Why does indonesia have many political parties

Since the fall of Suharto, direct elections at a national and local level have been dominated by members of dynasties, influential businessmen, and former military officials competing for public support based on their backgrounds and networks.

The likes of Anies, Ridwan, and Ganjar have taken a similar approach, building local support networks rather than simply relying on patronage as often happened before. One of the reasons that elections in Indonesia are so expensive is the practice of vote buying, in which candidates or their agents hand out cash or staple goods in the expectation that voters will support them.

As many as one in three Indonesians are given such bribes during elections, according to one expert study. After elections, established political party leaders use other methods to try to maintain their grip on power. Rather than go into opposition, many prefer to line up behind the president in the hope of winning access to Cabinet seats, protection from prosecution for corruption, or other forms of patronage.

Although they must work with political parties, their direct mandate from the people gives them significant leverage against the parties and requires them to be responsive to public needs. However much political party bosses might want pliable candidates who will sustain their rent-seeking practices and patronage networks, they need people who can win elections. And Indonesian voters are demanding more from their leaders.

Despite the manner of his election as president, Jokowi has been a weak guardian of democratic principles. The evidence of democratic backsliding under Jokowi is extensive. His administration has made increasing use of vague and illiberal laws to criminalise criticism of the government and other official institutions including the military.

It has weakened the fight against corruption in the name of political stability. And it has undermined successful efforts to put the armed forces back in the barracks, most notably with a recent proposal to deploy senior officers into the civil service ostensibly because there are not enough appropriate jobs available in the military.

Many of these issues stem from forces that were either unleashed or unreformed after reformasi. Too often, Jokowi has been unable or unwilling to take on these vested interests, preferring short-term political stability over long-term political change. Some of the biggest challenges to democracy in Indonesia today are a result of the growth of identity politics and the associated rise of a more pious and strident attitude to religion.

These nationalist parties have been promoting shariah local by-laws that mandate everything from the wearing of headscarves by schoolgirls to the quantum of zakat , Islamic charitable giving. This may reflect rising religiosity from nationalist party politicians.

However, it is also part of an effort by these local leaders to harness support from Islamic voters and organisations, in addition to creating new revenue streams. The Ahok case was an example of politicians instrumentalising religion and identity on a much bigger scale. Shaken by the scale and vociferous nature of the campaign, Jokowi went into damage control mode.

Even as he gave succour to the hardliners and conservatives with these moves, Jokowi also empowered the law enforcement agencies to go after them — another demonstration of his heavy-handed tendencies. The government banned Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia, the local offshoot of a global ogranisation committed to founding an Islamic caliphate.

The police effectively drove Habib Rizieq Shihab, the hard-line cleric who founded the Islamic Defenders Front, into exile after pursuing pornography charges against him following the leak on the internet of a purported sex chat between him and a woman.

The charges were dropped in but Rizieq remains in Saudi Arabia. Ahmed Dhani, a rock star, was jailed for tweets that were contentiously judged to amount to hate speech.

And Robertus Robet, an academic, was charged for singing a Suharto-era song that mocked the military. The police have also broken up or cancelled a series of anti-Jokowi political events on specious grounds. While this crackdown was largely reactive, rather than part of a premeditated plan, it has undermined democracy and the rule of law in Indonesia. The fight against endemic graft has been undercut by the apparent willingness of the government led by a president whose personal image remains clean to cut deals with those of questionable background in exchange for political support.

The most often-cited example is Hary Tanoesoedibjo, a media tycoon and ardent Jokowi critic, who started backing the president in after he was charged with threatening a public prosecutor — a case that has not progressed since.

Hit hard by reality, he is now simply trying to survive in what can be a very dirty game. And his chief focus has always been on economic progress, not human rights and the principles of democracy. His illiberal, if not authoritarian, responses, probably also reflect his own upbringing in the Suharto era. Whatever the motive, the trend is worrying.

Given how many in the Indonesian elite would like to roll back the power of democracy to hold them to account, Jokowi looks careless at best. Indonesia has built a robust system for holding free and fair elections, despite considerable logistical and political challenges. However, at a time of growing global concern about democratic regression from the United States to the Philippines, the broader democratic system is under attack on various fronts.

This tension between resilient elections and defective democracy partly reflects the political compromises of reformasi , which ended the Suharto regime and kick-started democratisation. The tension is embodied in Jokowi who won power because of competitive elections but has presided over a period of democratic backsliding, whether through neglect or intent.

The pressures on Indonesian democracy are not likely to abate under a second-term Jokowi or a Prabowo presidency, given their characters and their political coalitions.

Religious-infused identity politics, which many analysts argued would dissipate after the fall of Ahok, seems to be embedded in the system for now. Faced with criticism and challenges to their authority, both candidates are likely to respond with illiberal methods. Law enforcement agencies and the military have been emboldened by the expanding political roles given to them. And establishment political parties will continue to form powerful cartels until structural reforms break their hold over the system.

Amid the fears for the future of Indonesian democracy, however, there are signs of hope. The resilient election system has allowed a new slate of more effective and responsive local leaders to emerge, including Sandiaga, Anies Baswedan, and Ridwan Kamil. They are now eyeing the election, when Jokowi will not be able to stand if he is elected this time as the polls predict. These ambitious, younger politicians mostly come from outside the party, military and religious elite, and their politics has been much less defined by the Suharto era.

