Local democracy pains in
Indonesia By Jacqueline Hicks
NORTH MALUKU, Indonesia - With Indonesia's
general elections less than a year away,
preparations have begun in earnest. The new
election laws are all but finished, political
parties are now registering and photos of smiling
presidential hopefuls holding newly harvested
crops are beginning to creep into newspapers.
But two disputed results from last year's
local elections have highlighted a lack of
neutrality in the institutions tasked with
protecting the integrity of elections, which could
signal trouble down the road as the country gears
up for what are expected to be hotly contested
polls. The reputation of the National Election
Commission (KPU) - the body mandated to manage the
electoral
process - has suffered particular damage.
While incumbent President Bambang Susilo
Yudhoyono is still the clear frontrunner for next
year's presidential elections, his popularity has
been falling steadily since he was elected in
2004. And with the latest polls showing that 40%
of the population is undecided on how they will
vote, an election management body compromised by
allegations of bias and ineptitude could weaken
the legitimacy of the winning candidate.
The local-level disputes involve the
election of two of the country's 33 provincial
governors. Since 2005, Indonesians have enjoyed
the right to directly elect their governor at the
local level. Under former president Suharto,
regional governors were directly appointed and
then for a brief period voted in by local
legislators.
Suharto's New Order regime
used direct appointments, mostly military figures,
to maintain tight control over the regions. In the
few years when governors were elected by local
legislators, they tended to be more accountable to
legislators than the population at large.
The recent controversies have strengthened
the hand of those advocating less local democracy
after the country's swingeing 2001
decentralization laws brought extensive powers to
the regions. Last year saw the beginnings of a
debate on the suitability of direct elections at
the local level, with a senior member of the
country's largest party advocating a return to the
days when governors were appointed by the central
government.
The first dispute concerns
last November's gubernatorial election in South
Sulawesi. The race was closely run between the
candidate representing the country's largest
political party, Golkar, and another nominated by
the second largest party, PDI-P, led by former
president Megawati Sukarnoputri.
When the
election returned the PDI-P candidate by a
whisker, the loosing Golkar nominee filed a court
case against the local branch of the National
Election Commission (KPU-P) on allegations of
vote-rigging. Based on a few discrepancies between
an independent quick count survey and the official
results, at the time it seemed unlikely that the
runner-up candidate had much of a case.
Shock
decisions On December 19, however, the
Supreme Court, which handles local election
disputes, issued a shock verdict: the elections,
the judges said, would have to be reheld in four
of the province's 20 regencies. The decision was
controversial because the Supreme Court was
apparently only allowed by law to order the local
election commission to recount the votes, not
order new polls.
Many legal observers were
stunned by the decision. "The Supreme Court is
only mandated to order the election commission to
recount the vote," Topo Santoso, lecturer at the
University of Indonesia and ex-member of the
Election Supervisory Committee said. "They clearly
over-stepped their authority by ordering a
re-election."
The controversial nature of
the decision has led to accusations of political
interference at the Supreme Court. Following a
string of local election defeats for Golkar, the
South Sulawesi loss was particularly galling for
the party's top brass. Not only is the province
considered a Golkar stronghold, but it is also the
home province of Golkar's head, vice president
Jusuf Kalla. Speculation of possible foul play has
been egged on by the fact that the losing Golkar
candidate was Kalla's brother-in-law.
"The
fear is that there was intervention from Golkar
[in the court's decision]. We all know that this
kind of thing often happens in Indonesia. But it's
hard to prove," said Indonesian decentralization
expert Toto Sugiharto, who is attached to the
local Soegeng Sarjadi Syndicate think-tank. And
even though the Supreme Court recently overturned
its original decision on appeal, suspicions of
political partisanship remain.
The Supreme
Court was again at the center of an electoral
dispute in North Maluku. As in South Sulawesi, the
November 3 election there was another extremely
close run contest between two old political rivals
- Thaib Armaiyn and Abdul Gafur. In the last local
elections for the area in 2001, both men had been
involved in a bitter clash when Gafur was elected
by the legislature to become governor. But after
allegations that some legislators were paid to
vote for Gafur were eventually proven in court,
another vote was held and Armaiyn assumed the
position.
