INDONESIANS EMBRACE DEMOCRACY - BUT DO ITS LEADERS?
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| Prabowo, Anies, Ganjar. Source: Straits Times |
More Indonesians than Americans are likely to vote in key presidential elections next year. But Australia is focusing on distant North America, not adjacent Southeast Asia, the zone where the Titans could clash.
India is the world’s largest democracy - population 1.3 billion. It’s growing so fast that it will soon overtake one-party China. Far down in second place comes the US with 332 million and heading for ‘demographic shrinkage’.
In the 2020 election, 160 million Americans voted - that’s under 67 per cent of the eligible. The US sees itself as a champion of democracy, starting in the 1630s.
The Republic of Indonesia (RI) with 275 million is the world’s third-largest democracy since second president Soeharto quit in 1998 after 32 years of ruthless one-party rule.
In the 2019 election more than 158 million registered Indonesian voters fronted ballot boxes - that’s 82 per cent. Voting is voluntary.
If this participation trend continues Indonesia could overtake the US to be the second-largest democracy measured by committed voters.
There’ll be elections in the US and RI next year. The Western media is focusing on the distant race to the Washington White House, not the Jakarta Palace, though what happens next door could be critical for Australia.
Indonesian voters have embraced their rights only to be let down by leaders creating a ‘flawed democracy’ according to the Economist Intelligence Unit; nations in this group fail on pluralism, civil liberties, press freedom and political culture.
A major problem for Indonesia is ‘the stunted development of a clearly identifiable party opposition’. Small parties form strange coalitions with once bitter opponents, negating their ability to criticise.
Indonesians joke bitterly that their representatives’ principles are 5D - datang, duduk, diam, dapat duit - they come, sit down, shut up - and get paid.
Such cynicism would dissipate should members of the 575-strong Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat Republik Indonesia, (DPR - House of Representatives) - demonstrate altruism, a hope not confined to this nation.
The present president Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo was elected for a five-year term in 2014 and again in 2019. Attempts to get another stay failed in the courts.
Overall he’s done a reasonable job, particularly with infrastructure, health insurance, thumping terrorism and helping the poor. Reuters reported his approval rating recently hit an all-time high of 76.2 per cent, but this has more to do with personality than policy.
Source: Jakarta Post
Slim Jokowi (left) is the archetypal laid-back nationalistic Javanese, mildly Islamic with a mix of traditional faiths. Politically he’s socialist favouring state-owned enterprises, emotionally controlled and deliberately ambiguous in his pronouncements.
He came from a poor riverbank family with no ties to the military or Jakarta elite but has now created a dynasty with his three children in politics. What he hasn’t done is focus on the intangibles.
A report by two Australian academics, claims that: ‘The quality of Indonesian democracy has noticeably declined as the country continues to struggle with challenges to its democratic institutions and values, with systemic corruption and discrimination and violence against minority groups.’
The big ballot will be on 14 February. At this stage, it looks like a three-way punch-up between Central Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo, former Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan and Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto.
If there’s no overall majority, there’ll be a run-off between the top two, probably Ganjar and Prabowo.
Australian academic Tim Lindsey writes that politicians ‘getting and maintaining power … is absolutely a domestic issue – because Indonesians look inwards.’
Ganjar is backed by the centre-left Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P). The name is a misnomer. It’s the fiefdom of Megawati Soekarnoputri, 76, daughter of founding president Soekarno who died in 1971.
British Council research showed 52 per cent of Indonesia’s population ‘consists of young people between ages 18 and 39 years old, spanning both Millennial and Gen Z generations; Indonesia’s youth will shape the nation’s future.’
On paper, this looks like Anies’ mob. The 54-year-old has a PhD from the US and before entering politics was a university rector. He was handpicked by Jokowi as Education Minister, a job he held for less than two years, then sacked - apparently for being incandescent among dullards and proposing reforms reckoned too radical.
Ganjar has no international profile. His politics are domestic. As only the minority elite worry about foreign affairs, he plays on being Jokowi 2.
That means maintaining plans on shifting the capital Jakarta to East Kalimantan on the island of Borneo and building more toll roads and ports.
Human rights were never in Jokowi’s bag and absent from Ganjar’s - not through ideology but indifference. Intangibles don’t win votes in Indonesia.
Certainly not with Prabowo whose record as Special Forces Commander last century crushing dissent includes allegations of kidnapping and killing that should have had him on trial.
Instead, he’s back in with a chance thanks to being given a ministry by his opponent Jokowi and bankrolled by his dollar-billionaire brother Hashim Djojohadikusumo. He chairs his political creation - Gerindra (Great Indonesia Party), with the stomp of Trump’s MAGA movement in every Mussolini-style parade.
Prabowo appeals to the hard right, relics of the Soeharto era, content for the military to fix all problems so citizens needn’t bother with complex social ills.
During the 1983-85 military clean-up Petrus (penembak misterius mysterious shooter) campaign, citizens woke to find the bullet-shredded corpses of real or imagined criminals left in their streets. One estimate puts the slaughter above 10,000.
No arrests, courts, defence lawyers and all that rule-of-law namby-pamby. One US academic called Petrus ‘prophylactic murder’.
Prabowo wants the army, which used to control the police, to expand its power domestically.
If Indonesia reverts to a brutal autocracy the impact on trade, investment, security and defence planning would be damaging, hastening the turn back to the Anglosphere and farewell Julia Gillard’s Asian Century. That’s if it hasn’t left Australian air space already.
First published in Pearls & Irritations, 18 May 2023:
https://johnmenadue.com/indonesians-embrace-democracy-but-do-its-leaders/##
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