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
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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
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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.