What do PDI's losses mean for RI politics?

What do PDI's losses mean for RI politics?

The heavy losses suffered by the minority Indonesian
Democratic Party in the recent election took many people by
surprise. Cornelis LAY, a political sciences lecturer at Gadjah
Mada University in Yogyakarta, dissects the issue.

YOGYAKARTA (JP): The final election results that came out
earlier this week left the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) led
by government-back leaders Soerjadi and Buttu Hutapea with only
11 seats out of the 425 on offer in the House of Representatives.

For many this total defeat was predictable and showed how
strong the grassroots support is for deposed PDI chairwoman
Megawati Soekarnoputri.

Not only have the people shown their allegiance to Megawati
but they have sent a strong message that they are the true source
of sovereignty and legitimacy, a priceless lesson on the
substance of politics.

PDI's catastrophic defeat is testimony that the government-
backed congress which dethroned Megawati, based on what the
government called "sacrosanct party constitution, provincial
aspirations and PDI's interests", was the result of government
imagination devoid of accurate field data.

But is the crushing of PDI a mere internal problem of the
party or is it a revelation of something more basic in Indonesian
politics?

First of all, it is a national political tragedy that deserves
to be lamented by us all. There is no reason whatever for anybody
to rejoice. The deep tragedy is not that the Soerjadi camp has
been morally and politically penalized for an uncommitted sin but
that it is the most blatant proof of the failure of our political
development during the last 30 years.

It is not merely an internal issue for sure, let alone limited
to the Soerjadi camp. It is a reflection of the failure of the
three-party format designed by the New Order regime.

For over 25 years the three parties have fallen into a
prolonged emergency political format, a quasi-permanent
transitory status. They are fragile and devoid of all autonomy,
not only due to government repression and the overriding desire
of certain political actors to control and win elections, but
also because the masses expectations of the parties' function are
incompatible with reality.

If political institutionalization was one of the objectives of
the 25-year history of our political development, we have missed
the target. What has happened has been a continuous political
deterioration and PDI's total loss is only the tip of the
iceberg.

If we think that a fragile political infrastructure is
detrimental to the nation's development and political resilience,
we must also accept that PDI's misfortune is a national tragedy.

This idea will bring us to the serious question as to whether
or not we are on the right track with our party system. Will this
indeed lead us to political maturity and stability, to a
civilized, moral and democratic political society?

Or are we laying a foundation for long-term political
instability which will find its expression, among other things,
in anarchy simply because the political parties have failed to
reasonably fulfill their minimal role?

Amid the euphoria of this year's election, the above questions
have been branded either superfluous saber-rattling or even
subversive. However, we must have the moral courage to see the
PDI case with truly open eyes.

At the political level, it is very hard to imagine an
effective system to cope with the internal and global changes in
the next millennium if our political infrastructure is in a state
of fragility and uncertainty.

On the other hand, with its landslide victory, Golkar has
achieved or even exceeded the wishes of its leaders. But it would
be a mistake to overshadow PDI's total loss with Golkar's success
story.

By doing so we would dismiss the PDI case as solely an
internal problem or even only as a problem of the Soerjadi camp.

We all know that the PDI was, from its beginnings, a result of
political engineering born from a desire to form a three-pronged
political configuration.

As we juxtapose Golkar's success story with PDI's misfortune,
the first step to solve our political stagnation would be the
resignation of Soerjadi and his friends as an expression of moral
and political responsibility for their total failure in the
general election.

But most observers of PDI's development in the past year
believe that the Soerjadi camp is in charge because of external
manipulation. This however we can only suppose, it is impossible
to prove.

From the people's point of view, the PDI tragedy is also a
process of destruction carried out by the masses. This has
brought the whole party structure, and with it our political
system, to a crossroads signposted with many question marks.

It even opens the whole recent election to question concerning
its moral legitimacy, although on the surface it all looked very
normal.

Hopefully the situation is not as dreadful as the above
speculation makes out. Nevertheless, the problems the House of
Representatives will face in the next five years are likely to
induce a headache.

The House mechanisms that have been established for more than
25 years are now facing a severe test. If the running of the 1982
to 1987 House, in which PDI's representation was also minimal,
was problematic, the forthcoming session will be more so.

Last week saw the government and the two other political
parties facing the difficulty of trying to justify the free
handover of seats to the PDI.

As for PDI's internal problems, we may soon witness a new
episode, namely conflict within the Soerjadi camp, which will
again sap the nation's energy. The elite at the center of power
may tear each other apart, while the provincial elite who have
shown their loyalty, will vent their anger. An "all-out war" will
be difficult to avoid.