This time around, what followed
last year's election was a Byzantine array of
accusations, winning declarations,
counter-declarations and general confusion. The
local National Election Commission (KPU-P) was
first out of the stalls with a November 16
announcement that Armaiyn had won. This was
promptly met by an appeal to the central
headquarters of the KPU in Jakarta, which
apparently detected irregularities in the
vote-count. But when the central KPU ruled on
November 22 that instead Gafur had won and sacked
the KPU-P staff, the latter appealed their case to
the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court's
decision further muddied the waters. Released on
March 10, it faulted both the central and
provincial KPU's recounts and further ruled that
the central KPU did not have the legal authority
to take over the vote-count. Armaiyn's supporters
read this as a victory, but while waiting for the
court to deliberate the case, a new KPU-P had been
set up which declared Gafur the winner.
After five months, three recounts, a
Supreme Court ruling, a vote by the local
legislature and the direct intervention of the
central government, the issue of who won North
Maluku's 2007 elections is still unresolved.
"That's what happens if we rely on the Supreme
Court to resolve anything," Denny Indrayana,
University of Gadjah Mada lecturer said. "It gives
an unclear judgement so the plaintiffs have to ask
for further clarification. Each time they do this,
money changes hands. It's their modus operandi."
Democratic
damage While palms are allegedly being
greased, the people of North Maluku are being
short-changed. According to Husen Alting, lecturer
at the University of Khairun in North Maluku, the
politicization of the local population has been
damaging. "Local government has been disrupted
badly," he explained. "Civil servants and
legislators are all split on the issue and spend
their time politicking rather than working."
North Maluku is also well known as the
site of a sectarian conflict between Christians
and Muslims which from 2000 to 2002 saw thousands
die by the hands of their own neighbors. Although
there has been no sectarian overtones to the
ongoing election dispute - both candidates are
Muslim - the area is still sensitive to the
political mobilization of workers and farmers and
the security presence has recently been stepped up
considerably in the area.
The fate of
North Maluku's election has now been handed to the
minister of home affairs, who describes the
situation as "confusing". And with some analysts
already saying that the central government has no
legal authority to decide a local election result,
the controversy looks set to continue.
From a national perspective, both election
disputes add to widespread perceptions about
corruption in Indonesia's judiciary. That could
change with the passage of a new law on April 18
that cuts the Supreme Court out of the electoral
dispute resolution process altogether. The
Constitutional Court, a body generally perceived
to be less pliable than the Supreme Court, already
handled all electoral disputes at the national
level and within 18 months will handle all local
election cases as well.
However, concerns
over the KPU's ability to neutrally handle future
elections are not as easily dealt with. The body
is crucial to the success of both local and
national elections, charged with managing every
aspect of the polls from the registering voters to
candidate verification to vote-counts. In a
country of over 150 million voters, the KPU's
responsibilities are huge in size and importance
to the future of Indonesian democracy.
University of Gadjah Mada lecturer Denny
Indrayana describes the recent performance of the
KPU as a "real problem". "I don't think [the KPU]
is capable of running the 2009 elections, there
just isn't the capacity. The new board is less
independent than the previous lot and less
capable," he said, referring to the seven new
commissioners chosen by the national parliament
late last year.
Accusations of
partisanship within North Maluku's KPU-P have also
raised questions about the neutrality of some of
the KPU's regional branches. "There were problems
in [North Maluku’s] KPU from the very beginning of
the election cycle. The campaign schedule kept
getting changed, as did the election day ... This
favored the incumbent, Thaib Armaiyn . The others
didn't have a fair chance to campaign," said the
University of Khairun's Husen.
In the four
years that direct elections of regional heads have
been held in Indonesia, 169 cases of disputes have
been taken to court. Of those, all but a handful
have made it as far as a hearing. "There are a
number of cases where the provincial KPU have
decided who looks likely to win and then shown
bias towards them," said Lilli Romli, a political
analyst from the Indonesian Institute of Sciences.
Some are more upbeat about the KPU's
performance, including its criticized regional
branches. Jeirry Sumampow, the national
coordinator for one of the biggest networks of
election watchdogs in Indonesia, the People's
Voter Education Network, thinks they have actually
been improving over the past few years.
The central KPU was also credited with
broad success by international election observers
in overseeing the 2004 elections. Nevertheless,
with a national election just around the corner
and a new set of commissioners now in place, the
institutional capacity of the KPU's national
network will soon face a major democratic test.
Dr
Jacqueline Hicks is a political analyst
based in Jakarta.
(Copyright 2008 Asia
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