The Candidate's Dilemma

Anticorruptionism and Money Politics in Indonesian Election Campaigns

Elisabeth A. Kramer

• Publisher: Southeast Asia Program Publications
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781501764035
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia dell'Asia

In The Candidate's Dilemma, Elisabeth Kramer tells the story of how three political candidates in Indonesia made decisions to resist, engage in, or otherwise incorporate money politics into their electioneering strategies over the course of their campaigns.

As they campaign, candidates encounter pressure from the institutional rules that guide elections, political parties, and voters, and must also negotiate complex social relationships to remain competitive. For anticorruption candidates, this context presents additional challenges for building and maintaining their identities. Some of these candidates establish their campaign parameters early and are able to stay their course. For others, the campaign trail results in an avalanche of compromises, each one eating away at their sense of what constitutes "moral" and "acceptable" behavior. The Candidate's Dilemma delves into the lived experiences of candidates to offer a nuanced study of how the political and personal intersect when it comes to money politics, anticorruptionism, and electoral campaigning in Indonesia.

1

COMPETITIVE ELECTIONS AND CAMPAIGN BEHAVIOR

Electoral campaigns are imagined and created against a vast backdrop of institutions and norms that shape how candidates access the electoral system, gain nomination, and interact with the system during their campaign. To analyze the individual experiences of electoral candidates, it is important to first understand the broader context in which they are operating and the myriad influences that guide their thinking as they move through their campaigns. By tracing the recent history of electoral campaigns, we can gain a better understanding of how political contexts have changed and what this has meant for candidates competing for seats in the national legislature. In this chapter, I provide an overview of the changing electoral context in light of Indonesia’s democratic transition since 1998. By locating the experiences of candidates within this dynamic political environment, I bring into focus existing electoral institutions and the effect they have on candidates competing for public office at the national level. In the second part of the chapter, I expand this discussion of context to identify key factors that shape an individual candidate’s political campaign, laying the foundation for my analysis of individual accounts of campaign creation and decision making in the context of the 2014 election.

The political transition that began following the resignation of President Suharto, the authoritarian leader who ruled Indonesia from 1966 to 1998, prompted a shift in how elections and political campaigns were conceived and conducted. The post-1998 period of political reform, commonly referred to as Reformasi, saw sweeping changes to Indonesia’s political institutions, including a move toward more competitive elections. At the same time, the lingering influence of over thirty years of autocratic rule has been difficult to escape, and Suharto’s New Order continues to cast a long shadow over the democratization process. More than three decades of authoritarian rule has left its mark. The dominance of wealthy elites and the existence of local systems of patronage and clientelism that took hold well before Reformasi have been difficult to overcome (Blunt, Turner, and Lindroth 2012; Hadiz and Robison 2013). The effect of this dominance is evident in the ongoing power of elites and patronage systems, in the registration processes and structures of political parties, and in patterns of political participation among voters. As actors caught between the New Order legacy and the more contemporary shift toward democratization, candidates must deftly negotiate this context if they have any hope of winning office.

Although the democratization process has had varying impacts on the overall quality of democracy, it has undoubtedly generated increased space for broader engagement in electoral politics.¹ Moving beyond the three-party system of Suharto’s regime, elections now incorporate multiple parties, which compete in elections at the national, provincial, and district levels. There are many more seats available, and consequently many more legislative candidates participate in general elections. The scope for inclusion in elections is larger than it has ever been. For example, quotas have now been implemented that ensure that at least 30 percent of each party’s candidates in any electoral district are women (Shair-Rosenfield 2012).² This new diversity of candidates operates in an environment where personal identity and social networks play a vital role in how campaigns evolve. Furthermore, with an open-party system in place since 2009, most candidates have even less reason to rely on their political parties to channel votes to them. Never has the individual campaign been more important.

Elections in Indonesia

Indonesia has a long history of “depoliticization” of the masses, which has undermined citizen engagement in politics and fostered the norm of voting networks based on patronage, personal relationships, and vote buying that we see today. Moreover, the political party system, which has its roots in the New Order, places controls on eligibility while also barring individuals from competing as independent candidates in legislative elections. This means that political parties continue to act as gatekeepers, determining who can gain access to political office. Individual candidates now compete under electoral rules introduced for the 2009 elections that see them competing against candidates from both their own party and those from rival parties. These key features, as well as other elements of the electoral system, created a unique political landscape for candidates to navigate as they planned and conducted their campaigns in 2014.

New Order Legacies

We can trace many problematic aspects of Indonesia’s electoral system to institutions and practices that developed under President Suharto’s decades-long rule. Suharto rose to power after Cold War tensions between the Communists and the military boiled over into an attempted coup and subsequent countercoup in 1965.³ He solidified that power through a range of means, including both strong-arm tactics and the use of symbolic, but democratically inconsequential, elections. Suharto ruled Indonesia until 1998, when he resigned amid economic and social turmoil. There was evidence of growing concern over the government’s brutality toward its own citizens, including repressing calls for democracy in Aceh and East Timor, as well as violence against labor and other human rights activists (Dibley and Ford 2019). Government corruption also fueled public discontent (Liddle 1996; Schütte 2009), as the blatant wealth of Suharto’s family and cronies grew increasingly obvious. This discontent was intensified by the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997–1998 (Hill and Shiraishi 2007; Wie 2003). Indonesia’s economy had experienced highs and lows during the 1990s but nothing of the scale triggered by the monetary crisis.

