at least say 5%.

The new Regional Representatives (DPD), provides for genuine
equality among the regions in a way that the DPR never could.
Many countries have discovered that the provision of equal
representation for all their provinces provides a strong basis
for sustained and stable national unity. Even so Indonesia's
regions' house is constitutionally very weak in comparison to the
DPR, especially considering that it is also fully elected.
Indeed it is the only example to be found by the writer of a
fully elected chamber of parliament that is considerably weaker
than its other House. Even so it is well to note that
Indonesia's constitutional reform program is still very much work
in progress.

The way in which DPD members will be elected is quite
intriguing. This will be a legislative chamber in which there
are to be no party candidates. In many ways a non-partisan house
of parliament is, of course, an oxymoron. We should expect that
from the first day the new members take their seats they will
begin to seek out allies who will support their programs and
policy ideas and also to identify those who are likely to oppose
them. This process of aggregating political and other interests
is precisely one of the core functions of political parties.

Indeed the wags around Indonesia now say that just as the DPR
will no longer be elected on the basis of "buying cats in a sack"
the DPD will be elected through a process of "buying sacks in a
cat"- that is we know you but not your political alliances.

One other issue that will affect election to the DPD will be
the "splitting" of votes from similar groups. Let us take the
hypothetical example of East Java, the homeland of
"Traditionalist Islam". In these elections let us say a few
dozen well known Ulema across the province seek election. At the
same time one secular nationalist, one "Modernist Muslim", one
labor activist and one NGO activist seek election. The election
result here could well be that none of the "Traditionalist"
candidates will be elected while the four elected members may
come from these other four groups. They were elected because
they did not split their support among a number of candidates
appealing to voters from the same part of the electorate. The
legitimacy of such an election result may emerge irregardless of
the fact that the vote was free and fair.

The effective mobilization of electoral support for a
particular vision or set of interests or leaders is yet another
core function of parties. -- Kevin Evans