3 - Political Parties in Pilkada: Some Problems for Democratic Consolidation

Summary

INTRODUCTION

On Saturday 29 April 2005, the city of Tuban, East Java province, was burned. A huge crowd consisting of more than 5,000 supporters of the defeated pilkada candidate went down to the street angry. The crowd destroyed and burned the local electoral commission's (KPUD) office, district government offices and vehicles, and the pilkada winner's property, including two luxury houses, a hotel, eighteen vehicles, and two factories. A state of emergency was declared by the government, and thousands of police officers were mobilized with a licence to shoot disturbers.

This may be an example of what the government feared would be “unsmooth and disorderly” local head elections throughout the country. Since public pessimism over the implementation of the pilkada had been increasing from early on, the Minister of Home Affairs announced the success of pilkada in 2005 in influential mass media across Indonesia on December 2005. “Since June 2005, pilkada has been executed in 198 regions, 92 per cent of them were run in a smooth and orderly manner.” Of course, this used a minimum standard to define a “successful pilkada”.

Theoretically, the direct election of governors, district heads, and mayors is expected to further deepen democracy at the regional level. By this new electoral system, the heads of regions are no longer elected by regional assembly members, but are elected by individual citizens. Instead of taking a role in regional legislatures through their representatives, individual citizens now have direct access to vote for their governor, bupati (district head) or mayor. It will be argued in this chapter, however, that the path toward deepening democracy has not been significantly furthered by these direct elections, because of the electoral and party system which constrains grassroots participation. Nevertheless, it is suggested that voters at the grass-roots level are finding their own way to respond. Whether this response will have a positive effect towards the furthering of the democratic transition in Indonesia will be something to be examined further in the future.