Polls indicate need for party reform, says analysts

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.