T-SHIRT SLOGANS NO GUIDE TO VOTER STYLE

NOTHING SHEEPISH ABOUT INDONESIAN VOTERS

Instead of shouting shepherds and barking dogs, the smarter Australian abattoirs use ovine instincts to lead lambs to slaughter.

Trained wethers (castrated rams) or goats, move among the innocents, gain their trust and then lead their placid pals on a journey from paddock to plate.

Known as Judas, the betrayers get rewarded with handfuls of extra food and wear collars to ensure they don’t get their throats slit along with their followers.

Some in the commentariat, often from the West, think this country has a flock mentality, suggesting there are irrefutables regarding next year’s Presidential election.  These include claiming voters will trot behind whichever religious leader claims to know how to run a modern nation because they’ve spent their lives studying holy texts.

Which is why much importance has been given to the selection of high-standing cleric Ma’ruf Amin as Joko Widodo’s running mate and shield against abuse from the religious right.  It’s assumed the pious will gather at his side and ensure Mr Widodo gets a second term.

Mr Amin has a strong record as an Islamic scholar; whether he remains hostile to pluralism and social issues like homosexuality is another matter. Voters know what he is not - an economist of international standing capable of helping lead the nation out of the fiscal desert and into pastures new.

Electors are also aware that Subianto Prabowo’s VP pick Sandiaga Uno is a former well-heeled banker with a rich past. But he is no Gus Dur, equipped to offer moral guidance to a nation struggling, like all others, to handle a complex world. 

To imply that citizens will chose on one criteria alone is a slander.

During second President Soeharto’s 32-year autocracy ballots were held to show the world that ‘democracy’ was alive though it was then well dead and thoroughly decomposed.  These staged events were neither free nor fair.

Public servants were expected to vote for Soeharto’s Golkar Party; to ensure all complied, booths were opened in government offices.  Witch hunts followed if voting papers were defaced, or backed a rival.

Those days are history and new generations which know nothing of that charade are flexing their opportunities.  For them Merdeka! (freedom) is not just a yell on 17 August, but the right to choose partner, job, dress, behavior, faith - and leaders they hope are qualified and altruistic.

Aided by better education and the most open media in Asia, they hear the multiple voices bellowing in the marketplace of ideas and then decide for themselves.  They can spot hypocrites wearing religious garb at their court sentencing.  They know who owns the partisan TV stations.

There’s little privacy in Indonesia where petty officials have access to residents’ personal information, including their religion and marriage details.  But the polling booth remains off limits, a sanctuary where faith and state can be separated.

Whatever T-shirt the voter wears, once the curtain is drawn she or he can push a hole through the candidate of their choice and none will know.  Even if the elector tells to keep sweet with family and neighbors, it doesn’t follow that’s the truth.

The suggestion that millions will back Mr Widodo because he has a theologian at his side, or go for Mr Prabowo because he has Mr Uno’s wallet to hand, insults all. It implies Indonesians are not independent, thinking individuals. 

The story of Abdullah Gymnastiar is a sober reminder that people are not blinkered followers of religious leaders.  Better known as Aa Gym the popular TV preacher had a well-rewarded career and millions of admirers.  He seemed untouchable, but in 2006 lust ruled and he took another wife; although allowed under Islam, this didn’t stop the outrage. His support melted like ice in the sun.

Then there’s the case of the 1999 East Timor Referendum when observers confidently stated that the locals were happy with their lot and would vote accordingly. Instead 80 per cent chose separation when soldiers and spies were kept away from voting stations.

The prescient British author George Orwell imagined a future where groupthink ruled. That’s come to pass in China and North Korea, though who knows what the people would decide if cameras and guns were absent.

It’s certainly not this Republic where political debate is so lively it shames all ASEAN member states where despots, the military and royalty rule and suppress.

With seven months to go before the elections there’s ample time for citizens to hear all the competing claims and make up their own minds. 

This country is often tagged by outsiders as an ‘evolving’ or ‘developing’ democracy. Those labels are flawed. Indonesia is well advanced and an example to the world. The electorate has matured.

No democracy is perfect - Britain with Brexit, the US with Donald Trump and Australia with unstable leadership show how the system can get tangled.  

Whatever Indonesia’s difficulties now or ahead, most will judge candidates on their merits. The voters will bleat about their problems, but they are not sheep. 

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First published in The Jakarta Post, Saturday 13 October)

ELECTION 2014: INDONESIA'S CHALLENGES

The Year of Testing Democracy

Next month (April) the world’s third largest democracy and our nearest Asian neighbour goes to the polls. Duncan Graham reports from Malang, East Java:

It doesn’t look right.

There’s just 20 metres of posters when the banners and billboards previously stretched almost to the Bromo-Semeru Massif backdrop.  They flutter along a small bridge over a trash-choked drain, and can be seen only from one lane of the four-way intersection.

Other travellers might be unaware elections in the world’s third largest democracy are just around the corner, though they’d be bumped up to date once they turned on TV. 

Here the ads are more overpowering, though only three of the 19 free-to-air stations in my area are focussing seriously on the contest. Two of the three are owned by contenders.

