Transcript Challenges Ahead - International Association of Political

Democracy:
the Indonesian Experience
Ginandjar Kartasasmita
Chairman, House of Regional Representatives
of the Republic of Indonesia
40th World Annual Conference
International Association of Political Consultants (IAPC)
Denpasar-Indonesia, November 13th 2007
Introduction
Indonesia is emerging from long period of
authoritarian rule to consolidate its status as
one of the world’s largest democratic country.
 Although Indonesia has not been on “the road
to democracy,” for long, there is much that has
been achieved for which many citizens may be
proud.
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Introduction . . .
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Democracy has already rooted and become
“the only game in town”, although it still
faces various challenges and yet to prove to
be the best—if not the only—way to
creating the conditions for sustainable
development and enhancement of people’s
welfare.
This presentation is an attempt to highlight
salient aspects of, and draw some lessons,
from Indonesia’s experience in democracy.
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The Indonesian Archipelago
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a country of 220 million (as of 2005),
an archipelago strung 5000 kilometers along the equator.
more than 13,000 islands, 5,000 are inhabited.
more than 200 ethnic groups and 350 languages and dialects.
85 to 90% are Muslims.
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Regime Change in Indonesia
Sukarno
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Suharto
August 1945 - March
1968
Elected by the PPKI
Impeached by MPRS
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Abdurrahman Wahid
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B.J. Habibie
October 1999 – July
2001
Elected by MPR
Impeached by MPR
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Megawati
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May 1998-October 1999
Accountability Speech
Rejected
Declined to run for
President
Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono
July 2001 – October
2004
Elected by MPR
Lost election to SBY
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March 1968 - May 1998
Elected by MPRS
Resigned under pressure
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October 2004 – 2009
Directly elected
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Development Trilogy
Stability
Growth
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Equity
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Political stability
The military, the bureaucracy and Golkar (the
government party) constituted the political pillars
of the New Order.
 Two other political parties were allowed to exist,
but were politically constrained.
 The floating mass concept (depolitization of the
masses) constituted an important aspect of the
political strategy to sustain long-term political
stability.
 The political system had produced the intended
result: political stability that had endured for
three decades, sustaining economic growth which
in turn further reinforced its claim to legitimacy.
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Economic Development
With political stability assured, the Soeharto
Government earnestly embarked on
economic development, which was widely
considered as successful using various
standard of measurements.
 It all ended with the 1997 financial crisis.
The economy crumbled under the weight of
the crisis, followed by popular movement
against the Soeharto regime.
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Huntington maintains that a social scientist who wished
to predict future democratization “would have done
reasonably well if he simply fingered the non-democratic
countries in the $1,000-$3,000 (GNP per capita)
transition zone” (1991: 63).
Further studies, in particular an extensive quantitative
research and analysis done by Przeworsky et.al. (2000:
92) has lent support to Huntington’s threshold argument.
In 1996, the year before the economic crisis swept
Indonesia, its GNP per capita had reached $1,155.
According to Huntington’s theory, at that stage
Indonesia had entered the transition zone, which meant
that eventually sooner or later political change would
happen.
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Constitutional Reform
The democratization process in Indonesia,
although triggered by the 1997/1998 economic
crisis, has been undertaken relatively peacefully
in conjunction with the reform of the
constitution.
 The weaknesses in the constitution contributed
heavily to the concentration and abuse of power,
the lack of law and order, shallow citizen
representation, opacity of governance, and the
high incidence of human rights abuses.
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Constitutional reform . . .
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The constitution was written in a very broad and
general way. It has only 37 articles and 6 transitory
provisions.
There is strength to the way it was written that
makes the constitution flexible and easily adaptable.
The weakness is that it is so broad, general and
flexible, that it can be—and has been—interpreted in
different ways.
It gives a lot of room to the incumbent president to
maneuver and concentrate power in his or her
hands, as history has shown with Indonesia’s first
and second presidents.
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The amendment process
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The
The
The
The
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First Amendment 1999
Second Amendment 2000
Third Amendment 2001
Fourth Amendment 2002
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A term limit of two consecutive five-year
terms.
 Returned the power of legislation to
parliament.
 Decentralization and regional autonomy.
 The separation of the police from the
military.
 A new section on human rights was
constituted that incorporated statements
from the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights.
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Provides for direct election by the people of the
president and the vice president as a ticket.
To be elected, the candidate will have to get more than
50% of the popular vote with at least 20% of the vote in
at least half of all the provinces.
Sets out rules and procedures for the impeachment of
the president.
The parliament can only propose that the president be
impeached after requesting that the (the newly
established) Constitutional Court examine the charges
against the president and after receiving from the court
a finding that the president is guilty as charged.
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Appointments of the members of the Supreme Court by the
president have to be proposed by a newly constituted
independent judicial commission, and approved by the
parliament.
 In a major structural change to the legislative body, although
Indonesia remains a unitarian state, the third amendment
constituted a bicameral system of representation.
 It established the House of Regional Representatives (Dewan
Perwakilan Daerah-DPD), representing each of the provinces
equally, similar to the US Senate.

