Local elections
will be held simultaneously across Indonesia for the first time on Wednesday,
after the issue of whether to directly elect mayors and other local government
leaders spurred ructions, recriminations and walkouts in the national
parliament last year.
Back then, parties supporting President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo,
who had just been elected to office, voted to retain the decade-old system of
direct local elections, but the parties backing the losing presidential
candidate, Prabowo Subianto, successfully voted to scrap it.
Given that Indonesia had just elected Widodo, a former governor of
Jakarta and mayor of Surakarta, as president, the assault on voters' rights
prompted a massive public outcry. The backlash was strong enough to not
only prompt then-President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to issue a decree
overturning the vote, but convinced parliament to boost the status of local
elections.
On Wednesday, 269 contests -- for mayors and other local
government leadership positions -- are being held across the sprawling
Indonesian archipelago. The poll replaces the old, staggered system, when
local elections were staged individually, with 1,027 elections separately held
between 2005 and 2014, according to the Habibie Center, a Jakarta-based
research organization.
"There are 365 days in the year, there are more than 540
election locations," Arief Budiman, a commissioner at the KPU, the
Indonesian election commission, told the Nikkei Asian
Review. "Before, we were constantly monitoring another
election."
The unwieldy nature of Indonesian elections owes much to the vast
size of the country, which includes 6,000 inhabited islands, with mountainous
jungle terrain on large islands such as Kalimantan, Papua and Sumatra.
There are plans to further streamline local elections over the coming
decade, according to Budiman. Among the options are holding polls for regional
and city parliaments on the same day as elections for mayors and local
government heads. In 2014, regional parliament elections took place on the same
day as voting for the national parliament.
Politics and duty
Although
Indonesians were angered by the proposed annulment of their right to directly
elect mayors and local government leaders, the upcoming local polls are drawing
little interest among voters.
"Voters will act out of a sense of duty on Dec. 9, not
because they have been excited by the elections," said Bonar Tigor
Naisposos, vice chair of the Setara Institute, a political research
organization.
Campaigning
has been muted compared with the raucous, crowded and often acrimonious public
rallies that characterized the 2014 national elections, with candidates this
time mostly going door-to-door or speaking on TV.
"You don't see many ideas, many initiatives," said Bonar
Tigor Naisposos, in contrast to the July 2014 presidential contest, when
Widodo campaigned as a "man of the people" and reformer against
Subianto's strongman rhetoric and threats to make Indonesia less democratic.
However, a few local elections have grabbed attention. Surabaya
Mayor Tri Rismahrini has risen to national prominence, much like Widodo did
when he was governor of Jakarta. Widodo is Indonesia's first president
from outside the old political class, a beneficiary of the local election
system that allowed such newcomers to flourish.
Parties supporting the scrapping of local elections have cited
statistics claiming that 321 mayors and other elected local officials had been
charged with corruption. Many Indonesians regarded the allegations as a means
for parliamentarians to preserve elite politics and stymie the emergence of
another Jokowi.
Candidates convicted of corruption are running in 25 of the 269 local
contests, according to the Association for Elections and Democracy (Perludem),
an election monitoring group. There are also concerns that vote buying and
"money politics" seen during the April 2014 national parliamentary
elections could re-emerge.
"The crucial time is the silent period, the three days before
voting day," said Titi Anggraini, director of Perludem.
Academic surveys suggested that around 40% of the nearly 200
million Indonesian voters were offered some form of material or financial
inducement during the 2014 parliamentary elections.
There has been little sign of vote buying so far this year,
although there is speculation it could occur at the last minute in an effort by
candidates to be foremost in voters' minds and avoid being outbid by
rivals. "The 'dawn attack' is a worry," said Bonar Tigor
Naisposos, using the local term for early morning vote buying on election day.
Money nonetheless plays an important role, since candidates cannot
run without party backing and campaigning is expensive.
Ward Berenschot, a researcher at the Royal Netherlands Institute
of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, traveled recently to central
Kalimantan, where he found that regional candidates either work in the
lucrative local palm oil sector or had what he called "tight links to the
industry."
"They paid large sums of money to political parties to back
their candidatures," Berenschot said.
If allegations of corruption or vote buying occur on Dec. 9, it
could prompt renewed calls to end local elections.
Megawati Sukarnoputri, the former president who still leads the
Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, or PDIP, said recently that local
elections impede economic development. "Now, every presidential and
regional head candidate makes their vision and mission for only five
years," she said. "There is no continuity after five years when the
new leaders are elected."
Megawati's misgivings come despite her party voting to retain
direct local elections in 2014, and despite the fact that Widodo ran for mayor
of Surakarta as a PDIP candidate in 2005.
The Freeport factor
Parliamentary opposition to direct local elections, based on corruption
allegations, has been undermined by the fact that the current parliamentary speaker
is being accused of soliciting shares from U.S. mining company Freeport.
"It is clear that the public is overwhelmingly in favor of
direct local and national elections," said Andrew Thornley of the Asia
Foundation. "Arguments against at this point are unlikely to gain
much, if any, traction."
Regardless of public interest in the actual vote, political
parties are clearly feeling a keen sense of local rivalry. One of the parties
that voted in 2014 to abolish the local elections is now "ready" for
this round, Aburizal Bakrie, a scandal-tainted businessman who heads Golkar,
the second-biggest parliamentary party, told the Nikkei Asian Review.
"How many seats we win will depend on different factors on
the ground in each of the localities."
Hasto Kristiyanto, a senior member of the PDIP, said his party --
the biggest in Indonesia's national parliament after it won almost a fifth of
seats in 2014 national elections -- was aiming to win "at least 50%"
of the local elections.
SIMON ROUGHNEEN, Asia regional correspondent
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