Indonesia Backgrounder: A Guide to the 2004 Elections

Jakarta/Brussels  |   18 Dec 2003

Next year’s elections in Indonesia are unlikely to spur badly-needed reforms. Public disillusionment with the performance of democratic politics since 1999 and nostalgia for Soeharto-era authoritarian rule are spreading rapidly. Very little progress has been made in tackling corruption or delivering a better standard of living to ordinary Indonesians.

The International Crisis Group’s latest report, Indonesia Backgrounder: A Guide to the 2004 Elections,* assesses the players, their strategies and the range of probable outcomes. Victory by one of the country’s two major secular-nationalist parties, or perhaps a coalition of both, is widely expected – but neither looks likely to address seriously the core problems facing the country: blatant corruption, stalled democratic reform, economic stagnation, communal violence, and the more recent threat of terrorism.

“President Megawati Soekarnoputri’s leadership has been deeply disappointing, not only for those who had once held her up as a beacon of reform but also for those who had hoped she would use this period of relative political stability to tackle some of the country’s enormous problems”, says Sidney Jones, Indonesia Project Director for ICG. “There is no sign of a dynamic, visionary leader able or willing to take them on”.

Indonesia is facing at least two and probably three elections next year. The first, on 5 April 2004, will fill almost 16,000 seats in legislatures at the national, provincial and district levels. The second, on 5 July 2004, will be its first direct presidential election ever. If, as is almost certain, no candidate meets the criteria for victory in the first round, a run-off between the top two vote-getters will take place on 20 September.

For now, Megawati, of the ruling PDI-P, is the front runner, but the main opposition party, Golkar, currently assessing seven presidential candidates, is gaining ground. The two most likely Golkar nominees are party chairman Akbar Tanjung, who is appealing a three-year jail sentence for corruption, and former military commander General Wiranto, indicted by the UN’s East Timor Serious Crimes Unit for atrocities in 1999. The latter is playing to the desire for strong leadership. Either may need a coalition with one or more of three smaller Islam-based opposition parties.

The chances of a small party candidate winning the presidency are very slim. If one of those parties did manage to win the presidential race, it would still have to work with a Golkar- or PDI-P-dominated legislature and the corrupt “money politics” on which they thrive.

“Whether Megawati is reinstalled or a Golkar candidate elected, it would be unrealistic to expect either to embark on a program to tackle Indonesia’s ubiquitous corruption, particularly the urgent need to overhaul the judicial system,” says Sidney Jones. “Although the post-authoritarian governments have made some modest progress, there are still enormous obstacles to reform”.