Armando Siahaan – So far, 2011 has not been a good year for the Democratic Party. Let's just say that, if the 2014 general election was to be held today, the ruling party would be in deep trouble.
Though they won their de facto leader, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the presidency with their flagship "war on corruption" campaign, the Democrats are definitely not seen as the cleanest party in politics these days.
First, of course, there is Muhammad Nazaruddin, the ousted party treasurer who is now implicated in at least three major graft scandals involving the Education Ministry, the Southeast Asian Games and the Constitutional Court.
A recent survey conducted by the Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI) showed that the Nazaruddin scandal had severely damaged the party's approval rating, bringing it down to an all-time low of just 15.5 percent – a big drop from the 20.85 percent it held just before its huge wins in the 2009 election. In October 2010, the party was still leading the pack with a highly respectable 26 percent approval rating.
That drop in the polls may be the least of the damage Nazaruddin does. Just over the weekend, the runaway lawmaker, who is now holed up in Singapore, reportedly claimed that he had no role whatsoever in the SEA Games scandal, while at the same time alleging that the real culprits were fellow Democrats Angelina Sondakh and Mirwan Amir, both members of the House of Representatives' budget committee.
Let's not forget that when Nazaruddin first fled to the neighboring city-state, the young lawmaker publicly threatened to air more of the party's dirty laundry. Names like Youth and Sports Minister Andi Mallarangeng and former party Secretary General Amir Syamsuddin were some of the first to be mentioned.
Nazaruddin is not the only Democratic politico who has been muddying the party's credibility. Djufri, another Democrat and member of House Commission II, which oversees home affairs and regional autonomy, was arrested last month on corruption charges dating back to 2007, when the lawmaker was mayor of Bukittinggi in West Sumatra.
Meanwhile, Andi Nurpati, a former General Elections Commission (KPU) member who controversially joined the Democrats last year, has been implicated in a poll fraud case for allegedly forging a Constitutional Court ruling to grant a House seat to a candidate.
It seems like there is no end to such cases. While none of the lawmakers in question have been convicted, they have certainly caused the party to lose face in the eyes of the public. The party is also rumored to be unraveling from the inside due to internal disputes.
Political pundits have, time and again, speculated about divisions forming within the party since the 2009 chairman election that was contested by Anas Urbaningrum, Andi and House Speaker Marzuki Alie. Since Anas won the vote, the supporting camps of each candidate have reportedly been on less than amicable terms.
Top-ranking Democrats have denied there are any rifts within their ranks. With speculation mounting over their internal squabbles, though, it is no wonder the party's image has been tarnished, which may cost them dearly come election time.
The Democrats' list of woes does not end there. In only the first six months of this year, the party has been rocked by two damaging outside attacks.
The first came in March, when Australian newspaper The Age published a story headlined "Yudhoyono 'Abused Power,'" which reported the allegations made by US diplomats via confidential cables that had been made public by WikiLeaks.
The story alleged that the president had misused his position for questionable dealings. Yudhoyono was extremely lucky that local media's lukewarm reaction, combined with the devastating earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan on the same day, somehow caused the issue to slip under the public's radar.
In May, another attack was launched against the president and his party, this time through a mysterious viral text message that alleged the president was involved in corruption and inappropriate affairs.
Not many people took the text message seriously, except for the president himself, who lambasted the allegations during an official press conference – a move seen by political analysts as unnecessary, if not an outright blunder.
While those back-to-back allegations might not have directly harmed the Democratic Party's credibility, they certainly raised a few eyebrows and a lot of unanswered questions.
Politics is a game of image, reputation and perception. While the Democratic Party's embarrassments this year do not automatically mean that its political future is shot, it would be naive to think that these scandals will not affect its chances in the 2014 general election.
[Armando Siahaan is a reporter at the Jakarta Globe and writes a weekly column about current events.]