Ten years ago, Soeharto’s New Order began to be replaced by the world’s
largest New Democracy. It is time for an evaluation. By 2003, Demos (The
Centre for Democracy and Human Rights Studies), with the University of
Oslo, developed and applied a framework for comprehensive democracy
assessment by senior activists around the country.
Four years later, a full scale resurvey has been concluded. Thousands of
grounded experts have been involved. Indonesia has thus a unique set of
data to discuss changes over-time. A comprehensive analysis will follow
in cooperation with the Yogyakarta-based University of Gadjah Mada. The
early and general results, however, are presented in a seminar in
Jakarta on Tuesday.
First, the expert-surveys reveal that while many civil and political
rights remain at hand, the freedoms of religion, belief, language,
culture, assembly, organisation, media, art and academia have
backslided. The same goes for civic participation and access to and the
reflection of different views in the public sphere. This is worrying. On
the positive side, however, the miserable standard of governance-related
instruments such as rule-of law, anti-corruption and accountability have
picked up. Even if from very low levels, this is commendable.
Another positive sign is that the crumbling of the New Order has not led
to sustained separatism and ethnic and religious cleansing. What has
developed instead is a unitary political (rather than ethno-nationalist)
community with extensive space for local politics. It is true that this
space has often been occupied by powerful groups. But in Aceh, where
foreign donors have so far contained the military and big business, and
where the political system was made more open than elsewhere in the
country, separatists could substitute political participation for armed
struggle and opt for peace and democracy.
Generally, however, politics continue to be dominated by elites. Yet,
these are more broadly-based, more localised and less militarised than
under Soeharto. Remarkably, most of them have adjusted to the new,
supposedly democratic, institutions. This is not to say there are no abuses.
Of course, elites often mobilise support by making use of their
clientelistic networks, privileged control of public resources and
alliances with business and communal leaders. Yet, the interest of such
elite groups in elections is both a crucial basis of the actually
existing democracy and its major drawback. Without elite support,
Indonesian democracy would not survive; with elite support, it becomes
the domain of rotten politicians who prosper and entrench themselves.
In all these respects, Indonesia begins thus to resemble India, the most
stable democracy in the global South. The major problem as compared to
India is that Indonesia’s system of representation and elections is not
open enough for the possible inclusion of major interests among the
people at large.
Actually, it rather erects high barriers to participation by independent
players and ordinary people without high education and immense
resources. The surveys reveal that the system of representation is the
weakest point. The freedom to run in elections has deteriorated most
sharply among all indicators.
The elitist monopolisation of representation is not only about the
exclusion of ordinary people, especially women, but also the
marginalisation of vital issues and interests. Hardly anywhere can we
see substantive representation of crucial interests and ideas of the
liberal middle classes, workers, peasants, the urban poor, women, or
human rights and environmental activists.
Worst: upper and middle class groups who do not manage to win elections
may well use discontent with elite democracy to gain support for the
promotion of ’better preconditions’ through ’politics of order’ and
’middle class coups’.
Indonesia has been down this path once before, in the 1960s, and it gave
rise to Soeharto’s New Order.
Other illustrations include the quest for presidentialism and stronger
executives, a majoritarian two-party system, and general admiration for
what is called Singapore and China’s ’stability and economic growth
ahead of excessive democracy’.
It is imperative, therefore, that civic and popular organisations are
able to scale up their ideas and alliances. By connecting communities
and workplaces, and local and central levels, they can challenge elite
control over politics. However, Demos’ research reveals that even if
many groups now try to enter into politics they are both prevented by
the monopolisation of representation and constrained by their own
fragmentation.
Civics remain poorly connected to social movements and popular
organisations (and vice versa); and collective action is mainly based on
individual networking, popular leaders or alternative patronage as
against broad and representative organisation. Most attempts to approach
elections, parliaments and the executive remain by way of media, NGOs
and lobby groups.
These problems have so far been addressed by bringing people together on
the grass-roots level or by top-down organising. However, unity from
below has proved difficult because of the myriad of issues and
contending projects and leaders. Politics aiming at majorities behind
common platforms calls for the combination of specialisations and
interests, such as among peasants and plantation labourers.
Networking and polycentric action are not enough. Yet, to compensate for
this by way of ideologies, central organisations or charismatic
candidates offering support in return for popular votes tend to preserve
top-down structures and generate divisions among movements and civic
activists.
Hence, popular and civic organisations must instead form democratic
political blocks on an intermediate level, between the specific
grass-roots issues and the top-level perspectives. This is to define
joint platforms, gain wide support and alliances, and foster genuine
politicians — rather than being the victim of fragmentation and
dominated by parties or populist leaders. This way it may be possible to
build genuine representation in-spite of the present monopolisation of
the party system.