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Megawati's Indian lessons
With the elections looming, Indonesia finds itself at a crossroads
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ith the elections looming, Indonesia finds itself at a crossroads. Increasingly the public liken politics and the current democratic milieu to a dirty river: A river so polluted by reckless business interests and corrupt bureaucrats that only crooked politicians and parties can survive its poisonous currents.
Worst of all the interests and ideals among the middle and lower classes, which yield the most power to alter the current state of affairs, are largely absent in public discourse and are not championed by the parties eligible to run in the elections.
In this context, the news that Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) leader Megawati Soekarnoputri might run again for president is cause for concern. In other words, she would not be prepared to step aside for the only potential candidate that carries some promise of change and improvement ' current Jakarta Governor Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo.
At best, Megawati would only allow Jokowi to take the role of her subordinate deputy. If so, pundits convincingly argue, she is bound to lose and would actually pave the way for the re-emergence of Indonesia's dark past, with authoritarian chief patron of the Great Indonesia Movement (Gerindra) Party, Lt. Gen. (ret.) Prabowo Subianto and still active business tycoon Aburizal Bakrie waiting in the wings.
This line of thinking rests with the biased assumption that Megawati is a selfish, dynastic politician who is unable to make rational political decisions. Yet there are good reasons to assume that Megawati is less provincial than her critics and better read then they!
Possibly, for instance, she knows of Sonia Gandhi's wise decision a number of years ago to abstain from running in the prime ministerial race in India. This was because Gandhi then, like Megawati now, was bound to lose; Gandhi because of her Italian origin and Megawati because of what the new generations associate her with old politics.
Instead of being stubborn, Gandhi focused, then, on reforming 'her' party's policies. For example, she chaired a National Advisory Council for development- and social- rights scholars and activists.
This council fostered quite remarkable reforms for the right to information, guaranteed employment among the rural poor and food security. Thus, Gandhi gained widespread respect and increased authority and she nourished a number of successes for her battered party.
Most likely Megawati has also followed the international news last Sunday about the humiliating defeat of Ghandi's Congress Party in the capital region of New Delhi.
This catastrophe was because Gandhi had not yet been successful enough in repositioning 'her' party's organization.
While Gandhi herself and the social reforms she fostered were appreciated, the party itself continued to be associated with political corruption and elitism. Hence, by default, the conservative Hindu fundamentalist party Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) returned to the forefront with 32 of the 70 seats.
But most remarkably: voters primarily abandoned the Congress-ship in favor of the new Aam Aadmi Party (AAP): the Common People's Party. The AAP made unimaginable advances. Only a year ago, it grew out of the sections of the anti-corruption movement and the pro-democracy and social right groups that realized they had to go beyond civil society activism by engaging in politics. Moreover, they did not follow in the steps of the anti-democracy protestors on the streets of Bangkok.
On the contrary, each of AAP's most committed followers engaged in a remarkable campaign to select the party's candidates by knocking on most of the doors in the huge city to ask for nominations.
The proposals were then aggregated in a transparent process by respectable leaders. Thus, the AAP transcended the same kind of seemingly invincible patronage and money politics that ravages Indonesia ' by advancing from zero to 28 seats, 30 percent of the seats in one go!
In short, it is more likely that Megawati is more aware of contemporary international experiences than her critics.
Hence, she must realize that she, like Gandhi, should wisely and gracefully abstain from running and pave the way for fresh blood. She, like Gandhi, may then focus on strengthening 'her' party, assisted by an advisory council and support the development of innovative welfare and economic policies.
Instead of losing out this will even give her more legitimacy and authority as a seasoned political leader. Equally important, she may learn from Gandhi's mistake by genuinely democratizing 'her' party to avoid a similar humiliating defeat as that of the Indian Congress last week.
In any case, Indonesia's anti-corruption campaigners and emerging unions are using the stunning victory of the common people's party in New Delhi as the catalyst for their own cause. Indonesia's electoral system is certainly unfair enough to prevent such positive experiments ' but there are alternative roadmaps. This too, for now, speaks in favor of Jokowi.
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The writer is professor of political science and development research and senior member of the University of Gadjah Mada and the University of Oslo's joint research project on power, welfare and democracy.