In previous elections the streetscape was curtained and spanned by gaudy banners, the roads blocked by paid paramilitary-style motorcycle gangs roaring support for candidates. 

This time local authorities are curbing excesses, though things may change when the campaign gets underway for the presidential election on 9 July. That’s the big one – the parliamentary seats are a sideshow.

Outsiders often assume religion drives Indonesian politics and society. Faith is a powerful force, but it runs far behind nationalism. Proof is in the ballot box.

The principal Islamic movement Partai Keadilan Sejahtera scored under eight per cent at the 2009 election.  The name translates as justice and prosperity, but its elected members have since proved to be as sleazy and graft-ridden as the rest in a country ranked 114 on Transparency International’s corruption perception index.  (Australia is in ninth place, NZ at the top.)

Politicians using Islamic props like the Ka’aba and headscarf just bump along the bottom when compared to those draped in the secular red and white national flag. 

After proclaiming independence in 1945 Indonesians led by first president Soekarno fought a brutal four-year guerrilla war against the stubborn colonial Dutch. The revolutionaries’ success still stiffens spines.

Those who knew Soekarno (he was deposed in 1965, the ‘year of living dangerously’) recall a charismatic leader mesmerising millions with soaring oratory, but a flawed economist, toppled by the army that hated his dalliance with communism.

His vanquisher, General Soeharto maintained ruthless control of the nation through his army-backed Orde Baru (New Order) administration, till a popular uprising in 1998 when the economy crashed.

By getting into democracy first Indonesia has avoided the violent dissent now flaring in the Middle East.

Megawati Soekarnoputri, 67, Soekarno’s daughter by the third of his nine wives, apparently believes she’s destined to lead the nation of 240 million as head of the Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P).

The party came third in the 2009 legislative elections but the people, not the politicians, choose the president.  In a largely policy-free campaign electors will back personalities they recognise.

The polls are clear; if Megawati stands she’ll lose.  She was president between 2001 2004, but her term was a yawn and she was widely seen as a puppet of the military.

Since then she has been defeated twice by former general Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY). He’ll stand down this year as required by the constitution after ten years marked by economic stability and a growing middle class, but rising religious intolerance. 

Indonesian elections are colourful events.  Literally.  Each party has its own hue. Voters poke a hole through a party symbol on the ballot paper. If no clear winner there’ll be run offs. Overall the system is fair.

Megawati dithers on who’ll carry the red bullhead flag of the PDI-P into the  presidential ballot.  She says she won’t decide till after the 560-seat People’s Representative Council results are clear.

Party pragmatists are urging her to anoint Joko Widodo, 52, the popular Mettalica-loving mayor of Jakarta with polls predicting he’d be a shoe-in for the top job.

Jokowi, as he’s known, represents a clean break from the military-dominated past. In a nation where voting is not compulsory (71 per cent turned out in 2009) only an exciting candidate is likely to stir the disillusioned young and an electorate fed up with money politics.

Indonesia is youth dominated. One third of the nation’s 187 million eligible voters are under 24, meaning few have any real knowledge of the repressive Soeharto era.

The press is now the freest and most robust in Asia, though Indonesians are not great readers and prefer electronic media for their information.

About 64 million people are wired, mainly through Facebook, meaning candidates who can’t relate to this demographic are handicapped. However most users live in the big cities, not the highly populated regions where folk are less tech-smart.

Twelve parties are eligible but only four have a chance.  Apart from the PDI-P they are Golkar, Soeharto’s old outfit fronted by mining and media tycoon Aburizal Bakrie, SBY’s Democrats, now riven by industrial scale graft and no candidate of note, and the Great Indonesia Movement (Gerindra).

This is headed by former general Prabowo Subianto, 63, once Soeharto’s son-in-law and still on a US visa black list for his alleged involvement in human rights abuses.

Till now candidates have needed to be dollar mega-millionaires, own media outlets and have close links to the military to be taken seriously.

Jokowi, once a furniture exporter, meets none of these criteria.  Paradoxically that rules him in to an electorate weary of the uniform sameness of the autocratic Soeharto-era elites awkwardly trying to fit into democracy dress.  

Instead he wears casual plaid shirts and is prone to blusukan, taking walkabouts to hear the people’s gripes and check on the city’s infamously lax public servants’ work habits.

Jokowi has been governor of Jakarta only since October 2012.  Southeast Asia’s most dysfunctional city is again suffering under the annual floods that have so far killed 23 and displaced 20,000.

A survey by Indonesia’s Centre for Strategic and International Studies shows Jokowi has such overwhelming support he’s likely to win on the first round. This despite no form in national politics, or skills in foreign affairs.

Endy Bayuni, senior editor with The Jakarta Post has no doubt this election is critical,

writing that ‘Indonesia’s oligarchs (are) trying to steal democracy from the people.

‘The election may mark the end of democracy and the beginning of an oligarchic political system commonly found throughout Asia. Or it could give Indonesia a new five-year lease to strengthen the democratic government and culture’.    

(First published in On Line Opinion 13 March 2013. A day later it was announcede that Jokowi would be a presidential candidate)

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