Drastic price increases of key basics, such as fuel and household goods, led to mass civilian protests across the country, especially in the capital, Jakarta. On May 12, 1998, soldiers opened fire on protesters, killing four students from Trisakti University and injuring several others (Bird 1999). Public outrage at the deaths sparked further riots in Jakarta and several major cities. Suharto family enterprises and those of Chinese Indonesians became targets for arson and looting, with hundreds perishing in shopping mall fires (Siegel 1998). Suharto lost the support of not only ordinary citizens but also the business elite, many of whom fled the country. Political allies also rebelled, with fourteen cabinet members refusing to continue serving under Suharto. Finally, the military, under Commander in Chief Wiranto, withdrew its support for the president, while Islamic leaders also advised him to resign (Aspinall 2005b; Ricklefs 2001). Suharto stepped down on May 21, 1998, and was replaced by his protégé, Vice President B. J. Habibie, until new elections could be conducted.

The experience of 1998 notwithstanding, elections played an important role in symbolically legitimizing Suharto’s presidency. The institutionalization of the electoral system, and the role that candidates played within that system, reflected Suharto’s motivation to stack the legislature heavily in his favor. The primary function of the People’s Consultative Assembly (Majelis Permusyawaratan Rakyat, MPR), the overarching government body, was to elect the president and vice-president. It consisted of one thousand members including the four hundred elected representatives and one hundred military appointees who made up the National People’s Representative Council (Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat, DPR). The other five hundred delegates, including representatives from each of Indonesia’s provinces in the Regional Representative Council (Dewan Perwakilan Daearah, DPD) and other appointees from functional groups, were appointed by Suharto.⁴ Dubbed “Pancasila Democracy,”⁵ after the state ideology adopted when Indonesia achieved independence from the Dutch, the system promoted consensus-based decision making over a more adversarial strain of democracy and did not foster a strong oppositional voice.⁶

The New Order regime also took steps to distance organized politics from the everyday lives of Indonesian citizens, discouraging political party allegiances beyond the broad “streams” (aliran) that they represented.⁷ All civil servants and their families were required to vote for the regime’s political vehicle, Golkar (from Golongan Karya, Party of Functional Groups), which Suharto promoted as a movement to represent the political interests of a broad range of social groups, rather than a political party per se. Other citizens could also support Golkar or choose to cast their vote for one of two other alternatives—an Islamist party, the United Development Party (Partai Persatuan Pembangunan, PPP), or the secular-nationalist Indonesian Democratic Party (Partai Demokrasi Indonesia, PDI).⁸ Beyond this, successive elections fostered the government’s ideal of citizen participation—a “floating mass” of voters who were “allowed to vote every five years but would otherwise refrain from political activity” (Schwarz 2004, 33). This was underpinned by attitudes of New Order elites who felt that, owing to the political upheaval before 1965, Indonesian citizens were “not ready” for modern democracy (Haris 2004, 20). Ali Moertopo, Suharto’s head of Special Operations in the 1970s, even coined the term deparpolisasi, meaning “the freeing of people from political party allegiances,” to describe the intended outcome of the process (Bourchier and Hadiz 2003, 48). This semiofficial doctrine was particularly evident in rural areas, with political parties banned from establishing branches below the regency level. Thus, Indonesia’s rural masses were almost entirely divorced from politics between 1973 and 1998, except for the brief campaign period before elections (Anderson 1990, 115), concentrating political activity in cities and fostering an urban–rural rift in political engagement that remained in place well after the end of the New Order.

Elections—or pesta demokrasi (festivals of democracy)—were little more than a symbolic inclusion of citizens in the political process. Between 1973 and 1998, they were “heavily rigged affairs” (Eklöf 1999, 6) designed to validate Suharto’s ongoing presidency. Golkar won at least 60 percent of the votes in each of these elections. Suharto’s position was bolstered by military appointments to the legislature, making it inconceivable that he could lose power as a consequence of an election result (Crouch 2010, 44). These elections were closely surveilled with “harsh methods” employed to ensure Golkar’s victory, including “threats, coercion, unlawful detention, destruction of property, and outright physical abuse” affecting candidates, election scrutineers, and voters (Eklöf 1999, 91). So, if the primary purpose of elections during this time was to lend legitimacy to Suharto’s regime, what did it mean to be a legislative candidate in the New Order?

