Political alienation and antipathy rules

Mochtar Buchori, Legislator, Jakarta, mbuchori@indo.net.id

Antipathy toward political parties among the Indonesian public has been growing rapidly. All political parties, big and small, have managed somehow to alienate themselves from the public. This will have grave consequences for the projected 2004 general election. It is feared that the percentage of people abstaining to vote will be very high this time. Some estimates put this figure at more than 50 percent of eligible voters.

Why does this happen? I think the political parties have only themselves to blame in this regard. While during the short-lived reformation era people lauded political parties for their firm stand against corruption, collusion, and nepotism, now they are looked upon as inheritors of this mischief.

Right now people are convinced that political parties will not be able to improve their lives. Worse still, many think that our politicians now have neither a plan nor the intention to eradicate poverty and misery, and to improve the welfare of the people. They are there to serve their own interests and the interests of their respective parties.

Criticism of and disapproval toward politicians have gone so far that many people loathe legislatures and legislators, both at the national and the local levels. In their opinion these institutions completely ignore public interests and aspirations, and instead at times behave as adversaries of the people. There are legislators who are quite aware of this public sentiment, but their number is very small. These politicians try hard to camouflage their identity as legislators, and are embarrassed whenever someone recognizes them as such.

It should be mentioned in this connection that a great number of political personalities have become instantly rich; while at the bottom ordinary people suffer more and more. This creates anger, frustration, and impatience within society. This makes the public, initially distrustful of political parties, but later on this sentiment develops into dislike and antipathy.

The current political climate has made many people decide, at least for now, that they will not vote in the 2004 general election. This situation is aggravated by the fact that some big political personalities have either lost much of their popularity or completely lost it. While during the political campaign for the 1998 general election people rallied themselves behind big personalities like Abdurrahman Wahid, Megawati Soekarnoputri, Akbar Tandjung, or Amien Rais, at the moment there seems to be no single politician, sufficiently known to the public, whom the public considers their idol.

How will the public decide which party to support? Casting a vote on the basis of ideological considerations is very unlikely, because knowledge and consciousness of political ideologies is very low among the public, if not non-existent. Besides, all political parties have, failed to formulate their party's ideology in terms that are sufficiently clear and unambiguous to the public.

We can ask for example, "What is the main ideological difference among Islamic parties?" No one can give an unequivocal answer to this question. The name Indonesian Democratic Party for Struggle (PDI Perjuangan) suggests that the party's ideology is democracy. Is it? Or is it nationalism? And what is the ideology of the Golkar Party, the party that ruled during the entire New Order era? And in what way has this ideology reformed? Again, no one will be able to give a satisfactory answer.

This difficult situation is compounded by the unbelievable rise in the number of political parties. According to one member of the General Elections Commission (KPU), there are at the moment about 240 registered parties in the country. Even if only half of these registered parties do qualify for the upcoming general election, it still makes the situation very confusing for the public.

The only way for Indonesian political parties to draw sympathy from the public is by improving their image. But after they have ruined it during the last two-and-a-half years, improving their public image will be very difficult and will take time. Political parties can only restore their damaged image if they can convince the public that they are not as bad as the public suspects; that there are still good, honorable, and competent people among their ranks. At the same time they must push notorious personalities in their parties into the background, to make them invisible to the public.

Some people worry about the further consequences of the present situation. In their opinion, what is at stake is the future of democracy in Indonesia, and the future of the country itself. If the majority of the public no longer trust political parties, and the people and the society become unthinkably restless and unruly, what will happen? We should not forget in this regard that people at the grass roots still prefer "good life" to good governance or democracy.

It is not unthinkable that in a situation like this people will welcome any change that in their opinion promises a speedy improvement in their lives. Even military rule or any other type of totalitarian rule will be welcome!

Frightening, isn't it?