U.S. primaries: Government by the people

Endy M. Bayuni, Deputy chief editor, The Jakarta Post, Cambridge, Massachusetts

"If I am president (paused). When I am president". This was how Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts opened his speech after he clinched the Democratic primaries in New Hampshire Tuesday last week. The Vietnam War veteran made it two in a row, having taken the Iowa caucuses a week earlier.

Optimism runs so high in Kerry's camp that he is already speaking as if he will not only win his party's nomination in July, but that he will go on to beat Republican President George W. Bush and win the November election.

But that's campaign-speak.

Optimism is not the monopoly of Kerry alone. When the results came, the other leading candidates made similar upbeat speeches in their respective New Hampshire headquarters, before the thousands of supporters and volunteers. The primaries are still at the early stages for most of them to throw in the towel.

In New Hampshire, Kerry collected 39 percent, former Vermont governor Dean Howard 26 percent, Gen. Wes Clark and Senator John Edwards (N. Carolina) 12 percent each, and Sen. Joe Lieberman (Connecticut) 9 percent.

Indeed, there is still a long way to go for anyone, even the most insightful political pundits, to be able to draw any conclusion from New Hampshire. In the next few weeks and months, these candidates, plus other president wanna-bees, will stump the country, state by state, contesting the remaining primaries and caucuses.

Most money is now on Kerry. But things could still change. Just, until two weeks ago, all bets had been on Dean.

And who exactly controls this process? The people.

The primaries, more than the presidential election, embodies the famous phrase "government of the people, for the people and by the people" that defines the U.S. democracy and the way the country elects its government today.

It is the people, through their participation in these primaries, who determine who gets the Democratic presidential ticket in November.

The Republican party for its part is expected to endorse George W. Bush's nomination for a second term. But Bush went through the same grueling process four years ago to win his nomination.

A lot of work and resources go into these primaries.

In New Hampshire, being the first state to hold them, candidates worked hard to put themselves in respectable positions to take them to the next fights.

New Hampshire, one of the smallest states with a population of just over 1.2 million, is too important for any serious candidate to ignore. Clark and Lieberman were already busy campaigning in New Hampshire while the rest of the pack were still slugging it out in Iowa last week.

As the first primaries, New Hampshire set the tone for the rest of the campaign. Those who did not make it to the top five might want to reconsider whether to go on or not. Richard Gephardt, a senior politician, dropped out of the race after coming fourth in Iowa. More no doubt will drop out in the coming weeks.

The New Hampshire primaries put on the finest display of American democracy because of the intense way candidates engaged with voters.

They held small gatherings with residents in all sorts of circumstances, from restaurants, factories, and libraries. Wes Clark was seen bagging in supermarkets and talked to shoppers. Even the town hall meetings were small in comparison with most other states.

It was in New Hampshire that the candidates were being thoroughly tested on issues because the meetings were small. The questions were often more direct and even personal.

New Hampshire takes pride in the fact that proportionally, more of its residents have talked and shaken hands with candidates. And they take this role of screening candidates on behalf of the rest of Americans seriously.

Unlike in the latter primaries, in New Hampshire, substance mattered just as much, if not more, than appearance.

Candidates knew they were addressing more than just the people in New Hampshire. The presence of the national and international media circus meant that they were also being closely scrutinized by the rest of America, and the world.

Because of the massive publicity, what they said in New Hampshire would resonate throughout the rest of the campaign. Candidates would be constantly reminded of, or haunted by, remarks they wished they had not made in New Hampshire.

Theoretically, the primaries were designed to elect delegates to the Democratic Party national convention in Boston in July. In practice, people vote for candidates. Their share of the votes in turn determines the number of delegates they get from each state.

Who exactly get to vote in the primaries? Besides registered Democrats, unregistered and independent voters are allowed, or even encouraged, to cast ballots on election day. Republican supporters could theoretically participate in Democratic primaries (and sabotage the process by electing the weakest candidate if they wished to). They could remove themselves from the Republican voter registry list and momentarily become independent voters.

Because of its direct nature, the primaries give American voters real power in the presidential election process.

The presidential election itself, in contrast, is indirect. People elect delegates from each state to the Electoral College. This explains why George W. Bush won the 2000 election (by a Supreme Court ruling), although he lost the popular vote to Democrat candidate Al Gore.

Generally speaking, direct election should be democratically superior to the indirect system. This, however, is not necessarily the case in the United States with its complex but functioning primaries.

Take Indonesia's presidential election system this year for comparison.

Voters in Indonesia will have the chance for the first time to elect the president directly. Previously, our president was elected by the People's Consultative Assembly, made up of elected and appointed members.

The power to elect the president then fell into the hands of the major factions in the Assembly. In 1999, this resulted in the political horse-trading that led to the election of Abdurrahman Wahid, whose National Awakening Party (PKB) only came fourth. Megawati Soekarnoputri, whose Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) came first, only managed the vice presidency. (She automatically moved into the top job in 2001 after Abdurrahman Wahid was impeached by the same Assembly).

Real sovereignty therefore was in the hands of the big political parties.

Will the direct presidential election make the Indonesian system closer to the concept of "government by the people"?

Unfortunately, it is not the case.

The power to nominate the candidates is in the hands of political parties that pass a certain threshold in the April election. The public have been virtually shut out from the process of nominating candidates.

None of the political parties have opened the nomination process to the people. They may hold conventions, but these are mostly formalities to endorse a decision that the party bosses have made.

Golkar broke ground by holding a national convention to select its presidential candidates last year, but even here, the process was largely controlled by the party bosses and even if it was open, it was restricted to Golkar's own rank and file.

While we should rejoice at the improvement in our presidential election system this year, there is still plenty of room for improvement to turn our system from one of "government of the party, for the party and by the party" to the "government of the people, for the people and by the people."

The writer is currently studying at Harvard University under a fellowship program provided by the Nieman Foundation.