Pitan Daslani – The past week has seen an extraordinary escalation in Indonesia's political temperature leading up to the 2014 presidential election.
Presidential candidates and prospective candidates are already flexing their muscles at one another while using the mass media to influence public perceptions of their records and acceptability.
New developments include the publication of two new magazines this week that focus solely on the 2014 presidential election. One is called Indonesia 2014, or INA 2014 for short, published by Goenawan Muhammad, the founding editor of Tempo magazine.
INA 2014 describes the potential and past records of 36 prominent public figures capable of becoming the next president. The first edition includes an interview with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who says that he has three preferred scenarios for the 2014 presidential pairs.
The most preferable, by Yudhoyono's definition, is for the presidential and vice presidential candidates to both be civilians. This is Yudhoyono's first option, which indicates civilian supremacy.
But if that is hard to find, his second preference is to have a candidate with a military background to run for president with a civilian running mate. His third option is the opposite of this scenario, that is, a civilian presidential candidate and a vice presidential candidate who is a retired military figure.
The new magazine is well edited, with good reasoning given for its selection of the 36 most likely presidential candidates. It begins by describing the statesmanship qualities of American presidents Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, then runs through Indonesia's presidents, from Sukarno to Abdurrahman Wahid, B.J. Habibie, Megawati Sukarnoputri and Yudhoyono. Suharto, noticeably, is not in the picture.
Apart from leaders of political parties, the 36 names also include chairman of the House of Regional Representatives (DPD) Irman Gusman, Jakarta Governor Joko Widodo, rector of Paramadina University Anies Baswedan, owner of MNC Group Harry Tanoesoedibjo, owner of Para Group Chairul Tanjung, Puan Maharani from the Indonesian Democracy Party of Struggle (PDI-P), first lady, Ani Yudhoyono, World Bank managing director Sri Mulyani Indrawati, a number of serving and former cabinet ministers, as well as military figures.
The second magazine that hit the streets this week was even more eye-catching. Interview Plus, published by Warta Mandiri, based in Duta Mas ITC in South Jakarta, profiled retired Army Lt. Gen. Prabowo Subianto as "the most preferred American choice" to become Indonesia's next president.
The magazine describes quite logically why Prabowo now appears so appealing to Washington, even though for more than 14 years he was an unwanted option in the eyes of America's political and business elites.
It all began with Prabowo's recent lecture at the Rajaratnam School of Strategic Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, when he mesmerized the audience with his mastery of political and strategic issues, delivered fluently in the "Queen's English" of Britain.
The Wall Street Journal, which reported this immediately afterward, added ballast to Prabowo's qualities, raising his profile in an unprecedented manner that surprised many political observers in the region.
An exclusive WSJ Television interview with Prabowo completed America's sudden U-turn in its perception of the person it once accused as a gross violator of human rights after the fall of his former father-in-law President Suharto.
Why has the United States made such a suspicious turnaround in its perception of Prabowo? It seems that the man who it used to hate is now its dearest darling – so goes the hasty conclusion of some political pundits.
An exclusive relationship that Prabowo has maintained for years with Jordanian King Abdullah has been cited by the pundits as part of the reason why the United States needs Prabowo now more than ever before.
A few years ago, Prabowo appeared on a local TV station to announce that in the event that he became president and Washington still denied him entry, "I would send my vice president to represent me" in attending important events there.
Recently, Prabowo's extended family inaugurated the Soemitro Djojohadikusomo Center for Emerging Economies in Southeast Asia (SDCEESEA) in Washington, DC, as an integral part of the Center for Strategic International Studies, one of America's best known and most influential think tanks.
That's not all. US support is also visible in the presence of several public figures during the inauguration, such as John J. Hamre, president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and former Senator William Brock, the labor minister in Roland Reagan's administration who was a friend of Prabowo's father, the highly respected professor Sumitro Djojohadikusumo.
Prabowo's lecture at Nanyang and the establishment of SDCEESEA in Washington has presumably at least partly deleted the dark pages of his track record regarding human rights, as well as his perceived anti-Chinese and anti-foreign capital image. But his younger brother, Hasyim Djojohadikusumo, said that the SDCEESEA has nothing to do with what appears to be Prabowo's ambition to win the hearts of American policy makers in the run-up to Indonesia's next presidential election.
Perhaps the most telling development is a picture in the magazine depicting Prabowo shaking hands with Yudhoyono. Does this have anything to do with Yudhoyono's second preference? Well, perhaps.
Some have even jumped to the conclusion that Yudhoyono needs a tough leader like Prabowo to secure him when he is no longer president. But such a theory can easily be defeated by the fact that Yudhoyono was part of the four-member team of senior generals who sacked Prabowo at the request of then President B.J. Habibie, who suspected Prabowo of planning a coup. This makes Prabowo an unpredictable figure, even for Yudhoyono.
Meanwhile, another interesting development that took place on Friday was a commentary in the daily Koran Tempo by Asvi Marwan Adam, a political scientist and senior researcher at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI).
He charged that the Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI) was lying to the public in promoting the names of 24 presidential candidates that did not include the name of DPD chairman Irman Gusman.
LSI distributed questionnaires to 223 respondents that it claimed represented the mainstream people's choice, when the reality is that such a small number of respondents cannot be taken as a reliable barometer, Asvi said.
The results of the LSI survey were also flatly rejected by many other political analysts because the choice of respondents and methodology applied did not reflect Indonesia's actual situation.
A very senior politician close to Yudhoyono and Irman said on Friday that the LSI survey was "totally misleading" because "in terms of experience, statesmanship, capability, integrity and acceptability, Irman's name should have topped the list."
This senior politician is known to have said that his political party, one of the largest in the country, would not mind if Irman were the next president.
Meanwhile, the ruling Democratic Party seems comfortable with the idea of having somebody like Irman as its candidate for the 2014 race. It will open a convention in the second half of next year to allow independent candidates to get a ticket.
Despite all these developments, Indonesia's presidential election is unique in the sense that nobody can actually dictate people's choices. A foreign country may back a certain candidate to become Indonesia's president because it wants to protect its huge investments, but it is Indonesian voters that will go to the polls to elect their own leaders, transparently.
Likewise, polling agencies may make a lot of money fulfillling orders from vested-interest politicians and yea-sayers surrounding presidential candidates, but voters are smarter than they once were. Even during the recent Jakarta gubernatorial election, none of the experienced polling agencies predicted the outcome correctly. Perhaps we should begin to believe the opposite of what those pollsters say.
[Pitan Daslani is a senior political correspondent at BeritaSatu Media Holdings, of which the Jakarta Globe is a subsidiary. He can be reached at pitandaslani@gmail.com.]