The lid has been lifted on Indonesian politics – with 80 parties contesting the first free elections in 43 years. David Jenkins reports.
For a nation that has been on political Mogadon for more than three decades, these are heady days. Political parties are being organised, policy documents drawn up, coalitions discussed. The atmosphere is set to become electric as polling day approaches.
What sort of government is Indonesia likely to have after the polls in May next year? What sort of president will the legislators choose? At this stage, no-one can answer those questions with any certainty. But history provides some useful clues.
Indonesia has had only one really free election since the proclamation of independence in 1945. In that poll, in 1955, the bulk of the vote went to four main parties, two of them Islamic, two of them secular, reflecting the primordial differences that have run like a golden thread through Indonesian political life.
Muslim parties, of which there were four, carried off 43.5 per cent of the vote. The modernist Masyumi, which had strong backing in the Outer Islands, received 21 per cent. The traditionalist Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), with its base in the villages of East and Central Java, got 18 per cent.
Two secular parties won the second largest slab of votes. The Indonesian Nationalist Party (PNI), which enjoyed strong backing from the administrative elite and the abangan (nominal Muslim) peasantry of Java, won 22 per cent of the vote. The Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) won 16 per cent.
In the years after 1955, the fortunes of these and other parties waxed and waned, with more waning than waxing. Masyumi was banned in 1960. The PKI was banned in 1966. In 1973, Indonesia's nine surviving parties were herded against their will into two Soeharto-controlled coalitions, where they were expected to play the role of grateful Aunt Sally to Golkar, the army-backed "functional group".
Golkar lives on in post-Soeharto Indonesia. But it will be lucky to get 20 per cent of the vote in May 1999, down from 74.5 per cent in May 1997.
This time, votes are likely to be directed, as they were in 1955, along primordial lines. One large slab – perhaps 30 per cent – will go to the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) faction of Megawati Sukarnoputri, the daughter of Indonesia's first president.
Her group has a number of things going for it. The PDI is a lineal descendant of the old PNI, with a Christian element thrown in for good measure. It exerts a powerful, almost mystical, hold over abangan voters in the densely settled towns and cities of Java, where supporters, many of them poor, are ready to turn out en masse behind the red-and-black party colours. The party is popular, too, in Bali and in the predominantly Christian islands of eastern Indonesia.
Second, the party leader carries the magic name of Sukarno which still has the capacity to beguile Indonesian voters. What is more, Megawati has apparently been able to persuade Chinese entrepreneurs to make generous donations to her party. The Chinese, many of whom are Christian, like her brand of secular nationalism. They don't like the new Islamic face of Golkar. They are worried by Amien Rais, the modernist Muslim leader who, not very long ago, was complaining about what he saw as the disproportionate power and influence of Christians and Chinese.
Megawati has also spelt out, at last, something approaching a policy statement, one that can be summed up as "populist but pro-business". For all that, doubts remain. Megawati may be widely loved. She may inspire tremendous loyalty. But can she lead?
Megawati does not have the sure political instincts of Indonesia's two most popular Muslim leaders, Amien Rais and Abdurrahman Wahid, let alone those of her late father. She is not very imaginative, not very articulate, not very well educated. She does not have much of a policy grasp. She has yet to demonstrate that she can build a team capable of governing Indonesia, although she should be able to attract able ministers.
Nor has she handled pressure especially well. At critical junctures in the late New Order period, Megawati withdrew from the scene in the face of brutal military crackdowns against her supporters. That happened first on July 27, 1996, when police and hired thugs seized her party headquarters, triggering riots in which five people died. It happened again in March this year when the army kidnapped Haryanto Taslam, one of her right-hand men. "July 27 really shook her," notes a source in Jakarta. "It traumatised her. She was out of action for a month."
Another large slab of votes, perhaps 20 per cent, is likely to go to the National Awakening Party (PKB), the political vehicle of the Nahdlatul Ulama, Indonesia's largest Islamic organisation, with 34 million members. NU is headed by Wahid, a respected moderate who stands for religious and racial tolerance. He is, as it happens, a close friend of Megawati, and the two parties have struck up an alliance, building on their respective strengths. Support for PKB in the conservative rural heartland, especially in East Java, should complement the pro-Mega vote in urban Java and in parts of the Outer Islands.
Shrewdly, the parties have also been working out vote-swapping arrangements. If those arrangements can be made to stick at the local level, it may prove decisive, giving PDI-PKB an absolute majority in the Lower House (DPR) and sweeping Megawati into the presidential palace.
It is possible, however, that the PDI and PKB will need the support of minor parties or of the armed forces (ABRI) faction, which is to be awarded 10 per cent of the DPR seats and which may end up holding the balance of power. That may not be a problem. Sections of ABRI seem to have been cultivating both Megawati and NU, uneasy perhaps that Amien Rais has been talking up the benefits of a federal rather than a unitary state and about the need to curb ABRI's political role.
On the other side of politics are the sometimes less docile modernist Muslims, many of them members of the educated, urban middle class. Soeharto marginalised the modernists for more than 20 years. Then, in 1990, he set out to cultivate them, or at least de-fang them, using Dr B.J. Habibie, his one-time friend and eventual successor, as his point man.
No-one can be sure what difference the New Order wave of Islamisation will have on the way Indonesians vote. What is known is that at least four key parties are competing for the support of modernist Muslims. Some of the modernist vote will go to Golkar, which is now headed by Akbar Tanjung, a Habibie ally and former leader of the influential Muslim Students Association. Some will go to PPP, the "Muslim" party that served for so many years as a "sparring partner" for Golkar.
A third swag of votes will go the new Crescent Star Party (PBB), which enjoys the support of modernists who tend to be of a more militant disposition. Like the banned Masyumi, which wanted Islam to form the basis of the Indonesian state, PBB would like to see laws banning alcohol and prostitution. It also supports a Malaysian-style affirmative action program aimed at strengthening the position of pribumi (indigenous) businessmen vis-a-vis the ethnic Chinese. It may garner between 5 and 10 per cent of the vote.
A much larger swag of modernist votes will go to the National Mandate Party (PAN), which has been set up by Rais, a former head of Muhammadiyah, a modernist Islamic welfare organisation with some 30 million members. Unlike the Crescent Star Party, PAN has gone out of its way to stress that it is inclusive, secular, reformist and tolerant, a move welcomed by those who had been disturbed by Rais's earlier willingness to stir the ethnic and religious pot. With backing from Muhammadiyah members, PAN may get 20 per cent of the vote, perhaps more.
Almost inevitably, Indonesia is in for a period of government by deal-making, with no one group strong enough to win office in its own right. Moreover, a platoon-sized contingent of army officers, men who have never faced an electorate and who represent an institution which has spent three decades suppressing the democratic spirit, may play a key role in the new parliament, as king-makers and spoilers.
That may be less than perfect. On the other hand, it may provide stability during a difficult transition and will be a good deal more democratic than what has gone before.