RI's democracy held hostage by undemocratic parties

Berni K. Moestafa, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Indonesia's nascent democracy will remain fragile if political parties continue to show little respect for the democratic rights of the members of their own organizations, according to a new book examining the history of the country's general elections.

The power of political parties is too centralized and this failure to share will "continue to corrode the public's support for a democratic political system", said author Kevin Raymond Evans.

His book, The History of Political Parties and General Elections in Indonesia, was launched on Wednesday.

Sustaining the centralistic culture was the election system under which the parties rather than the voters have elected the country's legislative.

"Given the absence of direct political accountability to the public, the relationship of politicians to the electorate might at best be described as noblesse oblige," Evans said.

The consequences, he added, could range from voters staying at home during the next elections to "burning down or blowing up their local parliament houses".

But parties also are centralistic because the laws have failed to change this trait, he said.

For example, Evans said, the 1999 electoral system required parties to be headquartered in Jakarta.

The same system also allowed the central board, instead of the voters, to select who would sit in the legislature. Therefore, it is not surprising that 30 percent of the members of the House of Representatives are from political parties' central boards.

Evans said that because the central boards are so powerful, the struggle to seize control of the boards is paramount.

"Failure of some group or other within the party to win the key positions at party conferences tends to be followed by walkouts and the establishment of rival parties essentially working the same part of the electoral market," he said.

New electoral laws have improved some of the flaws, introducing for the first time an open-list system where voters can actually choose the name of the legislators they want to represent them.

Still, analysts have warned of more people foregoing their right to vote during next year's elections.

Members of East Java's Student Executive Board agreed on Tuesday to abstain from voting next year, in protest of the recently passed electoral laws.

A number of studies on the outlook for the 2004 elections have all indicated a similar indifference. They cited, among other things, the widespread disappointment over the performance of political parties and a lack of representative choices, and noted that apathy was higher among voters in cities.

Speaking during the book launch, Evans said anti-party sentiment was recurrent in Indonesia's electoral history.

Although hailed as free and fair, the 1999 general election was based on a poor electoral system that maintained undemocratic traits within the political system.

"The electoral system used in 1999 was actually more or less the same as the first used in the first New Order elections of 1971," he writes in his book.

So even if the election was held transparently, the outcome did little to improve the performance of the political parties.

The House continues to come under fire for failing to connect with the people. Although this time, this is more the result of internal politicking rather than from bowing to pressure from the government.

And while intervention in the House has more or less ceased, the government is also a step ahead of political parties in sharing its power.

Evans suggested that parties follow the government's model of decentralization.

"The current government now sees autonomy and decentralization as a way of maintaining the unity of an organization," he told reporters on the sidelines of the book launch.

Local governments now have a greater say in managing their own affairs, but this has not been matched by the ability of political parties to work on local issues, he said.

Evans fell short of suggesting the creation of local parties, an idea legislators have dismissed due to fear of national disintegration.