Commentary : Looking for electable candidates? Try a national convention

After serving two consecutive terms, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono will be barred from contesting the race for president in 2014.

However, Yudhoyono will still have the power to nominate a candidate to represent his political party, which won the largest number of votes in the last election.

The problem, as Yudhoyono admitted in a recent interview with US television interviewer Charlie Rose, was that he has not yet found a candidate.

What he did not spell out was that the Democratic Party, which he helped establish as his main political vehicle, has not found a candidate with strong electability from within its ranks.

This unfortunate situation actually presents Yudhoyono with a golden opportunity to make a major breakthrough in the way political parties are run in this country and to break from constraints that come with parties that are built around a single dominant figure.

Yudhoyono can do a great service to his party by leaving the presidential nomination to a national convention. Handled properly, this bottom-up process of selecting a candidate might just pick a winner in 2014, extending the life of the party beyond his own tenure.

He will also be doing a great service to the nation which is fast growing weary with political parties that produce poor, if not mediocre, leaders.

Party insiders say that surveys of prospective candidates conducted by major polling organizations put Democratic Party chairman Anas Urbaningrum behind three others in 2014. Voter familiarity, personal character and a track record are important to voters. Anas just does not have those things.

Leading the pack in all the surveys were former president Megawati Soekarnoputri of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), Golkar chairman Aburizal Bakrie, and Lt. Gen. (ret) Prabowo Subianto of the Greater Indonesia Movement (Gerindra).

Anas was ranked lower, along with Hatta Rajasa, a member of Yudhoyono’s cabinet and the chair of the National Mandate Party (PAN).

All the front-runners, however, have problems either in terms of a lack of name recognition, character or track records.

Luhut Pandjaitan, a former trade minister and now Golkar advisor, admitted that there were slim pickings for voters in 2014.

“We have to pick the best from the worst,” the retired Army general said during a discussion at the US-Indonesia Society (USINDO) in Washington.

Luhut said Bakrie was probably the most prepared of the front-runners, and he might just clinch the presidency in 2014 if he could address the mudflow and the tax scandals that have dogged him all this time.

Two independent candidates that featured prominently in all polls, though ranked lower than the top three candidates, were former finance minister and current World Bank managing director Sri Mulyani Indrawati and Mahmud MD, the chief of the Constitutional Court.

Both are iconic figures with impeccably clean and solid track records. But since party nominations are mandatory in contesting the presidential election, they will not get very far unless they run on the tickets of big parties.

There is no doubt that if Yudhoyono was allowed to run he would beat all challengers. In spite of some well-known character flaws - nobody’s perfect - he still scored ahead of others in terms of name recognition and his track record, just as when he pulled out a victory in 2009 to win a second term as president.

If the People’s Consultative Assembly opens the debate on another round of constitutional amendments in August, Yudhoyono might find an entry point to get the term limit requirement changed just in time to allow him to run for a third term. But that would be a very unpopular move.

It would be equally unpopular to nominate First Lady Ani Yudhoyono, or his brother-in-law, Lt. Gen. Pramono Edhie Wibowo, currently chief of the Army’s Strategic Reserves Command, as it would smack of nepotism. Either move could lead to a backlash against the party both in the legislative and presidential elections in 2014.

Holding a national convention to pick a candidate seems like the perfect answer to Yudhoyono’s problem in facing 2014. It is a mechanism that has been well tested in the United States and has actually produced some great presidents (though admittedly not all the time).

A national convention is not a novelty in Indonesia. Golkar held one in 2004 when it did not have anyone credible in its top leadership, but it could not have picked a worse candidate than former military chief Gen. Wiranto, who was eliminated in the first of two rounds of the presidential election.

Democrats would do well to learn the lessons of the US primaries and national convention, and also not to repeat the mistakes Golkar made in 2004.

In the absence of any electable candidate from within, the party should allow outsiders to contest, or be nominated by, the primaries. This would open the way for “independent” candidates with stronger credentials than Anas or Annie, to represent the party in 2014.

The process should be open and transparent and truly promote a bottom-up process to be credible. The credibility of Golkar’s 2004 convention, and its candidate, Wiranto, were destroyed by the rampant practices of money politics.

A candidate selected through a national convention will have been thoroughly tested and scrutinized. Through many public appearances and debates, the candidate will have increased his familiarity with voters and also expose her or his character and track record. Clinching the nomination fair and square would also means that the candidate has communication skills, an important criterion to win an election in a democracy.

Starting a tradition in selecting the right leaders for the nation’s political parties might just be the most important legacy that Yudhoyono can leave for his party, and for the nation.

May the best woman or man clinch the nomination, and probably, even the presidency.

The writer is senior editor of The Jakarta Post and a visiting fellow at the East-West Center in Washington, DC