However, they will face a similar dilemma to Jokowi: must power come at the price of real reform? Or can bolder leadership overcome vested interests without destabilising the political system? Instead, they should prepare themselves to deal with a nation that is becoming more complex as different actors fight for power and influence within a competitive but flawed democracy.

In the past two decades, Indonesia has come through an incredible array of calamities, including separatist conflicts, devastating natural disasters, the Asian financial crisis, and the messy end of a year authoritarian regime. That success should not breed complacency. Indonesia appears to be settling into a more divisive pattern of identity politics that risks stoking further intolerance and distracting from the debate about political, legal, and economic reforms.

Its vertical and horizontal organization has meant that of all political parties in the country, Golkar enjoys support that is spread most evenly across all the regions.

Golkar has yet to nominate a winning candidate for president, but it was the largest party in the House of Representatives in and the second-largest party in after the Democratic Party. It is poised for strong results again in As a party with a long history and strong institutional roots, Golkar does not revolve around a single personality. It is also one of very few Indonesian parties to consistently hold conventions to determine a presidential candidate.

But factional conflicts within the party have eroded its unity, and it struggles to come together behind a chosen candidate. The three newest parties in parliament—Gerindra, Hanura, and NasDem—were all created by dissatisfied ex-Golkar politicians.

When the president enacted fuel hikes in and , PDI-P strongly objected on the grounds that these policies would burden the poor. However, PDI-P pursued a fuel subsidy reduction while it was in power in Similarly, as an opposition party, PDI-P has been a strong critic of the military , but when it was the ruling party it regularly used military force to crack down on separatist movements. PDI-P is not quite a personal vehicle for its matriarch, Megawati, but it does draw heavily upon her star power.

In , the party faced a big decision: nominate Megawati for the fourth time or undergo a changing of the guard and nominate the popular Jakarta governor Joko Widodo, known as Jokowi. On March 14, PDI-P chose to nominate Jokowi, hoping to capitalize on his widespread appeal during the parliamentary as well as the presidential elections.

Nonetheless, it claims to be ready to return to a position of leadership in , and polls indicate that the party could land in first or second place in the lower house elections. It is a secular party whose chief ideology appears to be fierce nationalism and defense of the unitary state.

This allows Gerindra to operate well-designed public relations campaigns to boost its profile. In , the party won 26 seats in parliament, and it is likely to improve on that result in To further enhance its chances of success, Gerindra began absorbing smaller parties from across the political spectrum as early as Its patron is former general Wiranto, who—like Prabowo—failed to find success within Golkar, which prompted him to establish Hanura in Also like Gerindra, Hanura has spent the past five years as an opposition party and promotes a highly nationalist ideology lacking in specifics.

It sets itself apart by targeting parts of eastern Indonesia—particularly Sulawesi—as a voting base. Hanura was the smallest party in parliament in , when it won seventeen seats and 3. This is just above the new parliamentary threshold for the elections, which requires a party to receive 3. Most surveys suggest Hanura will increase its share and make the cutoff.

Its focus on maintaining national unity has even been used to justify its support for passage of a conservative anti-pornography bill. PKPI was initially excluded by the General Elections Commission on the grounds that it had not offered sufficient proof of nationwide support, a decision that was later overruled by the Election Supervisory Body.

NasDem began as a civic mass organization founded by several Golkar leaders in Despite projections that NasDem will win seats in parliament, the cohesion of its leadership is still very much in flux. PKS is known for its educated, politically savvy leaders, its well-developed organizational and electoral strategies, and its modern, pragmatic Islamic ideology.

When it burst onto the national scene in , going from seven to 45 seats in the House of Representatives, international observers wondered if the party represented the future of political Islam in Indonesia. PKS seemed positioned to transform the landscape of Indonesian politics. The party won 57 seats in , but its credibility took a big hit in January when its chairman and other staffers became implicated in a graft scandal.

The credibility of other Islamic parties implicated in the scandal was also damaged as all had made moral leadership a central pillar in their campaigns. Political observer Saiful Mujani says polarization caused by this year's elections may run deep in society but has failed to shake up Indonesia's political establishment.

The founder of polling agency Saiful Mujani Research Center SRMC noted that the elections have not changed the balance of power between Indonesia's political parties, but instead have reinforced it. I still feel it is. At least formally it is no different to other nationalist parties.

According to him, the boundaries between nationalist and Islamic parties in Indonesia are blurred. Nationalist parties are usually considered pluralist and inclusive toward minorities. However, the rhetoric coming from the party's elites, such as its founder Amien Rais, has contributed to the divisive nature of last month's simultaneous presidential and legislative elections. But PAN did not benefit from that in the [legislative] election," Saiful said.

They were close to being booted off from Senayan [where the House of Representatives building is located]. The polarization did not help [non-nationalist] PPP either," Saiful said.

Political expert Eve Warburton takes a different view of the polarization. She suggested that it is superficial and largely engineered by the top brass of the country's political elites as they fight for access to patronage resources.