Sometimes when we live through interesting times, instead of merely observing them from afar or reading about them in history books, we tend to lose the sense of urgency and importance of those sea-change events. It is not an exaggeration to say that Indonesia has come a long way to finally arrive at this point in time: mere days away from arguably the most momentous event since the reformation era started, an event where each voting-capable individual will be able to cast his or her own voice to elect the new leaders of this country. The atmosphere in Jakarta is one of jaded guardedness, however, as people feel they are used to the political maneuverings of politicians and perhaps do not observe events leading up to the direct presidential elections with a more critical eye. Through the media, anyone should be able to tell that each candidate’s battle for presidency has begun in earnest.

            If there is one aspect of the current presidential campaigns I do not like, it is that television ads of candidates lack seriousness and are condescending: images of schoolchildren running towards a certain candidate upon whom they will shower their (rehearsed) gratitude and affection, along with those of candidates helping the day to day routines of the working class (who slouch through some of the lesser quality advertisements like overworked beasts of burdens) seem to have been the work of amateur propagandists. More disturbingly, these ads also send out the wrong message to people who have not been prepared to filter out aggrandized messages that essentially only say: vote for us if you don’t want to be poor anymore, and because we will bring about unity in this time of barely contained animosity between groups, and because our singing voice isn’t all that bad, either. It is also disturbing how similar the television ads of different candidates are, so I have been forced to assume that they are targeted to a narrow (but very numerous) demographic – people without the aforementioned filters. The biggest problem here is that these individuals are invited to vote a candidate based on the charisma of that potential leader, and not on his or her capabilities, let alone policies (though some ads are clever enough to present the idea and imagery of policies as policies themselves). In a recent televised meeting between Amien Rais and Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (from hereon SBY), Amien Rais, who observers predict will receive substantial support from Muslims voters, is one of the most informative of all candidates, as he does speak publicly about the kind of policies he will implement in pursuing a certain objective. SBY during that show offered more generalized opinions. Judging from the reactions of viewers of that show, we can see that there is a delicate balance that candidates must manage between various important objectives. Firstly, they must be able to attract as many people as possible and since imagery is one of the most effective ways promote their candidacy, advertising through television (however irresponsible they may be) is a very good way to do this; I am aware that a vast demographic of Indonesians do not have televisions, suffice to say, the other forms of advertisements that are being used to reach these people (e.g. flyers, radio ads, illicit campaigns) do not offer more in the way of quality information. Candidates have to balance this strategy of minimizing costs and efforts so as to produce cheap and/or poor quality campaigning in order to get to as many potential voters as possible, with the need to capture the votes of people who actually care about policies and other pertinent issues, hence the televised meetings/debates. Secondly, those candidates who are more inclined to issue detailed accounts of their future policies face another risk, as they must balance the attractiveness of their promises with the possibility that he/she will be made responsible for any failure to keep those promises at a later date; Indonesia is new to democracy, but people will learn that they have the ability to thwart leaders who make empty promises. Finally, because we have established that candidates will want maximize voters through the above strategies, we can assume that they will minimize the risk of losing voters by appealing to as wide a demographic as possible, that is, by not addressing sensitive issues of race, religion, ethnicities, and so on. This is a source of concern because whoever will become the leaders of Indonesia will inevitably have to confront these issues (most likely) immediately after he/she has won the presidency: the ambiguity of present campaigning confuse voters so as to which candidate would support their interests best, so the voting will probably not represent the true opinions of the public. One last very probable ramification of this PC balancing act is that foreign businesses will probably wait until the resulting government declares where its loyalties lay before returning to Indonesia.

Candidates Gallery

            The candidates themselves make a very interesting composition. Here I will try my best to speculate the consequences should each team win the presidency. One of the more daunting outcomes of the election, for the student community and Indonesia’s budding civil society, is if the Wiranto team wins: simply because Wiranto embodies, for them, the worst of Suharto’s New Order, in the form of irresponsible and brutal militarism and the crushing of dissent. It is arguable that Wiranto’s victory, because he possesses so much personal authority, has become desirable to some entities both in the political sphere and the business world – indeed, his campaign machinery is at the moment one of the most well lubricated. Wiranto is the darling of these entities because they view him as the only candidate with the strength with which to finally re-establish certainty and stability: for our purposes let’s focus on the stabilization of the investment realm – for example through a decisive and successful act of abolishing illegal mining and logging, a feat that could only be done by a powerful leader. The problem with Wiranto, as we have alluded to above, is that when Indonesians see him, they see a remnant of the Suharto regime, and therefore a living legacy of the regime’s misconducts. In fact, the international community is not particularly fond of Wiranto (some would argue because the global policemen enjoy putting New Order survivors in the hot seat), but not least because of the way Indonesia handled the East Timor situation and other incidents of unrest elsewhere on the archipelago (side note: perhaps the recent “banishment” of Sydney Jones recently will not help our image any better). If we put aside those concerns, it is true that Indonesia will benefit from a powerful leader who can guarantee predictability and stability. Coupled with the strong performance of the Golkar party in the recent general elections, the resulting government just might be able to provide that sense of security and back it up with stern policies it will be able to enforce. Observers offer a caveat for Wiranto supporters however: there must be a system of checks and balances with which powerful leaders can be constrained, otherwise Indonesia’s voters would have proven their inability to learn from its own past. Some savants would even go as far as saying that Indonesia does not need another “Bapak Bangsa”, only fearless caretakers of a functioning democratic government.

