Dessy Sagita – Lack of good political leadership is one of the major causes why democracy in post-1998 Indonesia is not taking off as well as it should be, experts said on Wednesday.
"Our democracy is stuck because our president, who is supposed to be very influential with more than 60 percent of votes, is in fact not that strong," Indria Samego, a political analyst from the state Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) told a discussion among political analysts on democratic progress in Indonesia, at the Habibe Center.
Indria said the weakness of the current government was that it was too busy trying to accommodate all the demands from the members of the pro-government coalition of parties. "While they're trying to harmonize their interests, we Indonesians remain stuck in the middle of nowhere," he said.
Muladi, former justice minister and governor of the National Defense Agency (Lemhanas), said the leadership in Indonesia has been severely hampered by poor recruitment procedures resulting in a limited number of qualified leaders.
"To be a leader, one has to fight twice, first within one's own political party, where the vote buying starts, and the ones who win still have to fight outside the party where they need to buy more votes to win [elections]. Then when someone finally assumes a position of leadership, he or she has to join a coalition, further limiting the leader's power," he said.
"People who have money can win even though they don't have the proper political skills – that is why we have 17 governors who have been named suspects in corruption cases and hundreds of legislators jailed."
Ideally, Muladi added, political parties should be filled with activists and professionals. "But our current political parties are filled with those who have money and their friends, or relatives," he said.
Muladi said many people joined a political party as a means to obtain power rather than to improve the country's democracy. Because many saw their political party as a mere vehicle to gain power, they would not hesitate to switch to another party or change their political views.
"I'm not saying a good leader can't come from a political party, but it has to be the right man for the right job, a leader who is purpose-oriented," Muladi added.
Indonesian politicians needed a lot of leadership training and the country also needed to amend the constitution, he said.
"We need to put the core of democracy into our constitution and laws. Make this a priority," he said, adding that Indonesia should stop thinking about adopting foreign leadership models as they would not work in this pluralist society. Political parties should educate their members about democracy. "We need to make people understand that politics is not a tool for their private interests," Muladi said.