Local Democracy Pains in Indonesia

NORTH MALUKU, Indonesia -AMO

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.

By:Dr Jacqueline Hicks is a political analyst based in Jakarta./AMO

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