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his week we got another glimpse of the downside of democracy, with politicians in the House of Representatives fighting endlessly for power and position.

Thankfully, while the legislature may be dysfunctional, it has not affected the performance of the government of President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo. He helps us keep faith in democracy.

The House remains divided between the Red-and-White Coalition of five political parties that oppose the government and the Great Indonesia Coalition of four pro-government parties. They declared a truce after going separate ways, but they have yet to resolve the issue of House leadership.

President Jokowi was right in ordering his Cabinet members not to attend any House hearings until the leadership issue was settled. When asked why, he responded: Which House should the government entertain?

This week it has also become clear that Golkar, the largest party in the opposition coalition, is having an internal power struggle. Chairman Aburizal Bakrie is holding on to dear life amid growing dissent from factions disillusioned by his leadership. In their eyes, Aburizal is a big failure.  

To preempt anyone from mounting a serious challenge to his position, Aburizal has hastened the date of the congress to this weekend in Bali, though the original plan called for the congress to occur in the first quarter of 2015.

His challengers, including former welfare minister Agung Laksono and former industry minister M.S. Hidayat, refused to be outsmarted, forming '€œPresidium to Save Golkar'€ to remove Aburizal from his position as chairman. They have aired plans to hold a congress of their own in Jakarta in January. The Aburizal camp has declared the presidium illegal and will go ahead with its congress this Sunday.

The government may have made a tactical mistake when the Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister, Tedjo Edhy Purdijatno, blurted out that police should not issue the permit for the Golkar congress this weekend, citing security risks. He took his cue from the fistfights that broke out between rival Golkar supporters at the party'€™s headquarters in Jakarta on Tuesday, but quickly withdrew his remarks amid accusations of meddling in Golkar'€™s internal affairs.

The government got away once when the Law and Human Rights Ministry last month ruled in favor of recognizing the new leadership of the United Development Party (PPP) that challenged the incumbent chairman Suryadharma Ali.

The PPP is a member of the Red-and-White Coalition, but unlike Golkar, its numbers are too small to alter the political landscape in the House.

The fate and the strength of the opposition coalition hinges on the outcome of Golkar'€™s leadership battle. If Aburizal loses the chairmanship, it is almost certain that Golkar will abandon the coalition and join the Jokowi government. If Aburizal wins, he will likely preside over a badly broken Golkar. Either way, the opposition coalition will weaken.

With the House busy quarrelling amongst itself, it is hard to take its members seriously.

This week, several lawmakers circulated a petition calling for an exercise of the House'€™s interpellation right in order to summon President Jokowi to explain his Nov. 18 decision to increase fuel prices by 30 percent at a time when world oil prices are tumbling.

The petitioners seem to be the only ones who didn'€™t get it. The small protests that greeted the price hikes indicated widespread public acceptance of the official explanation for increasing the prices: To remove a huge fuel subsidy that instead of helping the poor had gone to the wealthy and redirect it to the President'€™s welfare programs.

The petition is just another indicator of how low the House has fallen. Since House members were inaugurated on Oct. 1, they have been engaged in fights that reflect a hunger for power more than anything else.

The House has yet to begin its main task of deliberating and passing legislative bills, and representing the people that put them there in the April elections.

The government, in the meantime, has been able to function well, even with a dysfunctional legislature.

Jokowi this week met with the governors of all 34 provinces and told them pointedly to reduce spending on meetings and traveling.

He also traveled to parts of Sumatra, including visiting the sites of forest fires that have sent haze and disrupted the lives of people in Sumatra, Kalimantan and in Singapore and Malaysia.

He demanded that everyone concerned join in the effort to prevent forest fires. We won'€™t know how effective his instruction is until the dry season returns in May or June.

Sooner or later, Jokowi will have to work with the House to ensure passage of his legislative agenda. Given his massive reform agenda and his ambitious vision of Indonesia as a maritime nation, he will need to secure the support of the majority in the House.

The question now becomes: when will the House get its act together and start working? The whole nation is waiting.

 '€” Endy M. Bayuni