Outlawing nonvoting drives

Outlawing nonvoting drives

Benny Subianto, Research Associate Center for Chinese Studies,
Jakarta

The legislature has finally approved the election bill, which
maintained a clause stipulating that anybody who campaigned
against voting in the 2004 elections must be tried in a court of
law. The campaigners are to be punished with a sentence of up to
one year in prison or a fine of up to Rp 10 million.

This clause applies to anyone who campaigns "with violence and
the threat of violence" against voting in the elections, and
those "who obstruct" anyone trying to exercise suffrage; but it
is feared that it will be interpreted loosely as "anyone who
campaigns against voting".

This is a serious backlash in the process of democratization
in Indonesia.

Legislators have said the stipulation was necessary to
guarantee suffrage for every eligible citizen in the 2004
elections. Apparently, members of the House of Representatives
(DPR) did not realize that since the 1955 elections and up to the
last election in 1999, voting has been considered a right,
instead of an obligation, in Indonesia. It is not like Australia,
where voting is an obligation, hence those citizens who do not
vote are punishable by law.

The political trend of not voting was a big issue in the 1971
elections. For the first time, some political activists coined
the term golongan putih or golput for short, meaning "white
group", pointing to non-voters in the national elections.
Political and student activists were indeed looking forward to a
free and democratic elections in 1971.

When the elections approached, however, they were desperate to
push as much as possible for a democratic political leadership.
The rules and regulations of the 1971 elections game were
unfairly designed for the benefit of the Golkar Party, who,
together with the military, had become intimidating.

Non-voting campaigners consciously and calculatingly tried to
persuade eligible voters not to vote, because the elections would
not produce a democratic political leadership, nor a potential
distribution of elites outside Golkar.

The non-voting campaigners, among others Arief Budiman, who is
now a professor at the University of Melbourne, coined the term
golput for the non-voters in order to mock Golkar, which also
identified itself as a group, as in its full name Golongan Karya,
while it clearly behaved and was organized like a political
party. The golput activists used an empty, white pentagon as
their logo in mockery of Golkar, whose logo is a banyan tree
within a pentagon.

The 1971 elections were widely considered violent, dirty and
intimidating. Nevertheless, the election law at that time did not
stipulate any legal sanctions against non-voters, although a
number of activists were detained and interrogated for a few
days.

About 20 years later, during the 1992 election campaign, a
group of student activists from the Semarang-based University of
Diponegoro campaigned for non-voting. The powerful New Order
regime detained two of the student leaders, Lukas Luwarso and
Poltak Wibowo, who were brought to court and sentenced to four
months' imprisonment. The panel of judges argued that the two
activists violated the articles of the Criminal Code concerning
spreading hatred in public, hatzaai artikelen.

It is important to note that even the election law during the
authoritarian New Order era did not criminalize whoever campaigns
for non-voting.

Campaigning for voting or non-voting in an election is,
indeed, the implementation of freedom of expression as guaranteed
by the 1945 Constitution.

All laws and regulations should be deliberated in the context
of an individual's basic rights. Criminalizing individuals who
promote or campaign for non-voting is not justified, and is
politically incorrect. Criminalization is only justified if a
particular action causes social chaos that endangers public
interests.

Based on Indonesia's experience since the 1971 elections, the
non-voters' movement and campaigning have never imperiled
society. In fact, it is the election campaigns of political
parties which have often led to riots, such as those in Central
Jakarta in 1982.

During the New Order, the non-voting campaign was a symbol of
resistance against the authoritarian ruler who forced his
political will. For the regime, elections were necessary merely
to gain political legitimacy as a "democratic" country.

Any systematic effort to boycott the elections was considered
a political disturbance. Since the non-voting movement was only
successful in attracting the urban and well-educated middle-
class, the Soeharto regime was only irritated by this gravel in
its shoes.

The political atmosphere is different now, as non-voting
campaigns indicate distrust in political parties. Political
parties are deemed to have failed to represent and articulate its
constituents. Worse, politicians in the House simply enrich
themselves, while their contributions to the law-making process
are very poor.

Voters' high expectations for political parties and
legislators have become disillusioned during the last four years.
Therefore, voting in 2004 might be irrelevant, since voters do
not trust any politician or political party.

Having realized that none of the major political parties will
gain majority votes in the 2004 elections, all eligible voters
are now being forced to vote in the election -- a last-ditch
effort of paranoid major parties to gain considerable votes.

The greater the number of people voting in the election, the
better it is for political parties as well as the government.
However, a smaller number of voters does not necessary worsen the
value of an election. In the United States, dubbed the champion
of democracy, the average turnout of voters is only about 60
percent of those eligible to vote. This, however, does not
curtail the political significance of the elections.

The urban, well-educated voters have become disillusioned with
the political parties. The only way for political parties to
convince people to vote in the 2004 elections is to take prompt
action to prove that they represent and articulate the people's
interests.

More importantly, it must be remembered that political parties
and elections are indispensable in the process towards democracy.