An Eventful Year for Indonesia

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An Eventful Year for Indonesia
Yohanes Sulaiman | December 27, 2012

With the new year closing in fast, let’s take a look at some of the most important domestic events hitting headlines this past year, and how they may affect us in the next.

Strength in numbers

The labor union might have legitimate grievances in its decision to blockade the Jakarta-Cikampek toll road last January. But it also set a terrible precedent by making it clear that the best way to force the government to do whatever you want is to cause massive traffic jams. Moreover, the government’s unwillingness to crack down on law-breaking protesters gave a signal to everyone that the government would not arrest anyone as long as they have strength in numbers.

Thus, while street demonstrations are not that uncommon after the fall of the New Order, this year marked a significant increase in the number of huge demonstrations that brought the traffic to a standstill.

The problem, aside of massive economic cost from lost time and gasoline and jittery investors having second thoughts about investing in Indonesia, these huge demonstrations also had an adverse effect of essentially stressing the idea of “might makes right.” Rather than contributing to the creation of stable democratic institutions, these demonstrations make a mockery of the rule of law and proper channels for grievances — the courts and the legislature.

Of course the blame goes both ways. It could be argued that people were forced to hit the streets as the government, the court system and the parliament were notoriously unresponsive to people’s concerns about economic injustices and bad policies, undermining the people’s trust in the first place. It could also be easily argued the government was unable to communicate its policies effectively with the people, making it easy for the provocateurs to whip up public sentiment to the detriment of government policies.

Either way, the toll road blockade marked a complete collapse of public trust in the government and the government’s ineffectual response to the blockade set a bad precedent for years to come.

‘Shock therapy’

The unlikely victory of Joko Widodo and Basuki T. Purnama in the Jakarta gubernatorial election jolted both regular Indonesians and the political elite alike. Apparently a pair of candidates with good track records could beat the establishment candidates backed by the political parties and their money machines.

This campaign also marked the power of the Internet, especially social media, in Indonesian elections. A strong, enthusiastic grassroots support could provide a strong countermeasure to ugly black campaigns that tried to bring up the divisive issues of ethnicity, race and religion.

More importantly, this election also stressed the need for the candidates to maintain self-discipline to win the race. We saw how Nachrowi Ramli self-destructed on national television during the gubernatorial debate. That, in essence, gave the election away to Jokowi-Ahok, despite Fauzi Bowo’s own respectable performance in the debate.

After the election, given the public’s high expectations of the victorious pair, Jokowi-Ahok also perform remarkably well. In spite of some complaints regarding Jokowi’s predilection to travel a lot, visiting Jakarta’s kampongs, and Ahok’s anger management problem, people remain ecstatic as the two manage to show the public that they are working hard to solve Jakarta’s massive problems.

The pair also enjoyed national adoration as Indonesians were supporting their  “shock therapy” — well-deserved public humiliation of what people saw as arrogant and out-of-touch bureaucrats. Not surprisingly, the two are possibly the most popular politicians in Indonesia today, though the sentiment seems not to be shared by many of Jakarta’s local parliamentarians or bureaucrats that are on the receiving edge of the “shock therapy.”

Angelina and the Democrats

Muhammad Nazaruddin’s claims of massive corruption within the ruling Democratic Party was vindicated with the arrest and trial of Angelina Sondakh over the  long-running Southeast Asian Games athletes village bribery scandal.

After the indictment of Angelina, more and more people were implicated in the scandal, including Andi Mallarangeng, the sports and youth affairs minister, who decided to leave both the ministry and the Democratic Party early this month.

While Andi’s guilt is not certain, the indictment of so many parliamentarians and other Democrats has put the party on the defensive. Opinion polls suggest people no longer trust the party’s commitment to eradicate corruption and many will abandon it ahead of the 2014 elections.

With the electoral field wide open, there are possibilities that small parties, especially Prabowo Subianto’s Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra), which already received a significant boost for backing Jokowi-Ahok, could reap the benefits, as people are looking for figures seen as decisive enough to combat massive corruption.

KPK under fire

This year is also marked by a concerted assault on the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) — by both lawmakers and the police force. First, the parliament decided to release the draft of the revised KPK law that would significantly curtail some of the KPK’s powers, notably its ability to conduct wiretaps on suspected corruptors and their accomplices and to prosecute corruptors. The draft also called for the creation of a KPK Supervisory Council, whose members were selected by the parliament itself. Many believed that the council would in the end meddle with the KPK’s affairs so much that the commission would be made irrelevant.

Later, the police, angered over a KPK investigation into the driving simulator procurement graft case, attempted to arrest Novel Baswedan, the head of the KPK’s investigation team, over an old, dubious case. When that didn’t work, the police decided to pull their investigators from the KPK, significantly weakening its ability to investigate corruption cases.

