The well-known idiom “it takes two to tango” definitely does not refer to politics.

At least that’s what we can conclude from Australia’s parliamentary composition resulting from a nail-biting federal election drama in which Julia Gillard from the Australian Labor Party and Tony Abbot from National Coalition acted as the main protagonists.

During the election there were weeks when a hung parliament was imminent as both Gillard and Abbott shared the same number of seats. In a country with a de-facto two-party parliamentary system such as Australia, a brittle situation from hung parliament — a condition where parliament is divided and no political party has an absolute majority over the opposition — is the last thing any prime minister would want to have.

Fortunately, after weeks of vagueness, Australians were able to breathe a sigh of relief when Gillard finally secured 76 seats (the number required for outright victory from the 150 seats in parliament) with last-gasp support from the Australian Greens Party and three independent members. This partly ended Australia’s political limbo, but the predicament is far from over since Gillard’s road ahead is still paved with loose stones.

The major reason why some people remain skeptical about the stability of Australia’s future government is that a parliament with a ruling party without power over its opposition may be incapable of performing at full throttle.

This could be nasty: During times when government policies urgently require approval from parliament, political intervention from the strong opposing party may be a hindrance to implementing such important policies.

As a country that has reeled through both the eras of autocracy and democracy (and also experienced a thorny transition in between), several examples could be drawn from Indonesia, Australia’s closest neighbor to the north, in terms of parliamentary matters.

In our not-so-distant past, former Indonesian president Soeharto could run his top-down politics and an extremely stable government because he had almost no one to oppose him in parliament. In addition to the autocratic culture that stemmed from his leadership style, the fact that the Golkar Party always came out victorious with overwhelming support in every election led the party to earn most seats in parliament, which allowed Soeharto to implement government policies as he pleased.

Soeharto’s example goes to show that the more power a ruling party has in parliament, the better its chances of implementing government policies smoothly. Under such conditions political interference from opposing parties is unlikely to be seen because of the overwhelming power the ruling party boasts in parliament.

More recently, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono tried to emanate Soeharto’s success by embracing other parties to form a giant coalition that holds 75 percent of the seats in parliament, with the expectation that such a powerful coalition would weaken the bargaining power of the opposition and ensure the stability of his second-tenure government.

So what would happen in a situation like Australia’s, where the parliament is divided into two fractions, with the ruling party only holding a wafer-thin majority over the opposition? If you were the leader of the ruling party in Australia, like Julia Gillard in the current parliamentary composition, then you could expect your powerful opposition to confront and grill you every time you came out with new policies.

And with her experience as a former minister and policymaker, Gillard surely realizes politics can get really nasty. Several lecturers at my university were once policymakers in government, and some said how crucial economic policies could lose their timing and credibility, and eventually become ineffectual, since such policies usually must undergo an arduous and protracted process of Indonesian politics before they can be put into action.

In the United States, very often Barack Obama has had to endure torrid times first from the Republican lawmakers before his policies could be implemented. Indeed, maintaining checks and balances on government by confronting the ruling party is precisely the job of opposing parties, such as the Republicans. But from an academic perspective — particularly in the field of economics where timing does matter and economic policies need to be implemented at the right time — there are times when an opposition party that is too strong can create lengthy political processes that ultimately reduce the efficiency of government itself.

However, in 2010 Gillard is not the only newly-elected head of state facing difficult challenges. One of her peers in a similar situation is Philippines’ Noynoy Aquino who was just elected this year, and already has to deal with the problem of national security and restoring the Philippines’ image following the Hong Kong tourist carnage incident.

Then there’s Colombia’s new president, Juan Manuel Santos, who presided over the country as president amid growing domestic tension between the state, guerillas and drug kingpins, as well as the problem with the threat of war from Hugo Chavez because of the infamous 2010 Colombia-Venezuela diplomatic crisis.

There’s also UK Prime Minister David Cameron who is unfortunate enough to occupy 10 Downing Street this year in the middle of anti-British sentiment from environmentalists following the British Petroleum fiasco in the Gulf of Mexico.

Having only a slim power difference against her opposition in parliament means with even a single lawmaker defecting her plans could be turned upside down: The government during Gillard’s tenure will be fragile indeed. In a world where encountering an uphill battle has become a trend for every newly elected leader this year, how to tame her stronger-than-ever opposition in parliament will be a challenging test for our beloved neighbor’s first female prime minister to overcome.


The writer is a student at the University of Indonesia’s School of Economics.

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