Apart from the election results, which we are all following, a big story is the discord and disappointment with the way the elections were conducted.
Some wonder if the 2009 elections are the worst we have ever had, or if they were just bad, or whether they were good. One of the extreme opinions came from one of the contestants, Lt. Gen. (ret) Prabowo, who said these were the worst elections in Indonesia’s history.
Many would beg to differ on that point. The worst elections in Indonesia’s history were probably the ones staged by Prabowo’s former father-in-law, the late president Soeharto, who turned the whole idea of elections into a cruel farce.
There was an occasion when the results for the province of Lampung leaked out days before the elections were held. When the official results were announced after the elections, they were indeed the ones that had circulated before.
Golkar constantly won more than 70 percent of the votes, and when they fell below 73 percent, the board fell into disfavor with Soeharto. Political parties were reduced to three and those who criticized the elections were jailed.
The Golkar-led elections led to public disenchantment, albeit silently, and made a charade of the whole concept. Being golput (abstaining from the vote) was not a fashion statement but the only way to keep sane, unless you were too scared to stay away from the polls.
People fell victim to a kind of terror that was totally absent last April 9, 2009, when people voted by free will, creating a relaxed and sometimes festive atmosphere around the polling stations.
So maybe we don’t want to keep returning to the past for comparisons, since we are in the new age. But we are only 10 years into the new democracy, and like children escaping from a monster’s compound, the monsters are still with us, and we should have some perspective in judging the 2009 elections.
For some, it was good; for others; it was bad; for most, it was so-so, and for a few it was “the worst in history”.
True, it was the worst managed election since 1998, which means it was the worst compared to the 1999 and the 2004 elections. There are two major causes: the quality of the election committees (KPU) and the huge complexity of the 2009 elections compared to the previous ones.
There were 171 million people who registered to vote in 33 provinces and 471 regencies, with 77 major election districts.
They had 38 national parties (plus six local parties in Aceh) to choose from, and an estimated 800,000 candidates for the national parliament, DPR, lower-level provincial parliaments and other legislatures.
There were 582,217 polling stations, managed by 32,290 district polling committees, and manned by 4,753,953 individuals acting as volunteers and polling staff. These are numbers inspiring global awe, which are incomparable even to the past two elections.
The distinguished news periodical The Economist reported last week, “Thinking back to the political chaos, bloodshed and economic meltdown that surrounded Soeharto’s departure, it is hard not to be impressed that the legitimacy of this convoluted process seems
to enjoy such general support in Indonesia.
Democracy has taken root and flourished. Though it is still finding its way — and there are many reasons to worry about the forthcoming election — democracy’s achievements are worth enumerating. In a country with a history of political violence, the campaign has been largely peaceful and good-humored.”
Having noted that, one cannot deny the fact so many people were disenfranchised. Many failed to vote because of massive mix-ups in the voter registration.
By one unofficial estimate, 10 million people were lost in the administrative chaos. Even those who did vote, did so without really knowing what they were voting for.
Up until the last minute there were swing voters who were in limbo, because they were ignorant about the whole process, whether by skepticism or because through the lack of information.
Forty-four parties, and hundreds of candidates for three legislatures (or two in the case of Jakarta) plus the “Senate”, which is the DPD, was a lot of necessary information to take in.
What is the bottom line? The positive perspective is that the elections have happened, and they happened on time.
They have yielded results which are reasonably logical, and the results are disputed, but with a great deal of caution and maturity from the important players. At the end of the day, people will move on.
That incidentally would be the wrong thing to do, just moving on. Because mistakes, such as the ones committed by the KPU, cannot be tolerated in the next election. The KPU would have to be overseen by a board of citizens of impeccable integrity.
How to translate the positives into action and how to translate the negatives into improvements; that is the golden rule of progress.
A lack of competence caused the elections to get a C grade, but Indonesian democracy still gets an A. Belaboring the mistakes could distract the nation from its determination to forge on, muddle on, keeping our heads high and rising to the next challenge.
Let us make sure we do not repeat the mistake of appointing incompetents to the most important tasks in the country.
There should be as much care in appointing the KPU as there is in appointing boards of state corporations and agencies of monetary authority. Yet who ever gave much thought to the selection of the KPU?
To be sure, the KPU are not the only incompetent body. The government is incompetent. The courts are incompetent. The legislature is incompetent. And in those bodies, incompetence is mixed with ill intentions. Not so in the KPU, but they are in an intensely focused public spotlight. They are the Kirov Ballet with a third-class cast. But at least the failure is not so much in “doing the right thing” as in “doing things right”, which is the lesser of the
two evils.
The writer is a political commentator.
