T

he infighting that now wreaks havoc on the Golkar Party may seem like long-overdue karma. There is certainly a delightful sense of schadenfreude in seeing a once a mighty political party, the political machine of an authoritarian regime that once enjoyed almost unlimited resources and controlled the country'€™s political system '€” rigging elections along the way '€” now reduced to shreds.

And the fact that Golkar suffered internal strife at around the same time as its contemporary, the United Development Party (PPP), another creation of the New Order regime, could also point to the fact that the shelf lives of the last hangovers of the authoritarian past have finally expired. The lease on life that Golkar had for almost two decades will soon fade and their electoral success in the post-Soeharto era will be seen as an exception rather than a rule.

Consider this: The Golkar Party has never won a presidential election since the downfall of its former master, president Soeharto. The party'€™s ideological conservatism in 2014 that led it to nominate Wiranto '€” a former military general whose rise to prominence was owed to Soeharto'€™s network of patronage '€” for the presidential election, was a quintessential Golkar move, which promoted stability over dynamism, regression over progress and nostalgia over hope for the future.

The party'€™s decision to nominate Jusuf Kalla in the 2009 presidential election was a classic Golkar move also: Promoting a deep-pocketed candidate for the party'€™s top ticket and highest position so the party would enjoy smooth sailing, the same modus operandi that saw the party elect Aburizal Bakrie as its chairman.

Golkar has not delivered an impressive performance in the past four legislative elections, in fact displaying a downward trajectory. If this trend were to continue, it would see the Golkar Party as we know it out of the country'€™s political scene by 2030, if not sooner.

Golkar garnered 22.4 percent of the popular vote in the transitional 1999 general election, a feat that the party repeated in the 2004 election with 23.7 percent. But we should bear in mind that electoral gain was made by Golkar while the party continued to control the country'€™s most well-oiled political machine and that it didn'€™t gain nearly as much of the vote in that five years as the newly established Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party later went on to succeed in bringing former Indonesian Military (TNI) general Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to the presidency '€” which goes to show that anybody, especially the Democratic Party, can borrow tricks from Golkar'€™s playbook.

Golkar'€™s downward trajectory continued in 2009 when it only secured 14.45 percent of the vote, which translated to 106 seats in the House of Representatives. In the 2014 election, a slight change in electoral laws gave Golkar only 91 seats in the House, in spite of collecting around the same portion of the vote as in 2009. Also in 2014, Golkar'€™s conservatism (again visible in its endorsement of former TNI general Prabowo Subianto as presidential candidate) cost the party dearly and for the first time in its history, Golkar was out of the ruling government.

With all the missteps and wrong moves, it is quite amazing that Golkar continues to be part of the country'€™s political scene today. And for a political party bereft of any semblance of ideology and clear political program, there'€™s nothing that we could use to make sense of their continued, limited success other than brand recognition. Their key to middling electoral success is simply the fact that they have been around for far too long. '€œShowing up is 80 percent of life,'€ Woody Allen once said.

Once the older generation, who vote for and run the Golkar Party and who grew up during the peak of the New Order era, depart the scene, we can only expect that Golkar will ride off into the sunset with them. This explains the recent development in the party that has seen party elders, from Muladi and Akbar Tandjung to former president BJ Habibie, lead the charge to try to save the party. They have been calling for a national meeting that would elect a new party leader outside of the warring camps.

But even if they succeeded it would do little to stem the loss. Golkar is unlikely to emerge unscathed from today'€™s conflict and as the saga continues, voters will certainly punish them in the 2019 general elections. Besides, most voters would certainly think that after 18 years, Golkar has overstayed its welcome.
______________________________________

The author is a staff writer with The Jakarta Post.