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Stipulates universal government-sponsored
primary education, minimum aggregate
education spending of 20% from the national
government and regional government’s budget,
 Incorporates clauses on social justice and
environmental protection.
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Strengthening the Political
Institutions
 All
political offices are elected through
general elections:
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President and Vice President;
Member of both house of parliaments, and
regional councils;
Governors, Bupati (District Heads), Majors,
Village Heads.
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All important political appointees—except
members of the cabinet—have to be confirmed
by the parliament; i.e.:
Chiefs of the Military and Police;
 Supreme and Constitutional Court Justices;
 Governor and Deputy Governor of the Central
Bank.

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Members of national commissions such as:
Anti corruption;
 Judicial;
 Elections;
 Fair business competition;
 Ambassadors from and to Indonesia;
 Human rights;

have to be confirmed by the parliament.
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Political Parties
One of the basic requirements or institutions in a
democracy is the existence of a free and active political
parties to represent the people in the governance of a
nation.
 In 2004 elections, 24 political participated, 17 parties
won seats in the parliament.
 Indonesia is gearing for the next general election in
2009.
 The law for parliamentary elections is being deliberated
in the parliament.
 Among the crucial issues are the redrawing of the
voting constituencies and the party threshold in
parliament.
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Civil Society . . .
Indonesia's civil society has grown in recent years and
has played a role in the political change.
 However, as a real countervailing force to the state, it is
still weak.
 Not only is it a relatively new concept in Indonesia's
polity, and thus yet to mature, the quality of the people
who are attracted to join it does civil society little good.
 Only recently has civil society attracted better-qualified
people from among the graduates of top universities
and among the top ranks.
 In the past, this class of young people was more
attracted to the bureaucracy, the academia, business
and even the military.
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The rise of the middle class . . .
At that stage the Indonesian middle class political attitude
was not necessarily anti-government; in fact until the end of
the 1980s the majority of the middle class who owed their
economic advancement to the government’s development
efforts believed in the government’s development creed and
strongly favored political stability.
 By the mid-1990s the Indonesian middle class had reached
the “critical mass” in number as well as in resources to play a
significant role at political change. And they had increasingly
become critical of the government; their writings, plays and
discourses had provided for intellectual inspiration towards
democratization.
 They have now become the backbone of Indonesia’s civil
society as well as filling the growing demand for intellectual
professional members of political parties.
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Decentralization
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One of the challenges facing Indonesia is keeping the
country united.
The threat of separation has always plagued the country
since the first days of independence.
One of the main grievance is income and regional
disparity. It is a complex problem and would take time
and effort to resolve, but at the heart of the problem
was the overly centralized government structure and
decision making process.
Devolvement of central authority should be the first step
toward addressing the problem.
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The Role of Islam
The threat to the unity and integrity of the country has
recently been perceived as not only to come from ethnic or
regional separatism but also from fundamental and political
Islam. Many have speculated about the political implication of
the rise of the social standing of Islam in Indonesia.
 In actuality, however, Indonesian Islam is embedded in a
culture of tolerance that can be traced back to the history of
Islamization of the archipelago.
 Islam originally came to Indonesia and religiously "conquered"
the people not through war, but through trade, marriage and
education.
 Hence the absorption of Islam by the societies in this vast
archipelago was generally peaceful and involved little
coercion.

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The Role of Islam . . .
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In fact, in the propagation of Islam there was a tendency
to adjust the new religion to older beliefs that resulted in
moderate and tolerant—some may say syncretic—
attitudes among the majority of Indonesian Muslims.
It is true that fundamentalist Islamic groups, some of
them militant, do exist in Indonesia, but they are
marginal and have little popular support.
Despite the recurrence of incidents involving some
Islamic extremists, for many years, Indonesia, the
country with the largest Muslim population in the world,
has been well known as a pluralistic society
characterized by religious moderation and tolerance.
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The Role of Islam . . .
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The September 11 act of terrorism against the US was
almost unanimously condemned by organized Muslims and
by the public in general.
Except for a few very vocal fanatics, Indonesia's Muslims
were outraged by with happened in New York.
The feeling of outrage against terrorism that had taken the
lives of innocent people was heightened when Indonesia
also became a victim of international terrorism with the
bombing in Bali on 12 October 2002, the more recent
Marriot bombing in Jakarta on 5 August 2002, and the
second Bali Bombing in 2005.
For many Indonesian Muslims, terrorism had only
succeeded in creating the wrong image of Islam and
Islamic values.
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The Role of the Military
Observers of Indonesia have paid much attention to the role of
the military in post-New Order politics and how the military
perceive its role in democracy.
 Events surrounding the fall of Soeharto showed that the military
had been supportive of political change. Its role was crucial in
the peaceful transition from an authoritarian regime to real
democracy.
 In the political transition period, the military lent its political
weight to the institutionalization of democracy, that dismantled
the old authoritarian structures and replaced it with a democratic
system.
 The military has shown its commitment to democracy when it
accepted the consensus of the polity that it should no longer
take an active role in politics and therefore no longer hold seats
in the elective political institutions.
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The Role of the Military . . .
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In the post-Soeharto period, the military had been
steadfast in refusing to be used as an instrument to
subvert the constitution and resisted the pressure to
reverse to authoritarianism.
Although many retired senior officers were against
changing the constitution, the serving military
establishment fully supported the amendments that have
become the foundation for a stronger and more stable
democracy.
Therefore it is safe to say that at present the military is
not a threat-but an asset to Indonesia's democracy.
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Economic Performance

