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Sunday, March 23, 2014

Indonesia: Populist Leaders Must Maneuver Corrupt System

Why populist figures in Indonesia are being challenged to maneuver in a corrupt political system. This is a critical inquiry prior to the legislative and presidential elections in upcoming months. This question concerns the populist figures, current Jakarta governor Joko Widodo and Surabaya mayor,Tri Rismaharini. Nationally, both figures have a good and clean reputation, yet they have to face firm challenges from what they have done so far.  Two factors hampering the performance of these outstanding leaders, namely the elites and the oligarchs.
In this article, the phrase the “corrupt political system” refers to a political system which has been dominated and abused by a few powerful people or groups for their own interests. These people consist of elites and oligarchs. I make a clear distinction between these two political concepts. As Jeffrey Winters argues, elites are certain people or groups who have highly concentrated power, such as coercive power, mobilizational power, official or party position, which has been distributed in a highly exclusive way. In contrast, oligarchs are those with significant fortunes who have been attained from the accumulation of economic wealth.
Both elites and oligarchs can have a similar interest in inhibiting potential challenges or radical demands that may pose threats toward them. They can form a collective action through political institution, such as a political party (Slater, 2010). In the case of Joko Widodo, affectionately known as Jokowi, the party “detains” him to meet public desire. Similarly, in Risma’s case, it is not only local parliament but also her own party that has been dominated by businessmen and party elites to take stand against her populist policies.

Party & Oligarch Interests
Jokowi has been performing well to manage Indonesia’s most populated city. In terms of tackling down the problem of severe traffic in Jakarta, Jokowi has been battling the national government regarding the cheap car policy. He prefers to improve the quality of public transportation. Accordingly, Jokowi has turned down the intention of Vice-President Budiono’s offer to sell a low cost green car to Jakarta’s residents. It was widely believed that automobile businessmen were behind this proposal, targeting Indonesia as a potential market for low-priced car.
Above all, the public are looking forward to knowing whether he will run as the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle’s (PDIP) presidential candidate. The key, as nationally known, is in the hands of Megawati, the PDIP’s chairwoman. Apparently, Megawati has not given up the possibility of making her third bid to run as the party’s candidate, even though this option is unlikely to increase party’s odds of winning the election.
In the case of Risma, a collaboration of the elite’s party and the oligarchs in parliament was a strong challenge to her public service policies. For instance, as reported by the weekly magazine, Tempo, three cases have prompted Risma to step down as Surabaya’s mayor. The battle over the construction of a toll road across Surabaya was the opening case. Instead of this this project, Risma favored improving the city’s public transportation.  Following this, Surabaya’s city council, supported by the PDIP attempted to oust her, but failed. The rejection by PDIP and its oligarchs’ component continued, when Risma wanted to raise the billboard advertising tax and further angered the city council. In these two cases, the shared interest of businessmen and political elites was obvious motivation behind the rejections. And the strong “punch” to shake Risma’s position was the covert appointment of PDIP’s local head and deputy speaker of the city council: Wisnu Sakti Buana as the new deputy mayor. This decision instantly disappointed Risma, because she knew Wisnu was another attempt to topple her from her position as mayor.

Populism Challenges
Given these facts, the populist figures have apparently been captured by the corrupt political system. On the one hand, they are personality-based figures which differ from mass mobilizational figures, such as Lula Da Silva and Evo Morales in Latin America. Indeed, the cases of Latin America and Indonesia cannot be directly compared, due to their different political and economic systems and societal characteristic. However, as witnessed currently, the personality populist figures have been unable to block political elites and oligarchs as has been done by mass-based figures in Latin America. Lula and Morales could transform their societal support into populist parties. Accordingly, they received full support to impose many populist policies without getting strong resistance from parliament or their own parties.
 In slightly contrast, Jokowi and Risma are elites since they received official positions. Prior to their current positions, these two prominent leaders emerged from the middle class. Jokowi was a carpenter turned politician and Risma was a true-blue bureaucrat. They had no mass political mobilization to challenge established political elites and oligarchs. The only way they had was to enter well-established political party, namely the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP) to be eligible to run for governmental positions.
There is a huge gap between elites and grassroots in terms of building strong political influence. In the Indonesia’s modern history, the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) had been widely known for its intimate relationship with the grassroots. The masses could be mobilized to support certain party policies whether in favor or against the government.  However, since the Suharto took over the government in 1966 and built his regime, Indonesian society has been distanced from politics. The concept “floating mass” was widely disseminated by Ali Murtopo, Suharto’s right-hand man. According to it, people would not play any political role or organize any political organization and therefore they would devote all their efforts to economic development. Since then, no populist figures have arisen from the grassroots.
What we are seeing today on the Indonesian political landscape are politician who have come from the middle class. On the on hand, the emergence of populist figures is the answer of a deficient political system. People for a long time have been neglected by the current government, so they need figures to address their problems, creating condition ripe for populism. On the other hand, these figures have no owned political-based organization that can continually draw support from society to impose populist policies. They must frequently abide by party’s rules. Occasionally, the pro-people policies were at odds with the party interests. In this regard, populist policies have to fall in line with the party’s instruction. So far, Risma has been an obvious case of this pattern.

Electoral Figures
Furthermore, populist figures in a corrupt political system risk being used by other political parties. It has nationally been known that certain parties, such as PAN, Democrat and Golkar were trying to take Jokowi from PDIP and make him their own candidate. However, this move was blocked by PDIP. Similarly, Risma if she steeps as Surabaya’s mayor, Gerinda, Golkar, and even Democrat are willing to propose her as a strong running-mate.  They are still in the circle of a corrupt political system. This is possible because they do not have their own political organization. As Max Lane’s argues, Jokowi and also Risma are electoral political figures (ISEAS, 2013). For these parties, Jokowi and Risma are vote magnets which can increase the party image and support sufficiently to win the election. This is a very pragmatic objective, yet it cannot guarantee that in the future the party elites will not continue to threaten the performance of these two leading populist figures.

By: Hipolitus Yolisandry Ringgi Wangge
Published in the Jakarta Post, March 5, 2014
Republished in the Eurasia Review, March 12, 2014


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