domino99 poker online dewapoker: President Jokowi: ten years too soon?

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President
Jokowi: ten years too soon?

New Mandala - August 11,
2014

Indonesia:
We was robbed – New Mandala. July 24, 2014

Indonesia:
Trouble in the East? – New Mandala. July 16, 2014

Indonesia:
Voting Number 1 – New Mandala. July 15, 2014

Indonesia:
Stand by your man – New Mandala. July 14, 2014

Indonesia:
How to read a quick count – New Mandala. July 11, 2014

Stephen Sherlock – A huge sigh
of relief that Prabowo was (just) defeated and that Indonesia will not
be led by relic of the New Order, a xenophobe... well we all know the rest.

But now the celebrations
are over, how do things look in the cold light of the morning? Beyond the
personalities involved, was this the best that Indonesia"s democracy could
produce? What does it say about the political parties that sponsored the
candidates?

Jokowi seems a sincere man,
certainly unpretentious and an excellent mayor. He did, in Edward Aspinall"s
words, do Indonesia a great service just by keeping Prabowo out of the
presidential palace. But this surely not enough – elections are not just
about keeping the reins of power from the worst candidates, but about the
people"s right and opportunity to select the leader who is the best.

But, of course, they can
only select from what is on offer. And – with all due respect to Jokowi
– the choice in this election was far too limited. It was a contest between
a throwback to the Suharto era and a provincial mayor thrust into the role
of presidential candidate because there was no-one else available. With
only about a decade of municipal government experience behind him, Jokowi
was arguably elected five or 10 years too soon – a good candidate for 2019
or 2024. He still needed more time to get the muscle and grit that comes
with conceiving and implementing policy, building coalitions and banging
heads together at a serious level of government.

But enough about Jokowi.
This is not meant to be a critique of him but an expression of serious
worry about the future of Indonesian politics and political parties. And
a word of caution for party bashers: I don"t think parties are fundamentally
anti-democratic and I don"t think we should marginalise them from the system.
We actually need better and stronger parties that play the kind of roles
that are usually expected of them, like recruiting the successive generations
of new political leaders, for example.

It should be a cause of concern
that, after 15 years of democracy and reformasi (remember that?) the parties
are still dominated by figures who were power players under the old order.
Less than a year ago, before Jokowi"s candidacy became a real possibility,
people were discussing scenarios for the presidential line-up such as Prabowo
versus Megawati, or maybe Prabowo, Megawati and Bakrie, or perhaps Prabowo,
Megawati, Bakrie and Kalla. Even dinosaurs like Wiranto were being discussed
seriously.

Prominent "new" candidates
included people such as Surya Pahlo and Mahfud MD, hardly fresh sprouts
from the grassroots. The only really fresh faces, such as Anies Baswaden,
were utterly unknown outside the Jakarta political class. Then there were
the "dynastic" figures like Megawati"s daughter Puan Maharani and SBY"s
son, Edhie Baskoro. Hardly any of these prospective candidates reached
double figures in opinion polls. The parties are simply incapable of regenerating
their leadership ranks and pushing solid, electable figures through party
ranks.

This is because parties seem
uninterested in building party structures and systems for encouraging and
training party cadre (known as party institutionalisation to the cognoscenti).
Financial resources are thrown at election campaigns and great efforts
are sometimes made to raise money for leading candidates (although open
list legislative elections have put the burden on individual DPR/D candidates),
but little or no money can ever be found to pay for party staff devoted
to policy, organisation and recruitment. Most party advisers are part-time
people working in business, academia or as personal staff paid from state
allocations for office-holders such as DPR members.

The problem is that party
leadership positions are seen purely as vehicles for personal ambitions.
There is a culture of "winner takes all" with regard to party offices and
losing contenders often conclude they have no alternative but to leave
and form their own party. The long line of ex-Golkar figures establishing
presidential vanity parties – from Wiranto to Prabowo to Surya Pahlo –
is testament to this. A logical political home for SBY before 2004 would
have been in PDIP, but Megawati was unable to contemplate the idea that
the party could be in hands of someone not in possession of Sukarno genes.
Hence SBY went on to create the Democrat Party, which in turn has utterly
failed to produce a successor to its founder. And in the case of the "presidential"
parties – those created as vehicles for personal presidential ambition
– what chance would any aspiring front-rank leader within NasDem, Hanura
or Gerindra have of supplanting their respective creators?

Candidate selection processes
within the parties have been subverted by money politics, dynastic ambitions
and squabbles, and a systemic neglect of the task of developing policy
alternatives. The role of money in Bakrie"s victory in Golkar and Hatta"s
leading position within PAN is well known. Golkar was willing to accept
a leader and prospective presidential candidate with absolutely zero popular
appeal because he was able to deposit the envelopes in the right laps.

In the case of PDIP, its
domination by dynastic politics is obvious and has greatly hampered its
capacity to cultivate rising leadership, despite the considerable wealth
of younger talent in its lower ranks. Although Megawati managed to suppress
her ambitions for Puan long enough to allow Jokowi to be the presidential
candidate, her game-playing delays in naming him added to the incoherence
of the Jokowi campaign and came close to costing him the election. And
during the campaign, the gap between the enthusiastic volunteers (relawan)
and the PDIP party functionaries was frequently noted by close observers.
Rather than welcoming the fact that normal people were embracing the opportunity
to change their country"s future though party politics, the apparatchiks
saw them as a threat to their monopoly. Jokowi"s biggest challenges in
office will be to establish and maintain a base of support within his own
party and avoid being undermined by jealous party colleagues.

As such, the 2014 election
the party system failed to put forward a spectrum of candidates which offered
a good range of choices to the electorate. As a lot of commentary did suggest,
there was a choice between a reversion to the past and a rather wishful
grasp for a hopeful future. But the fact that a figure like Prabowo could
become so popular is a dire reflection on the electorate"s disappointment
with party politics. Many people seem to have voted for him because he
projected the image that he was not one of today"s squabbling politicians
but the kind of firm leader that the country once had. Concrete economic,
social, environmental and governmental issues barely received a mention
in the campaign.

Weak party consolidation
and institutionalisation is one of the most important examples of the limitations
of post-Suharto political reforms. The hardware of constitutional structures
is in place and there is no significant anti-democratic sentiment – inchoate
or organised – but the software of the system is still beset by operational
problems. The people who make institutions work have become very adept
at manipulating the system for short-term and sectional gain, and the old
autocratic players have "reorganised" themselves (in Hadiz and Robison"s
words) to survive and prosper in the new democratic environment. Despite
institutional reform, the informal rules of the political game as played
out in Suharto"s time remain essentially unchanged.

Today there is a continuing
tendency towards collusive consensus among the political elite rather than
open competition and debate, especially over questions of policy. Coalition-building
has been random, "promiscuous", opportunistic, and determined by division
of the spoils of office rather than reflecting coalitions of interests
committed to policy outcomes.

Conditions are nowhere near
so dire as to threaten the basis of Indonesian democracy, but if democratic
institutions are seen as failing to deliver prosperity and opportunity
to a young growing population there could be dangers of instability ahead.
Jokowi has come to office with a huge reservoir of goodwill and an ocean
of high expectations. In the months leading up to his inauguration, it
seems a good time to start asking some hard questions about what happens
next.

[Stephen Sherlock is a consultant
on governance and politics, and Visiting Fellow in the Department of Political
and Social Change, ANU College of Asia and the Pacific.]

Source: http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/newmandala/2014/08/11/president-jokowi-ten-years-too-soon/.

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