Suharto’s need to control electoral outcomes had a direct impact on who could run for office. All candidates were screened by the military and national intelligence agency to assess, as Moertopo euphemistically claimed before the 1972 elections, that they had the right “attitudes and … capabilities to fulfil their political tasks” (Bourchier 2014, 164). Candidates were expected to toe the government line at all times (Crouch 2010, 44). At the same time, because political engagement was so far removed from day-to-day life, only individuals who were tenacious and calculated in advancing their party status ended up running for office (Fionna 2014, 114). For the privileged few who were able to secure nomination, legislative seats also became a marker of esteem, offering access to patronage networks and opportunities for embezzlement, bribes, and kickbacks (Robison 1981). People asserted that parliamentarians primarily followed the “5Ds,” an abbreviation for “datang, duduk, diam, dengar, duit,” which translates as “come, sit, be quiet, listen, money” (Sebastian 2012, 470).

Holding a prestigious parliamentary seat may have offered status and opportunities for personal enrichment, but the seats themselves held little real democratic function. As such, candidates were rarely ideologically motivated. Those competing were certainly not compelled to present any real platform to mobilize voters. Campaigns and elections were merely a hurdle to accessing the perks of public office. By the same token, voters had no real impetus to choose one candidate over another (Robison 1981), given that the composition of legislature made no real difference to the state of Indonesian politics or to government policies. Candidates in some areas may have benefited from aliran preferences, where the population would traditionally vote for the PPP or the PDI. Others may have chosen Golkar as an expression of gratitude for the benefits they had received as a result of Suharto’s development agenda.⁹ However, the “floating mass” represented a largely politically unengaged populace. Without any real policies to offer voters, and a general understanding that politicians were simply in office to rubber-stamp government decisions, campaign tactics were about leveraging relationships or offering better incentives than other candidates—a theme that has endured well after the fall of the New Order.

Changing the System

The immediate post-Suharto period saw a dramatic political shift that brought with it high public expectations for change and an opportunity to enact sweeping democratic reforms. The transitional government was determined to prove its democratic credentials. It made several far-reaching policy amendments, lifting restrictions on civil society and the media, implementing political decentralization, and initiating electoral reforms. Decentralization measures devolved power from Jakarta back to the regions, giving cities and districts more control over their budgets and resources, while also dampening the threats of separatism posed by anti-Jakarta backlash in outer islands (Nordholt 2004, 564). This decentralization agenda had immense consequences for local politics, as competition for power at the local level took on a new significance (Hadiz 2003). Included in the measures was the establishment of provincial and local legislatures, which served as new sites of political and electoral competition, while also greatly expanding the number of legislative positions available to be contested.¹⁰

In terms of electoral reform at the national level, new laws enacted in 1998 reduced the concentration of power, placed a two-term limit on the presidency, expanded the power of the legislature, and diminished the military presence within it (Bird 1999).¹¹ Although the new laws did not change the basic structure of representation established under the New Order—maintaining the existence of the MPR—they opened elections for the DPR to multiple parties and for the DPD to individual candidates.¹² There were still some restrictions on party eligibility, but these reforms drove the final nail in the coffin of Suharto’s three-party system, with forty-eight parties qualifying to field candidates in June 1999. These new parties had only a narrow window to recruit candidates and organize their campaigns, and the election results were dominated by the established parties, with the PDI offshoot, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (Partai Demokrasi Indonesia Perjuangan, PDIP) and Golkar securing the most votes by a healthy margin. Despite this, the elections were heralded as “democracy restored,” with twenty-one parties securing seats in the national legislature in a relatively peaceful and open competition (Liddle 2000). The process also benefited from relaxed media controls, allowing for openly publicized debate in which candidates could level all manner of criticisms at the government (Hara 2001).

Elections for members of the national legislature are significant for two main reasons. First, the elections dictate the lawmaking power and influence that parties have. The more seats a political party wins, the greater the party’s ability to create or amend national legislation. Second, the number of seats won by a political party in the national legislature influences their ability to nominate a presidential candidate. With these motivations in mind, the Indonesian government has continued to “tinker” with the parameters of electoral contests since 1998 (Morgenbesser and Pepinsky 2019, 16), making changes to party eligibility, presidential nomination, and electing candidates. Party eligibility in elections has become a battleground for existing political parties keen to maintain systems that work in their favor. The laws guiding party eligibility to both compete and to take their place in the national legislature have been amended several times (Shair-Rosenfield 2019).¹³ After the 1999 election, new, stricter eligibility criteria were introduced, ostensibly making elections more manageable by deterring “hopeless parties” but also favoring the three New Order parties (Crouch 2010, 78). Regulations for eligibility required parties to have at least one thousand registered members, a permanent regional office in each province and in 75 percent of districts or municipalities, and a chapter in at least half of each of the sub-d...

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Notes on Currency and Indonesian Terms
• Introduction
• 1. Competitive Elections and Campaign Behavior
• 2. Corruption and Leveraging Anticorruptionism
• 3. Standing His Ground
• 4. Bowing to Pressure
• 5. Experienced and Pragmatic
• 6. Campaigns, Context, and Consequences
• Conclusion
• Notes
• References
• Index