PDI-P cannot be Megawati Soekarnoputri's fan club

John Mcbeth, The Straits Times, Asia News Network, Singapore

If there was ever a wake-up call for the Indonesian Democratic Party for Struggle (PDI-P), it was the setback it received at last year's parliamentary and presidential elections. Yet for all the talk about reformation and regeneration, when the party begins its national congress in Bali on March 28, former president Megawati Soekarnoputri will still be the odds-on favorite to win another five-year term as chairman, holding powers that conflict with Indonesia's progress towards democratization.

Megawati's re-election would leave herself as the only old- guard leader left from a tumultuous decade that brought an end to Soeharto's authoritarian rule. Former president Abdurrahman Wahid has seen his influence decline dramatically in Nahdlatul Ulama, the mass Muslim organization he used as his support base, Golkar's Akbar Tandjung lost the party chairmanship at last December's congress, and National Mandate Party founder Amien Rais has retired with dignity to his old teaching job in Yogyakarta.

Megawati has survived on the strength of the Sukarno family name that brought her to power in the first place. But this time around, she and her controversial businessman husband, Taufik Kiemas, will have to fight off a challenge from a core of prominent party cadre, including her brother Guruh Soekarnoputra, oil magnate and financier Arifin Panigoro, former Cabinet ministers Laksamana Sukardi and Kwik Kian Gie, and senior party officials Roy B.B. Janis and Sophan Sophiaan.

Arifin is the leader of the self-styled reform group which grew out of discontent over the way those around Megawati were seen to be using their ties with the former president for their own benefit. Kwik, the mercurial former national planning minister, has frequently blamed the same people for Megawati's defeat in the presidential election and for the party's poor showing in the parliamentary election.

Megawati, still irritated at losing the presidency to someone she regards as a disloyal subordinate, appears to sense a conspiracy. Despite reassuring noises from President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, she has warned of possible government interference in this month's congress, pointing to Akbar's experience in losing the Golkar chairmanship. Interestingly, it was Akbar's failure to read the sentiments of the party's rank- and-file that contributed to his downfall at the hands of Vice- President Jusuf Kalla.

Megawati has led the party since 1993, when it was still known as the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI). The Soeharto government's intervention in the party's affairs led to an internal rift, with Megawati and her supporters breaking away to form the PDI-P. The party quickly became a rallying point for political opposition to the New Order regime, which culminated in Soeharto's downfall in mid-1998. Megawati was elected to a second term as party leader that year, and then again at a special congress in the Central Java capital of Semarang in 2000.

In an extraordinary move for a party which uses "democratic" in its name, the Semarang congress accorded Megawati "prerogative powers" which allow her to make any decision needed for the party's success, including the freedom to choose her own 17-man central executive board. It is those powers which will be the main bone of contention in Bali, with reformers wanting them scrapped.

While they may not be instinctive reformists, the politicians now lined up against Megawati believe that only by removing her from the leadership can the party hope for a better showing at the next election in 2009. But finding someone of stature to mount a credible challenge is a major problem. Brother or not, Guruh, 52, just does not seem to fit the mould.

Megawati has already rejected suggestions that she step down and head a newly formed board of advisers instead. Clinging to the nostalgia of a past era, however, could well consign PDI-P to political mediocrity. Megawati may be founding president Sukarno's daughter, but she inherited none of his charisma and political skills. And while trading in the Sukarno name worked during the dramatic political events of the late 1990s, it grew thinner and thinner as voters realized she was not quite what they thought she was.

The impact was particularly noticeable among Java's poor, who had seen her as their champion. Their disillusionment -- and what was perceived to be the shoddy treatment dished out to Susilo in his final days as political coordinating minister -- was one of the main reasons why PDI-P took heavy losses in the parliamentary election and why Megawati herself was soundly defeated in the presidential race last September.

Susilo's stormy departure from Cabinet in March last year amid claims that he was being left out of decision-making was part of a well-laid plan to reap political capital and put Megawati on the back foot.

Still, it took Susilo a long time to make up his mind. As late as early 2003, according to one confidant, Susilo was still banking on Megawati choosing him as her running mate. It was only when those hopes faded in the mid-year that he finally decided to run himself -- a decision precipitated by his anger over the lack of political backing he had received from Megawati in the failed Aceh peace talks. Even then, however, he refused to acknowledge he was in the running until the last minute. Many of his critics feel he should have.

Megawati's refusal to talk to Susilo since her defeat and the opposing position she is taking on the oil price increase smacks more of contrariness than anything else. Although they might not like it, most Indonesians now seem to understand that the country cannot go on paying subsidies when oil is at US$50 (S$80) a barrel. The concept of opposition politics implies that the party in opposition has clearly defined, alternative policies. Megawati and PDI-P do not. Bali will determine whether PDI-P is learning to be a real political party or is simply satisfied with being a Megawati fan club.

The writer is a former Jakarta correspondent for the now defunct Far Eastern Economic Review.