Who Will Be Indonesian President in 2014?

Summary

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

1. • Presidential candidates in Indonesia have to be nominated by a political party (or combination of parties) that have either won 20% of the national vote in the parliamentary elections or control 25% of the seats in the House of Representatives (DPR). Some parties have already made clear choices.

2. • An analysis of candidate choice must however take into consideration the steady alienation of the majority of the population from existing political processes and actors.

3. •Voter abstention (golput) has steadily increased for both national and local elections since the 1999 elections. This reflects the alienation of the masses from the system and is reinforced by declining support for all of the political parties. The most popular party in the polls, the PDIP, is scoring only 20% and all other parties are scoring 12% and below.

4. •It is increasingly possible that the 2014 elections will take the form of a contest between two modes of political campaigning: an appeal to the charisma of power (pejabatism), and the deliberate rejection of this previous mode.

INTRODUCTION

The usual path to become a presidential candidate in Indonesia is to be nominated by a political party or combination of parties that have either won 20% of the national vote in the parliamentary elections or control 25% of the seats in the House of Representatives (DPR). Some parties already have made clear choices: Golkar (Party of Functional Groups) has nominated ex-Suharto loyalist and tycoon Aburizal Bakrie (although former vice-president Yusuf Kalla still lurks in the wings as a possi-ble challenger); Gerindra (Great Indonesia Movement Party) decided on ex-Suharto general and semi-tycoon Prabowo Subianto; Hanura (People's Conscience Party) nominated ex-Suharto general Wiranto; and Nasdem (National Democrat Party) chose ex-Suharto loyalist and tycoon Surya Palo. The lead party in the ruling coalition, the Democrat Party (PD), has not yet decided on its candidate although it has now moved to bring former General Pramono Edhie Wibowo, into the leadership.

The party that does have a chance of winning 20% of the popular vote is the PDIP (Indonesian Democratic Party-Struggle), but it has also yet to determine a candidate. In the past, it has nominated Megawati Sukarnoputri. There is also a possibility that the PDIP could nominate the current governor of Jakarta, the popular Joko Widodo.