16 - The Normalisation of Local Politics? Watching the Presidential Elections in Morotai, North Maluku

Summary

obj-d>Ever since the introduction of democratic elections in 1999, observers have engaged in intense debate about the factors that motivate Indonesian voters when going to the ballot box. Some analysts believe that Indonesians are still primarily driven by their ethnic, religious, social or regional affiliations, as in the country' first democratic polls in 1955 (King 2003; Baswedan 2007). Others have emphasised the importance of ‘money politics’ in electoral behaviour. According to this view, Indonesians mostly vote for political patrons who offer them cash or other forms of material inducements, including jobs (Sulistyo 2002). But an increasing number of scholars contend that Indonesian voters are becoming more rational, critically evaluating politicians’ leadership qualities, the performance of the incumbent government and the media advertisements presented during the campaign (see, for example, Mietzner 2009 and Mujani and Liddle in this volume). Obviously these highly divergent views on electoral behaviour have led to equally differing assessments of the state of Indonesia' democracy: while those who stress the significance of primordial attachments and material inducements generally see Indonesia as being at a very early stage of democratisation, the proponents of the view that the electorate is becoming more rational maintain that the country has made considerable progress.

Many of the studies mentioned above are based on national survey data or analyses of Jakarta-based newspapers and magazines. While this is a useful (and perhaps inevitable) approach to the regionally frag mented landscape of post-Suharto politics, it often misses nuances and details that only grassroots research can capture. Therefore, this chapter offers a local perspective on the 2009 presidential elections, evaluating from a close distance the key drivers of voting behaviour in one of Indonesia' most remote islands. The observations presented here on the elections in Morotai, an island off the north coast of Halmahera in North Maluku province (see Map 16.1), are not meant to establish more generalised claims about electoral patterns in other parts of Indonesia' vast archipelago. They do, however, present important insights into the workings of Indonesia' democracy in an area far off the journalistic and scholarly track.

The presidential elections in the district of Morotai were a quiet, orderly exercise in civic duty, marked more by a quiet cynicism that nothing would change than excitement over the candidates.