Polls indicate need for party reform, says analysts

M. Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

Three successive elections this year revealed that the public had largely grown distrustful to political parties and a reform is needed to make them more susceptible to popular demand, analysts said.

Political analyst and senior journalist of the Far Eastern Economic Review Michael Vatikiotis and expert Dewi Fortuna Anwar of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), said that political parties should play an indispensable role in upholding democracy in the country, which has just invigorated after the Sept. 20 election runoff.

"This election demonstrates a very strong popular rejection to selfish political elites within the political parties... and the first thing that is obviously a change in the parties' structure. They must become more responsive to the people's needs," Vatikiotis told a discussion organized by International Center for Islam and Pluralism (ICIP) here on Friday.

He said the political parties had long been detached from the electorates who in fact had shown their maturity and independence in the three successive elections.

The Sept. 20 election runoff was won by Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a presidential candidate who was nominated by the Democratic Party, a small party that made its debut. He outdid the incumbent president, Megawati Soekarnoputri, who was nominated by the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), a political party with a massive grassroots constituency and supported by the so-called Nationhood Coalition, consisting of PDI-P, Golkar Party, the United Development Party and a number of small political parties.

The coalition, which boasted to have controlled an intact political machineries capable of swaying the voters' preference, was in vain as shown by Susilo's landslide victory.

Dewi concurred with Michael, saying the workability of political party system would deter the emergence of a new authoritarian regime.

"In the absence of political party reform, there is a danger that someone as popularly elected as Susilo, can build a direct rapport with the electorate can become a populist president and can appeal directly to the people and bypassing the parliament, and a populist authoritarian regime will rise," she said, adding that Susilo could end up like Argentina's populist dictator Juan Peron.

Dewi suggested that politicians get their act together and cast away their conception that all decisions could be made behind closed doors and the electorates would always bow to their orders.

She said the runoff election showed a gap between what the parties' elites stood for and what the people believed in.

"We may regard this with glee and righteousness ... but on the other hand there is danger here because a democratic system could survive if there are strong political parties," she said.

Dewi said the reform could start from selection of legislative members.

"As long as the legislative members still owe their allegiance to their respective party central boards, the parties will continue to be widely removed from the people," she said.

The 2003 law on composition of the House of Representatives and regional legislatures maintains the control of parties over legislative members. A party is allowed to dismiss its lawmaker who was elected directly by the people, according to the law.