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Local elections: Balancing political party bossism
In general, political parties remain the best vehicle for individuals who aspire to public posts at national or regional levels
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n general, political parties remain the best vehicle for individuals who aspire to public posts at national or regional levels. This ideal mechanism, however, has been tainted by myriad corruption cases involving political party members and public trust in political institutions has been degraded.
The fact that political parties have sought every path to raise the bar very high for independent candidates can be regarded as a counterattack to mushrooming volunteer movements seeking to nominate non-partisans for elections, particularly in Jakarta.
Ironically after that, we have seen a deficit of political party members who are fit for regional head posts.
Under such conditions, the next question is whether political parties have successfully strengthened themselves as one of the most important axes of democracy.
The characteristic of political parties in Indonesia can answer this question. Most political parties in the country still lean on one strong figure. In short, the party’s decisions are not the result of a democratic process, but more the subjective views of individuals from the parties’ elites.
This has held true in the political process in the run-up to the Jakarta election, which will see a three-horse race featuring Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama-Djarot Saiful Hidayat, Anies Baswedan-Sandiaga Uno and Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono-Sylviana Murni.
Agus’ candidacy is the latest example of the bossism phenomenon. His nomination shows the central role of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as the patron and chairman in determining the political direction of the Democratic Party. SBY’s influence behind his son Agus’ nomination confirms the bossism that typifies our political parties.
Bossism can be described as a power control system that centers on one strong figure. This figure is the one who controls every aspect of political decision making, especially in choosing candidates for elections.
Each candidate, if elected, will have to toe the party line in accordance with the figure’s interests. This bossism is practiced by all political parties, whether they are small or big.
So how can we balance bossism? The answer is the power of civil society. In general, civil society in Indonesia is still fragmented, unorganized and without coherence (Nyman 2009:29).
But, in the event of a general election, this condition can change. In their research on the 2014 presidential election, Ririn Sefsani and Patrick Ziegenhain (2015) showed that the power of civil society was the winning factor for Joko “Jokowi” Widodo-Jusuf Kalla.
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Ahok’s candidacy came from the bottom of society, unlike Agus who came from above.
Sefsani and Ziegenhain maintain that it is more important for civil society to support one candidate pair that they trust rather than a political party that they do not.
This follows the fact that civil society, and especially political volunteer groups, is relatively autonomous and therefore can change a clientelism form of support to a more direct public participatory approach.
As a candidate, Agus has a strong and close relationship with SBY (because of their father and son relationship).
Agus is not a member of any political party and has never got involved in politics because his military service prohibited him from doing so.
Ahok is a different phenomenon. His candidacy started from the support of civil society grouped under a volunteer group called Teman Ahok. This means Ahok’s candidacy came from the bottom of society, unlike Agus who came from above.
Successful entrepreneur Sandiaga is also a candidate with a civilian background. But unlike Ahok, Sandiaga does not have a massive social or volunteer movement to support his candidacy.
Therefore his candidacy more or less came from his own political ambition, despite his denial of this.
This does not mean that Ahok does not have that kind of political desire. But the political mobilization that the volunteer group built needs to be included as a special factor in order to balance the power of bossism.
The support from an autonomous voluntary group is a must to balance the power of political party elites.
Meanwhile, Anies was appointed near the deadline of registration. The short amount of time taken to choose Anies as a gubernatorial candidate also reflects the great power of political elites, particularly the Gerindra Party’s chairman Prabowo Subianto, to direct which candidate should be picked.
The elaboration above at least can give an interesting picture of the state of our political parties after Reformasi.
The negative side of this bossism is that our country will find it difficult to achieve infrastructural power, or a capacity to penetrate civil society and implement political decisions in a democratic scene (Slater 2008: 254).
Indonesian political parties need to transform themselves into mass-based parties, which can easily reach out to grassroots society, either at the national or local level. A mass party can effectively carry out political mobilization in the public’s interest.
In fact, the viability of a mass party depends on the active participation of its members.
At the same time, volunteer civil society movements to support candidates in an election remains a necessity as they can balance the “feudalistic” power of political parties.
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The writer, a graduate of Faculty of Political Science, University of Indonesia (UI), Depok, West Java, currently works as an intern at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Jakarta.
