PDI-P cannot be Megawati Soekarnoputri's fan club

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.