Asia
Indonesiasets an example
Nov 19th 2008
>From The World in 2009 print edition
>http://www.economist.com/theworldin/displayStory.cfm?story_id=12494534&d=2009
By Peter Collins, BANGKOK
The largest
Muslim country will stage a remarkable feat of democracy
In 2009 Indonesiawill mount an impressive spectacle of
popular choice, in which around 174m voters across 14,000 tropical islands will
choose a president and vice-president and 560 parliamentarians. The chances are
good that, as in the previous national elections in 2004, polling will be
mostly peaceful and that the overwhelming majority of successful candidates
will be committed to a pluralistic Indonesiawith freedom of both speech and
religion.
Once again, the world’s most populous Muslim country will demonstrate that
there is nothing incompatible between practising Islam and being democratic.
This achievement will be all the more
remarkable considering where Indonesiawas just ten years ago: in chaos. After
three decades in power, the authoritarian regime of President Suharto had
collapsed amid rioting and no one knew what might take its place. Could such a
huge, diverse and impoverished archipelago, with hundreds of ethnic groups,
possibly hold together, given the weakness and corruption of its national
institutions?
Since then the country has consistently
surprised on the upside, even if the pace of reform has been ploddingly slow.
Indonesia’s shattered finances have been repaired. It
has developed a free press. The army’s hands have been prised from the levers
of power. And, above all, Indonesiahas become a democracy in which the voters
can chuck out their government. Freedom House, an American think-tank, now
rates Indonesiaas the only completely free country in South-East Asia—putting
its richer neighbours, Malaysia, Singaporeand Thailand, to shame.
Popular wisdom
The 2004 elections allowed Indonesians, for
the first time, to choose their president directly. The man they selected,
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a liberal ex-general, was deemed by international
observers to have been the wisest choice from those on offer. Though the
speculation about possible presidential candidates and governing coalitions has
already begun, the parties will wait and see how they do in the legislative
elections in April before entering into serious talks about the presidential
vote (whose first round will be in July with a run-off, if needed, a few months
later).
Even so, it is quite likely that the two
main presidential contenders will be the same as last time: Mr Yudhoyono and
his immediate predecessor, Megawati Sukarnoputri. Mr Yudhoyono’s popularity has
been dented by decisions to cut fuel and electricity subsidies, so as to avert
financial ruin and redirect state spending towards the poorest. Miss Megawati
has been on a meet-the-people comeback tour since early 2008 and has benefited
from discontent over rising living costs. Yet the election is Mr Yudhoyono’s to
lose.
A few other candidates will run, probably
including Wiranto, a former army chief indicted by a UN-backed tribunal over
the violence that accompanied the breakaway of the former East Timorin 1999.
Mr Wiranto will argue that an
old-fashioned strongman is what the country needs but it will be surprising if
he does any better than the third place he got in 2004. Golkar, the party that
used to support Suharto, is now led by Vice-President Jusuf Kalla but his
opinion-poll ratings are probably too weak for him to win the presidency. Thus
Golkar may, as in the second round in 2004, offer him for the vice-presidential
slot on Mr Yudhoyono’s ticket.
Whereas the presidential race will feature
some very familiar personalities, the parliamentary contests will also
introduce
fresher faces. In recent elections for provincial governors, voters have
spurned established figures. This has convinced the main parties that they will
need an infusion of new blood to do well in the parliamentary races: Miss
Megawati’s Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) says up to 70% of
its candidates will be newcomers.
At first sight the parliamentary elections
look like a recipe for confusion. There will be something like 12,000
candidates from 38 parties battling for the 560 seats. This is a big increase
on the numbers in 2004 but the next parliament will in fact be less fragmented
than the current one. This is mainly because a new rule requires parties to get
at least 2.5% of the national vote to win any seats. Of the 17 parties that
won seats in 2004 only eight would have met that test.
Furthermore, several mid-sized parties, such
as the National Awakening Party of Abdurrahman Wahid (president in 1999-2001),
are riven by splits. So the new parliament will be dominated by Golkar, the
PDI-P and Mr Yudhoyono’s Democrats—all of which are staunchly secularist—plus
the mildly Islamist Prosperous Justice Party (PKS). The PKS, like the smaller
Islamist parties, has found that moderating its calls for sharia and embracing
pluralism
is the only way to win new votes. It will be the cost of living that dominates
the campaign, not theology.
**
Peter Collins:South-East Asia correspondent, The
Economist
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