After the dramatic economic, political and social
upheavals at the end of the 1990s, Indonesia has started
to regain its footing. The country has largely recovered
from the economic crisis that threw millions of its
citizens back into poverty in 1998 and saw Indonesia
regress to low-income status.

Recently with GNP per capita of $1280 (2005), it has
once again become one of the world's emergent middleincome countries. Poverty levels that had increased by
over one-third during the crisis are now back to precrisis levels.
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Poverty in Indonesia fell rapidly until the 1990s,
and has declined again since the crisis
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Positive Growth Trajectory
Sustained economic growth despite difficult environment

Economy is on a steady upward
trend. Indonesia’s performance
is very much comparable in the
region
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Over the medium term, this
acceleration process should
continue assuming that all
reform programs are
implemented.

The Indonesia’s economy is still
fragile and sensitive to external
shocks (financial turbulence,
high oil price, etc)
> 7%
6-7%
5-6%
5.25 %
4%
2001-2003 2004-2005
Source: CBS
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2006
2007 - 2009 2010 beyond
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Does culture matter?
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All the discussions on democracy are based on the
works of western scholars. Is democracy a
monopoly of the west? Are there no cultural variants
of democracy? On the other hand, is culture a
legitimate (or genuine) justification or merely an
excuse (or apology) for authoritarianism?
Indonesia, under both Sukarno and Soeharto
insisted that culture was indeed the distinctive
variable of any political system, and launched
concepts for the political systems that would
respond best to what they claimed to be the intrinsic
values characterizing Indonesia’s society.
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Does culture matter? . . .
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Lee Kwan Yew, the former Prime Minister of Singapore,
the founding father of the country and its political
architect, has been making a very strong case about the
Asian values as an important element in the political
system of the East Asian countries. He believes that
adversarial politics is out of place in a multiracial society
such as Singapore.
Many scholarly works have been devoted on the subject
of cultural paradoxes in democracy; most concluded that
indeed culture exerts a certain influence on how
democracy is adapted among countries (see Alagappa,
1996; Fukuyama, 1996; Lipset, 1996; Huntington, 1996:
Inglehart, 2000; Sen, 2001).
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Conclusion
In conclusion, much has been achieved, but even more
remains to be done. The past few years have been extremely
eventful for Indonesia.
 Following the maelstrom of political, economic and social
crises, economic stability has now returned though the
economy has not returned to the heady levels of the boom
years.
 Most significantly of all, the country is charting new political
waters with a comprehensively amended constitution a
process that again marks a dramatic break from the past.
 To overcome the challenges ahead, whether from political
corruption, violent communal strife and terrorism in the name
of God or external economic shocks, the new tools of
government and democratic governance will face their
definitive test.
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Conclusion . . .
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What is significant about Indonesia’s democracy, that it
is “homegrown”.
Indonesian’s are adapting democratic models and values
that are universal in nature, but the democratization
process in Indonesia had been initiated and carried out
by political forces within the country.
In certain stages of the process such as in implementing
the general election, Indonesia receives foreign
assistance such as in observations of the balloting, or
the case of Aceh, in foreign facilitation of peace
negotiation. But in the case of Indonesia democracy was
not imposed by foreign powers.
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Conclusion . . .
Indonesia still needs to strengthen its democratic foundations
and practices, such as greater executive accountability to the
law, to other branches of government, and to the public; a
reduction in the barriers to political participation and
mobilization by marginal groups; decentralization of power to
facilitate broader political access and accountability; vigorous
independent action by civil society; and more effective
protection for the political and civil rights of citizens.
 The fledging democracy still faces serious challenges, such
political corruption, the rule of law, as well as accelerating its
economic reform and improving its governance to sustain
growth and poverty reduction. However the course of the
country is heading into the right direction.
 The Indonesia’s experience, its successes and failures maybe
worthy of some lessons to other, especially those who at the
stage of, or entering the same “zone of transition”.

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Thank you
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