In his work Indonesia's Accountability Trap: Party Cartels and Presidential Power after Democratic Transition, Dan Slater, an observer of Indonesian politics at the University of Chicago, said that the nation's political parties had created a "cartel" dependent on state resources to maintain their positions. Slater said that politicians who joined the cartel would work to share power among themselves at the expense of constituents and that the cartel would grow entrenched and impossible to replace. In a recent interview with The Jakarta Post's Margareth S. Aritonang, Slater answered questions about party politics in the run-up to the 2014 general elections.
Question: What do you think of the state of the nation's political system as the next round of presidential and legislative elections approaches?
Answer: It's hard to avoid the conclusion that Indonesia's major political parties are anything but a colossal and continuing disappointment. Indonesian voters deserve much better. But the leading parties are mostly just getting older, not better. This is despite the fact that all of them, except the Democratic Party, experienced disappointing results in 2009 – and the Democratic Party is on the verge of a similar setback in 2014. Voter de-alignment seems sure to continue, because parties aren't doing what is necessary to maintain their supporters.
Do the nation's political parties live up to democratic principles or are they becoming less democratic?
I'm less concerned about how parties run themselves than about how they run the country. Parties can either be run in a highly disciplined and top-down manner or in a more loose and bottom-up manner, but still play a positive role in representing voters. I don't think parties have ever been where the main democratic impulses in Indonesia have come from. From the anti-Soeharto protests until now, those impulses have been strongest in civil society and in the independent media. Indonesian voters thankfully seem to be maintaining their democratic vigor, despite the fact that leading parties keep proving to be such disappointments.
How will these problems, especially internal party problems, affect democracy in Indonesia?
I've long argued that Indonesian parties undermine democracy most severely by sharing power indiscriminately after elections – especially because this threatens to eliminate all serious political opposition, just like what happened when Megawati [Sukarnoputri] was president. No opposition means no choice. How parties run their internal affairs worries me less.
Do we need to nurture an opposition voice within individual political parties for a better balance of power?
Unlike the country as a whole, a particular party doesn't need openly vocal internal opposition to be an effective agent for democracy. But parties do need to be able to absorb energies from their rank and file and produce new talent for leadership positions. It's on that score where Indonesian parties are faring quite badly. Plus, the lack of transparency is troubling. When party leaders like SBY [President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono] and [former Democratic Party chairman] Anas [Urbaningrum] have a falling out, voters shouldn't just be left guessing what's going on.
What are your projections for 2014?
The legislative elections seem unlikely to produce a decisive winner, so once again we'll see party elites deciding how to divvy up power among themselves. As ever, voters will propose but elites will dispose. As for the presidential election, my worry has long been that Indonesian voters would be confronted with a choice between an irresponsible populist and a traditional, aloof oligarch. A match-up between someone like [Gerindra chief] Prabowo [Subianto] and someone like [Golkar chief Aburizal] Bakrie is what I have long envisaged and what still worries me most. My main hope is that some kind of reformist candidate will bubble up from a party that has active ties to the grassroots, such as the PDI-P or the PKS. For now it looks like [Jakarta Governor] Jokowi [Widodo] is the best hope in that regard, if the PDI-P put him forward. If nobody like Jokowi channels reformist energies, I'm afraid someone like Prabowo will.
How do you see the competition among the parties next year?
The biggest problem with Indonesian parties isn't that they're non-ideological, but that they're non-responsive. I think the vast majority of voters would be very pleased to have representatives who actually see it as their daily job to fight for their voters' interests. SBY has been no more ideological than Megawati, but he has been modestly more responsive to popular pressure, and that has been a change for the better. All in all I think Indonesian democracy looks stronger heading into 2014 than it looked heading into 2004.