            The recent fatwa against a female leader has received the disdain and ridicule of many factions, including many Muslims. Even though it may incite the feminist movements of Indonesia to lend their support for the re-election of President Megawati Sukarnoputri, most Indonesians have already become disillusioned with Megawati’s various unfulfilled promises, not least of which her pledge to commit to stopping corruption in the country. Although we currently enjoy a relatively stable economy that her cabinet has laudably nurtured, there are some factions who see the present cabinet as a detached entity from the President herself (perhaps best portrayed by how many presidential hopefuls the cabinet produced), and so what success has been garnered by Megawati’s regime may not guarantee her a shot at a second try. One of the biggest criticisms against Megawati is that she does not have the powerful presence of other candidates such as Wiranto and SBY, harshly criticizing her of possessing only the leftover charisma of the nation’s beloved Sukarno. Because of the still significant support for her party in Indonesia, another term for Megawati may not be undesirable if only because the resulting government will be free to formulate and implement new laws.

            Of the rest of the candidates, perhaps SBY has one of the better chances to win the seat of presidency due to his charisma and relatively clean history. Unfortunately, judging from the results of the recent elections, the general consensus is that the victory of any of these other candidates will most likely produce a weaker government that would spend most of its time engaged in internal quarreling. There is a chance that if SBY becomes an effective populist leader his innate leadership qualities may overcome this structural obstacle, but since the next regime will be the first government elected in this manner in Indonesian history, SBY’s success is unlikely to happen; the aforementioned internal fighting would most probably reduce his effectiveness as a leader. It is unlikely that this issue will hamper SBY’s popularity, however, and it must be very frustrating for observers that none of the leader/party configurations are set up in a neater manner. Voters who wish to vote for a Muslim leader basically have to choose between Hamzah Haz and Amien Rais, next month, and most people are already comfortable with the idea that the latter will rise above the former in terms of popular support; a standpoint that has amalgamated from the public’s disappointment in Megawati and Hamzah’s government, the declining power of the PPP (Hamzah’s party), and the telling fact that Amien Rais was the only presidential candidate to sign the anti-corruption political contract the KPK have challenged all candidates to sign.

            As I have mentioned somewhat crassly above, it is the general feeling of the voting populace that although they have been granted the new freedom to choose the President and his running mate this time around, there just isn’t much in the way of real variety. This is an unfair description of course, and political observers readily explain the public’s pessimism due to what voters feel to be a reform effort that has not improved their welfare. Other groups, such as the Indonesian proponents of civil society, are less kind: these groups think that the general lack of trust in the candidates is solely because none of them are good leaders; the reason being that the Suharto regime culled all competent and potentially brilliant leaders from the system, and affected Indonesia’s education system to act as a ‘barrier to entry’ for anyone with political leadership capabilities. Persons of Quality will no doubt argue this point for quite some time, but the reality of the matter is that Indonesians really do lack a brimming well from which it can appoint its leaders, as too many people simply never had the opportunity to rise to the occasion. A simplistic approach of looking for a way out of this monopoly on political power on the hands of a few individuals of questionable competency (some may argue), is for us – the voters – to choose the candidates who will provide national policies that will lead to better education and the nurturing of future leaders. For a nation as big and as diverse as Indonesia (in terms of geography, etc) this is not an easy task, but if we keep putting off planting the seeds that will one day save our nation, then things will never get better.

            The international community is no doubt looking closely at Indonesia’s direct presidential election; Indonesia is large enough to be significant in the world market, and to present serious problems in terms of security in the region should things go awry. As mentioned above, foreign analysts regard the Wiranto team in a somewhat poor light. Should Wiranto win the election, however, international watchers will themselves be faced with a range of options: will it endorse the resulting powerful government, which will certainly be able to be more authoritative with regards to Indonesian security concerns? Or will it worry over the fact that the resulting government will take away the liberties of the Indonesian people that was hard won from Suharto’s regime? At this point in time, different international factions are undoubtedly supporting certain candidates who are best aligned to their interests, so I won’t discuss the various probable ruminations of each faction in detail; one very important point however, is that Indonesia must be serious in its fight against corruption and in instilling good governance across the board – and therefore we must align our nation with those factions that support this stance best. The following is an oversimplification: economic analysts observe that some less scrupulous foreign firms will tolerate a corrupt system as long as their gains are still larger than their losses in an acceptable degree, but of course such a system will only benefit a minority in the country in question. If Indonesia’s civil society succeeds in bringing about better governance on all levels (a pipe dream, but we must start somewhere), then foreign investment will benefit greater and greater proportions of the population. Another issue that may emerge is should a predominantly Islamic government take power: in light of recent world events such as in the Middle East and in South East Asia (in the Philippines and Thailand), how will foreign interests realign their alliances and reassign their investments? Various national and international entities would argue that this issue is not pertinent, at least not to people more nuanced than the average middle-class American; these entities would be wrong. It is dangerous to submerge these sorts of problems, as any loss of control will cause them to bubble up to the surface swiftly (and violently, as any serious student of history will tell you). A more reliable course of action would be to take on these issues up-front, to acknowledge the ugly sides of life and use the lessons learned in the process to cement Indonesia’s unity and integrity to sacred values. [aws]