Fifteen years after the start of the Reform movement, the call for a return to an authoritarian system has ironically been promoted by the country's political parties, which should have served as the backbone for the democracy. The Jakarta Post's Margareth S. Aritonang looks into how political parties dangerously fail to promote democracy within their own institutions.

The existence of political parties is the basic prerequisite for any democracy and many would expect that a healthy democracy could only work with political parties applying basic democratic principles in their day-to-day affairs.

Fifteen years after the ushering in of democracy, political parties in this country are not only getting more corrupt, with some of their leaders being locked up by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), the parties have applied non-democratic principles in performing their basic functions such as electing new chairmen, presidential and legislative candidates.

One need look no further than at the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) to find evidence of authoritarian practices working within the party.

Despite the adjective "democratic" in its name, when asked about who would run as the party's candidate in the 2014 presidential election, all party members have set their sights on party chairperson Megawati Soekarnoputri.

Party leaders and members at the local level may deliberate on who will represent the party in regional elections, but Megawati has the final say on who will run in the presidential election. Most party members like to call approval from Megawati a "blessing".

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's Democratic Party is no different. Leading politicians from the ruling party could have bickered over the best strategy to lift the party out of its slump following the KPK's decision to name Anas Urbaningrum a suspect in a graft cases, but at the end of the day it was Yudhoyono who had the last word.

A kingmaker who leads the party's board of patrons, Yudhoyono made it clear during the Anas imbroglio that the party belonged to him and that when it was time for Anas to go, the young politician had to pack up and leave the party.

The official reason for Anas' departure was his alleged involvement in a graft scandal surrounding the construction of a sports center in Hambalang, West Java, but many felt that Anas' growing clout within the party was a challenge to the supreme authority of Yudhoyono.

Such an authoritarian tendency is not unique to established political parties. The same problem also plagues new political parties like the Great Indonesia Movement [Gerindra] Party.

Established in 2008, the party has rarely held a congress or national meeting to select party leaders or deliberate party programs.

Although Gerindra's chief patron Lt. Gen. (ret.) Prabowo Subianto has been the perennial choice for presidential candidate, no one remembers when exactly that decision was made.

"Who would dare to challenge Prabowo? He set up and finances the party. Gerindra is practically his," researcher Wawan Ichwanuddin from the Indonesian Science Institute (LIPI) told The Jakarta Post recently.

But Prabowo is not the only politician to consider a political party their private property.

Wawan regards party leaders such as Megawati, Yudhoyono, Prabowo, media baron Surya Paloh, who recently took over the leadership of the National Democratic (NasDem) Party and Golkar Party chairman Aburizal Bakrie as oligarchs, individuals who have the ultimate control over their political parties.

Quoting Chicago-based Northwestern University's expert on Indonesian politics Jeffrey Winters, Wawan said that these oligarchs had reigned supreme over the country's democracy for the past 15 years.

This oligarchy has apparently destabilized the institutionalization process in political parties and prevented the parties from growing into modern organizations that promote transparency and fair distribution of power, Wawan says.

The oligarchy not only damaged the internal affairs of political parties but also compromised the country's democracy as all decisions concerning the country's laws and public policies would always involve political parties, said analyst Hanta Yuda from the Poll Tracking Institute.

"The oligarchs exercise their power in all decision-making mechanisms within their parties, including decisions taken by their representatives at the House of Representatives and in government agencies," Hanta said.

"These politicians serve as representatives of their political parties rather than the people because their policies mostly benefit their parties," Hanta added.

A 2012 study conducted by LIPI reveals that the public consider themselves powerless when dealing with the country's political system due to the absence of access given to them in influencing public policies.

In the survey, only 12.8 percent of the 1,700 respondents considered that their opinion mattered in the country's decision-making process. The study concluded that the low level of enfranchisement in the political system has become an obstacle to the consolidation of democracy in the country.

In his seminal work "Indonesia's Accountability Trap: Party Cartels and Presidential Power after Democratic Transition", analyst Dan Slater of the University of Chicago said that the grouping of political parties had created a so-called cartel that used the state's resources to maintain their position within the political system.

This party cartel can be seen in the distribution of seats in the Cabinet, favoring those parties that will likely bring political benefits to the ruling party and getting rid of those that are deemed threats.

"Political parties have to change if we want to see democracy being fully adopted, I personally think that we will not see this in the near future because parties have secured all access and nurtured oligarchy by setting their own rules," Hanta said.