The public uproar over this case was such that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was forced to step into the fray to stress his support for the KPK. By staking his reputation on this, however, the embattled president will receive the lion’s share of the blame should the KPK end up emasculated. And that will harm his ability to influence the election to pick his successor in 2014.

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Normalaatsra

4:06pm Dec 27, 2012

And FPIxMUI are not mentioned.

Yohanes-Sulaiman

5:19pm Dec 27, 2012

...and that stupid sandal trial, etc., etc.,etc. Some of them due to the lack of space. But, the goal of the article is to identify four most important events of 2012 -- and nNothing new about MUI and FPI -- they have caused troubles for years and years already and especially the latter, the government never develops enough backbone to tackle them. Not that they are unimportant, but nothing "new" about them in 2012. That's all.

GlobalCitizen

1:12am Feb 28, 2013

FPI and MUI are nothing but organization of terrorists who promote terrorism. Period! They are hiding behind the religion while actually they tarnish the religion like hell.

On the Campaign Trail, Image Rules

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On the Campaign Trail, Image Rules
Yohanes Sulaiman | November 13, 2012

"Candidates should cherish controlled dissent, allowing people in the campaign to critically analyze whether their candidate is truly on the path to victory."

The election circus in the United States has come to an end, but that in Indonesia — which will have its own presidential poll in less than two years — is only just beginning. The field here remains wide open, with many surveys indicating that the majority of voters still don’t know any of the possible the candidates well — let alone would be able to decide whom to vote for. But for Indonesian presidential aspirants there are important lessons to be learnt from the US presidential election.

Lesson No. 1 is that money — although always nice to have — cannot buy everything if competitors also have plenty of it. As the Republicans found out, regardless of all the talk of their donors willingly donating millions of dollars through political action committees to defeat President Barack Obama, the Democrats in the end managed to match the massive Republican war chest.

While money is still important, because you need it to build a campaigning infrastructure and for political advertising, with the cash-stalemate going on, the next election in Indonesia will be fought down in the trenches.

Candidates’ personal rapport with regular Indonesians, effective use of social media to spread campaign messages, generating voter turnout and enthusiasm, and political messaging will be crucial. Here Obama’s campaign performed much better than Mitt Romney’s. The Obama campaign convinced enough people to cast their votes, which allowed them to win the election.

Given that all the presumptive candidates in the next Indonesian election have deep pockets or at least are backed by generous billionaires, it is simply impossible that any particular candidate will be able to dominate the airwaves. Vote-buying will be difficult too, because there will be other bidders, which causes prices to rise.

As the recent Jakarta gubernatorial election shows, even though Governor Fauzi Bowo had seven times more money in his war chest than his challenger Joko Widodo, in the end Jokowi emerged the winner simply because Jokowi could generate more enthusiasm.

This brings us to lesson No. 2, which is to define yourself and your opponents as soon as possible. As Romney painfully found out, once Obama and his supporters managed to define him as an uncaring billionaire born with a silver spoon in his mouth, it was very difficult to overcome such a caricature. Each misstep was then used to reinforce the image of an out-of-touch political opportunist.

In the meantime, Romney was also unable to answer to Obama’s negative campaign messages and to sell himself to make the voters think they did know him, which would make them more passionate in supporting him. While Romney’s superior performance in his first debate managed to create some momentum, it could not defeat months of bad news and negative campaigns. So in the end, he lost.

With the majority of the voters in the next Indonesian presidential election being, at least until now, undecided and unfamiliar with the candidates, it is imperative that they quickly define and sell themselves to the voters and try to address any perceived weaknesses. Candidates should not assume that, for instance, by simply wearing Jokowi’s checkered shirt they could emulate Jokowi’s success. Jokowi had his own accomplishments as mayor of Solo to boast and he built upon it an image of a competent reformer and Mr. Fix-it-all, which led to outright Jokowi-mania.

Candidates clearly have to educate voters about their accomplishments, their plans, and their familiarity with the important issues. But more importantly, they need to be prepared and maintain discipline to prevent gaffes that could be used to sink their campaigns.

Candidates therefore should not surround themselves with yes-men and pollsters only interested in keeping their clients happy and keeping their contracts. That is one of the main reasons why Romney’s campaign crashed and burned. With the campaign insulated from bad news and aides unwilling to strongly challenge what they thought were bad decisions, it could not react and take quick and decisive action to prevent damage from spreading.

Candidates should cherish controlled dissent, allowing people in the campaign to critically analyze whether their candidate is truly on the path to victory. Without dissent, any campaign is doomed.