Pitan Daslani – The biggest difficulty in Indonesia today is finding capable democratic leaders with statesman qualities. Strangely, this is the result of the reform process that started 14 years ago with the intention to develop a democratic culture.
Reform and democracy have produced an unprecedented paradox: Political parties are mandated by law to produce capable leaders recognized for their quality and integrity, but instead are producing popularity-based transactional ones.
As a result, Indonesia does not have enough capable candidates for the 2014 legislative and presidential elections.
And this is another strange paradox, because outside of political parties, a lot of qualified candidates, including professionals from a number of fields, are willing and able but not given a chance.
It could be said that the country has too many leaders, but at the same time not enough. Too many because there is hardly a leadership chair vacant in the government. But not enough because there are hardly any qualified candidates who resemble statesmen. A statesman thinks about the next generation, a politician the next election.
The limiting factors
The core of the problem is that competition among political parties is not based on political ideology, but on the popularity of the candidates. As a result, voting is based on personal preference.
This system ushers in three related problems. First, legislative candidates will do anything to advertise themselves and to be seen by voters. Many of these methods are expensive – billboards, print advertising, TV spots and so on – so they must find a sponsor.
But the sponsors might want to be paid back in cash or with policy compensation later on. This is where a huge breeding ground for corruption and collusion is created.
Once elected, either as legislators or as executive leaders, the politician's first obligation is to find enough money to settle their campaign-related debts.
Inflating project figures and embezzling state funds are popular methods of finding money. This is why House of Representatives Speaker Marzuki Alie claimed that 70 percent of the 560 house members were "carriers of disaster."
Politicians who are not required to pay cash back usually compensate sponsors' generosity by ensuring that their business interests are secured and spoken for in the legislation process.
This is one of the reasons why at least 57 laws passed by the House of Representatives over the past year were canceled by the Constitutional Court, according to the court's chairman, Mahfud M.D.
Second, the popularity-based member recruitment philosophy reinforces the perception that only politicians with strong financial backing can survive on the national political stage.
As a result, money politics becomes a necessity, satisfying thousands of functionaries who will not bite the hands that feed them. Political recruitment is not based on electability, capability, statesmanship and political leadership traits, but rather on campaign funds.
This is the reason why top leaders of political parties cannot be challenged by better-suited candidates in the 2014 presidential election – the leaders are also the financiers.
The third problem is also money-related. Climbing the party leadership ladder is determined by one's closeness to the financiers, rather than by merit. This is the reason why every party has a shortage of candidates.
Nobody in Golkar would dare to challenge its chairman, Aburizal Bakrie, who has announced his presidential candidacy. Nobody in the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra) has the guts to run against Prabowo Subianto. And nobody in the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) can stop Megawati Sukarnoputri from running for the post.
The direction of the future
From the perspective of creating a healthy democratic system, senior leaders need to preserve their statesmanship posture by allowing alternative candidates to replace them. Until then, there is little reason to applaud them as role models, because their insistence on being candidates denies their parties the chance to evolve and establish a mechanism for political succession.
Another unresolved issue is the acceptability of the so-called independent candidates. On the district, mayoralty and provincial levels, independent candidates are allowed to participate. But independent candidates are not allowed in the presidential election because the law says that a candidate can only be proposed by a political party that wins 25 percent of a popular vote, or controls 20 percent of parliamentary seats.
Potential candidates outside of major political parties won't have a chance to lead the nation unless they not only become party members but make it to the highest levels of party leadership.
There is a far less cumbersome option: Amend the Constitution's provisions on presidential elections. But again, this is not easy because it needs approval from the House, an institution that is submerged in a pool of vested interests.
There is, nevertheless, one last option left: To get the public to demand an overhaul of the system. The public needs to demand an establishment of a national coalition of parties, mass organizations, professional associations and universities to propose alternative candidates to the ones already identified.
The most urgent need of the country today is not where to find somebody significantly better than President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, because the country has no one at the moment. Instead, the necessary political infrastructure needs to be created to encourage potential alternative and independent candidates to appear on stage.