Susilo's victory spells death for political elitism

Ong Hock Chuan, Jakarta

The presidential runoff on Monday was a watershed event in Indonesian politics. It marks the day when elite politics finally died, six years after the Reformasi deal it a mortal blow.

With its demise Indonesia now has a better hope to see the transparency and accountability that has been so slow in coming.

Elite politics is actually a holdover of the Soeharto years where one man held all the real power. But to retain that power Soeharto had to have a semblance of a system where the ambitious could channel their energies to move up the political and social ladder.

It was a safety valve and a monitoring system. It laid bare to Soeharto the machinations of the able and the ambitious. Upward mobility in this system was dependent on the politician's ability to peddle influence, which often gets translated into money. Many of them became masters of the back room deal. A wink, a nudge and high-level positions or multimillion dollar contracts are signed, sealed and delivered.

Many of them became to be perceived as powerful, but it was only an illusion. Influence was mistaken for power. Occasionally, there would be a few individuals who succeeded in converting their influence to power. But as power was a zero sum game with Soeharto, they were all mowed down unceremoniously when they forgot their lot in life.

The Reformasi of 1998 changed all that by removing the center of the power structure. However, because there was no proper leader or institution to seize the mantle, the power was dissipated. It flowed to a myriad destinations and was therefore effectively nowhere. That is why politics has been so inefficacious and frustrating to observe and the source of disappointment for those who took part in the Reformasi.

In the political circle, however, with the center not holding, thing began falling apart. But the political elite acted as if nothing had changed. Like stage characters who forgot to lie down after being stabbed a mortal blow, they carried on as before.

Although it was evident that they were losing support rapidly Megawati Soekarnoputri and the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) elites acted as if they would be returned to power. They ignored their own Cassandra, Kwik Kian Gie, when he warned of imminent defeat because of the corruption and weakening or morale within the party.

In Golkar, the wily Akbar Tandjung pulled all the strings so that he would be elected the party's presidential candidate. But for all his canniness, Akbar could not hold back the tides of change and he lost his party's nomination.

The mirror cracked further for the political elites during the general elections. PDI-P saw its support eroding but did nothing to remedy the situation. Golkar was drunk on its apparent success after its disastrous showing in 1999. The religious-based parties fared badly. And Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's star began to rise. That a single man, with a military past, little support and a spanking new party could garner nearly 10 percent of the votes should have sent warning signals to the political elites.

When the first round of presidential elections resulted in a runoff between Megawati and Susilo, the political elites should have been dismayed and realized that people power, a la Indonesia, is here to stay. It was evident that the cozy club of very rich, very influential politicians, their factions and their coterie of factotums no longer held the power to influence the course of elections. That power now belonged to the people.

Yet instead of courting public opinion and seeking the support of the people what the political elites did was to fall back to old habits by making backroom deals among each other. Hence the unwholesome and impotent coalition of PDI-P, Golkar and assorted parties is the mistaken belief that these parties could deliver the votes.

What happened at the center was repeated in the periphery as countless backroom deals took place between party chiefs and their lieutenants in the provinces instead of an all out campaign to win the hearts and minds of the voters. In the end it all came up terribly short.

Susilo, however, had sensed the shift in power and concentrated his campaigning on the voters. His advertisements were cheesy but they at least spoke directly to the voters. He and is deputy, Jusuf Kalla, also tirelessly toured the country and took every opportunity to press the flesh and speak directly to the voters.

It was not the most impressive of political campaigns but I was the better campaign. And the fact that he had not resorted to arcane coalition building like his rival must have helped.

In the last days of the campaigning, however, Megawati seemed to have woken up from her somnambulistic state and traded her natural tendency for reticence for an aggressive visibility campaign of interviews and public appearances.

These efforts helped her to narrow the gap between her and Susilo but it was not enough. The fact that it narrowed the gap, however, was significant and is a hint for all aspiring politicians on how political power is to be acquired from now on.

The political parties, if they are serious about grabbing or retaining power in the next round of elections, will have to begin courting public opinion and support instead of the patronage of crusty old political elites.

This is all good news for Indonesia because it is another firm step toward democracy that, after all, works best if you can get a change to throw out the old rascals.

The writer is a Partner at PT Maverick Solusi Komunikasi, a PR consultancy specializing in crisis/issue management as well as brand communications. He can be reached at ong@maverick.co.id