5 - Power Broker: The Role of the Parliament during the Presidencies of Abdurrahman Wahid and Megawati Soekarnoputri

Summary

According to the transition theories, after the election of a freely elected nonauthoritarian government, the democratization process enters the third stage — the consolidation period. In the transition theories, the consolidation period is usually defined as the space of time between the appointment of a freely and fairly elected new government as a starting point for a stable democratic system in which the “rules of the game” are independent from the ruling figures, groups, and parties.

However, the question remains whether Indonesia really entered the consolidation period after the free and fair general elections for parliament in June 1999 and the MPR vote for the new President Wahid in October 1999. Indonesian legislator Sembiring Meliala gave this opinion: “The presidency of Habibie was the transition period (masa transisi), because after the elections we reached democracy.” This statement, however, is questionable. The usual features of the end of the democratization period — the definition of the “rules of the game” and the completion of institution building — were not achieved by October 1999, but in the following years and only became effective in October 2004. Therefore, some important characteristics of the democratization period continued to be relevant in this stage of democratic transition. Consequently, I regard the time frame of this chapter (October 1999 until October 2004) not as the consolidation period, but rather as an extended democratization period (democratization period II).

The second part of the democratization period in the Indonesian democratic transition process started with the election of the moderate Muslim leader Abdurrahman Wahid as the new president at an MPR session in October 1999, which ended the term of interim President Habibie. The discussion process at this MPR session took place in a “heated atmosphere, but within limits that can be tolerated” (Tandjung 2003, p. 300).

During this MPR session in 1999, the Indonesian president was elected for the first time by a genuine voting process. All previous presidents in Indonesian history were elected by acclamation of a single candidate. Abdurrahman Wahid was elected at an MPR session which Akbar Tandjung later described as “dynamic, escalative and often unpredictable. The political map changed easily and fast” (Tandjung 1999b, p. 94).