Who will triumph at the polls?
Who will triumph at the polls?
This is the second of two articles on the mapping of
Indonesian politics prepared by Lance Castle, a visiting lecturer
in political science at Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta.
YOGYAKARTA (JP): New political parties are visible and audible
everywhere and the message that Golkar stands for failure and
betrayal is beamed into tens of millions of homes.
Golkar might get about one-tenth of its previous vote total
for various reasons, mainly habit. Conceivably, Sulawesi Muslims
might go for Golkar because of pride in Habibie. If it is true
Balinese society likes to split dichotomously, as some theorize,
Edy Soedradjat's Justice and Unity Party (PKP) might give
Megawati a fight there. (How ironic if that great nationalistic
institution should end up as a refuge for esoteric
primordialism.) To know more about the likely outcome on points
like this, we need more polls in particular regions, like
Sulawesi, and polls which focus on rural people.
So how might the seats divide up in the election? That the big
three parties -- the National Awakening Party (PKB), the National
Mandate Party (PAN) and the Indonesian Democratic Party of
Struggle (PDI Perjuangan) -- which were outside the system eight
months ago, will be overwhelmingly dominant is now axiomatic. I
believe PKB will be significantly weaker than the other two
parties, contrary to the opinion expressed by Indonesianist Bill
Liddle some months ago.
The total Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) vote-bank cannot amount to more
than about 20 percent of the vote, much of which might go to the
United Development Party (PPP), now that it has an NU leader,
Hamzah Haz.
A recent poll of Jakarta voters points to more choosing PPP
than PKB, but this may not be the nation-wide pattern. Both PDI
Perjuangan and PAN can expect far above 20 percent of the vote;
probably above 30 percent each.
One approach at estimation would start from 1955, when non-
Muslim parties got 56 percent of the vote. Is not PDI Perjuangan
now the sole significant legatee of all those votes, and so
stands to gain a majority single-handedly? Incidentally, during
the PDI crisis of July 1996, Megawati's people claimed she stood
to get 85 percent of the vote in a free election.
A The Jakarta Post poll also gave Megawati a substantial edge
over Amien. On further consideration, however, this can be
discounted. The respondents were telephone subscribers in cities,
and as such were more likely than average voters to be non-
Muslims or secularist Muslims.
An alternative approach at estimation would start from the
facts that:
* For thirty years, Indonesia has been undergoing an Islamic
awakening, or, better put, a scripturalisation, the biggest
beneficiary of which is Islamic modernism. Syncretism, kejawen
(Javanese mysticism) or abangan (nominal Muslims) are generally
supposed to be in decline.
* PNI voters, apart from the non-Muslims, have always been mainly
among the ethnic Javanese, the group with a particularly low rate
of natural increase over the decades. Though still the largest
single group, they now constitute only about 35 percent of the
nation.
So who will vote PDI Perjuangan? Non-Muslims, l2 percent, plus
half of all Javanese, 18 percent, plus one-tenth of the remainder
of voters, 5 percent. This gives a maximum of 35 percent of the
vote for PDI Perjuangan.
What about the Christian vote this election? There are several
parties targeting the Christian vote, but none has any salience
to the average voter. Probably what will happen is Christians
will nearly all vote for Megawati, and then their representatives
will form a separate caucus inside or outside PDI Perjuangan,
like the black caucus in America.
The institution of recall will become a dead letter since its
victims require the "nomination" of their party and also the
confirmation of the president. Under the new conditions, it is in
the executive's interest to have a shifting majority in the
parliament.
Frequent references to coalitions among parties in the new
Indonesia are misleading, since under the 1945 Constitution the
president and vice president, once elected, are there for five
years. The frequent fall of Cabinets owing to the withdrawal of
party support, as in the 1950s, is impossible.
Now add NU's 20 percent vote-bank as mentioned above, and the
remainder of the vote will likely go to Amien Rais or parties
inclined to support him rather than Megawati. Thus Amien is right
not to be embarrassed to point out that whoever controls 50
percent plus one in the new House of Representatives (DPR) will
be able to choose the president. (The 50 percent plus one
majority was a particular bugbear of president Sukarno).
Therefore, a likely breakdown of seats in the DPR might be:
Party/Faction Seats Leader
------------------------------------------------------
PAN 148 Amien Rais
PDI Perjuangan 168 Megawati Soekarnoputri
PKB 54 Matori Abdul Jalil
Golkar & PKP 37 Akbar Tandjung, Edy Soedradjat
PPP 37 Hamzah Haz
PBB 18 Yusril Ihza Mahendra
ABRI 38
------------------------------------------------------
Total 500
This breakdown would mean Amien would dictate the outcome.
Even if PKB, as on past performances, prefers a Sukarnoist to a
modernist Muslim and votes with Megawati, that would still give
PDI Perjuangan only 222 seats out of 500, or 40 percent. The rest
would prefer a deal with Amien. Perhaps this is why the PKB
leadership, having done its sums too, is talking to PAN again in
spite of the demonstrated disloyalty of Gus Dur to the Ciganjur
concept.
It does not necessarily follow that Amien will be president,
though his second name means that in Arabic, and though all
adjudge him (rightly) to be ambitious. The new Constitution will
certainly limit presidential terms to two at the most, and Amien
is a relatively young man. So will he not support Megawati for
two terms in a mainly ceremonial role, with himself in the old
Hatta role of vice president and first minister, and then take
over as the fifth president in 2009? That way he gets to rule 20
years without breaking the Constitution. Eat your heart out Fidel
Ramos.
There have been reports that when the new People's
Consultative Assembly (MPR) meets, it will, as it is entitled to
do, revise the Constitution before proceeding to elect the
president. This would involve inserting a Bill of Rights, which
was unsuccessfully attempted after 1965, but could also
institutionalize the Hatta role of vice president cum first
minister, restoring the symbolically satisfying dwitunggal
(couple -- the late president Sukarno and the late vice president
Hatta) of the early years of independence.
A Supervisory Council of representatives of the five biggest
factions could be created to take over some of the sensitive
roles of the president, like high appointments, remission of
sentences, etc., while still leaving the first minister in
undoubted control of the executive branch.
The impression of winner-take-all would thus be diminished,
and Indonesia would be seen as having a government of laws and
not of men. The provinces, cities and districts will have their
own variety of regional coalitions and single minorities to
handle the matters which will be surrendered to them under the
new autonomy law.
A final philosophical reflection is that everyone who observed
the painfully long 1955 campaign thought the central issue was
Islamic state versus Pancasila. Sukarno, not to mention the
Communists, attacked the Masyumi as national traitors who were in
cahoots with the Darul Islam rebels and the Dutch and were
deliberately creating a danger that the Christian islands would
secede and West Irian would never be recovered. In turn the
Masyumi branded the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) bearers of
atheism and anarchy.
The Muslim parties frustrated the work of the DPR in enacting
a permanent Constitution because its terms of reference required
a two-thirds majority.
So in 1959, Sukarno, with Nasution's support, was able to
"return" to the integralistic, executive-dominated 1945
Constitution, so initiating four decades of dictatorship. Too
late, alas, the end of ideology has arrived. Parties demanding an
Islamic state are unlikely to get more than 10 percent of the
vote in June.
Communism, the blighting ideology of the twentieth century, is
dead. Even Megawati is not a Sukarnoist; her close advisers are
unabashed pragmatists. Late, yes, but let us congratulate the
Indonesian people for making psephology an interesting academic
pursuit again. What a bore it was these last forty years.