Portrait of Regional Elections 2018
It seems the 2018 regional elections to be held simultaneously will be more interesting than the regional elections in 2017.
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The time has passed for the regional leadership of political parties to flock to Jakarta to ask for the central executive board’s blessing and recommended backing for the candidate pairs of the regional elections. There were those who were successful, and not a few who had their hopes dashed. What big picture can we draw of the simultaneous regional elections in 2018?
It seems the 2018 regional elections to be held simultaneously in 171 regions (17 provinces, 115 regencies and 39 cities) will be more interesting than the regional elections in 2017. The dynamics of last year’s regional elections were dominated by the freneticism of the Jakarta gubernatorial election, which was colored by the issues and emotionality of tribal affilication, religion, race and inter-groups (SARA). So rowdy was the reporting and public debate concerning the tug-of-war among candidates in the Jakarta gubernatorial election, that it seemed as though the 2017 regional election was held only in the nation\'s capital; whereas in fact, the regional elections were being held at the same time in 101 regions covering 7 provinces, 76 regencies and 18 cities across the country.
Different from the 2017 regional elections that tended to center on the Jakarta gubernatorial election, the competitive atmosphere has been noticeable in a number of regions for the 2018 regional elections, both in Java and the outer islands. A tight competition is expected in at least the five key electoral provinces of West Java, East Java, Central Java, North Sumatera and South Sulawesi. This is interesting, because the five provinces have the largest number of voters at 108.2 million, or 67 percent of the 160.7 million or voters for the 2018 regional elections. Theoretically, the political parties or coalitions that win the regional elections in the five provinces are predicted to have a good chance in winning the 2019 presidential election.
Party coalition of "three friends"
Nevertheless, it is not easy to find a "pattern" in political parties forming coalitions or cooperation to back their regional candidates. Moreover, it is nearly impossible for the pattern in question to include a map of the coalitions in 171 areas. The map of political alliances is not only different from one region to the other, but also very diverse. Political parties that are "hostile" toward each other at the national level even can cooperate and work hand-in-hand at the regional level, whether in the provinces, regencies or cities.
It is not surprising that the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) has formed a coalition with the Democrat Party to back Ganjar Pranowo-Taj Yasin as the gubernatorial candidate pair in Central Java. The same thing happened in East Java, where a coalition of the National Awakening Party (PKB) and PDI-P backed Saifullah Yusuf-Puti Guntur Soekarno, and was eventually joined by Gerindra and the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS).
The only inter-party cooperation that has a relative pattern is the tri-party coalition between Gerindra, the PKS and the National Mandate Party (PAN) in the five regions of West Java, Central Java, North Sumatera, East Kalimantan and North Maluku. The "three friends" coalition is not merely directed toward supporting each other in the regional elections, but also in their efforts to explore a possible coalition to support Prabowo Subianto as a presidential candidate in 2019.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with that. Moreover, the only significant competitor to Joko "Jokowi" Widodo in the upcoming presidential election has so far been Prabowo. The general chairman and board of trustees chair of the Gerindra Party is also the only figure who has consistently ranked second in electability surveys of the 2019 presidential candidates.
To what extent the Gerindra-PKS-PAN coalition will provide incentives to expand Prabowo’s electoral base for the 2019 presidential election remains a big question. The issue does not merely concern the flexibility of a political coalition, but also a constituent that is not ideological and more short-term oriented.
From the five top electoral provinces, the Gerindra-PKS-PAN coalition is only united in Central Java and North Sumatera. In West Java, PAN supports Sudrajat-Syaikhu ”half-heartedly” because it had, along with the PKS, made an earlier commitment to Deddy Mizwa. The incumbent West Java deputy governor finally joined the Democrat Party and is supported as a candidate for governor, with running mate Dedi Mulyadi supported by the Democrat and the Golkar parties.
In East Java, Gerindra and the PKS are supporting Saifullah Yusuf-Puti Guntur Soekarno separately from PAN, which is backing Khofifah Indar Parawansa-Emil Dardak. Meanwhile, in South Sulawesi, Gerindra is supporting Agus Arifin Nu’mang-Tanribali Lamo in a break from PKS and PAN, which are backing Nurdin Abdullah-Andi Sudirman Sulaiman, along with the PDI-P.
Regeneration failure
Another phenomenon that has been caught up in the hustle and bustle of the 2018 regional elections is the tendency of a number of political parties to promote figures outside their own parties. These non-cadre figures are quite diverse, ranging from soldiers, police officers, incumbent leaders from different political parties, bureaucrats and on up to religious figures and artists. For example, the PDI-P is backing at least four retired generals, both from the Indonesian Military (TNI) and National Police, as candidates for governor and deputy governor in West Java, Maluku and East Kalimantan. Gerindra is supporting at least three retired TNI generals governor and deputy governor in West Java, North Sumatera and South Sulawesi.
In North Sumatera, the Nasdem Party is even supporting a candidate from another party, and an incumbent at that: Tengku Erry Nuradi, who is experienced in leading North Sumatera not only as a cadre, but also as the chairman of the Nasdem Party’s regional executive board. There is no reasonable explanation behind such a political reality except the failure of the political parties to regenerate their own cadres on the one hand, and the increasing political pragmatism of parties on the other.
The failure of parties to regenerate cadres explains the increasing number of single candidates in the 2018 regional elections. When the candidate registration finally closed, at least 13 single candidates were registered for the 2018 regional elections, an increase from three single candidates in the 2015 regional elections and nine single candidates in the 2017 regional elections.
Besides the regeneration aspect, the increase in single candidates in the regional elections appears to have been caused by the higher costs the candidates must bear when seeking the support of political parties or party coalitions. At the same time, incumbents with a high electability and/or large financial support who gain party support have a greater chance of winning because of their status as a single candidate.
Increasingly expensive dowry
One of the major problems behind the direct regional election mechanism established since 2015 is the candidacy system, which is still centralized in the parties’ central executive boards in Jakarta. All candidates supported by political parties in the regions, whether in the provinces, regencies or cities, have to obtain recommendation letters from the party’s central executive board, signed by the party’s general chairman and the secretary-general. The General Elections Commission (KPU) at all levels will reject any candidates with party backing if they are not armed with a recommendation letter from the party.
The impact of such a selection process is the immediate dependency of regional executive boards and party branches to their central executive board. Furthermore, the regional executive boards’ dependency on the central executive board can give rise to the birth of a trade in the backing, blessing and of course, issuing the recommendation letters, popularly called "rekom" letters. In the end, are local executive board members and figures interested in becoming regional candidates will go on the hunt for rekom letters.
It is these regional executive board members and figures seeking regional candidacy that reportedly flocked to Jakarta in December to obtain rekom letters from the parties’ central executive boards. It could be alleged, too, that dozens or even hundreds of moneybags changed hands from the regional figures to "unscrupulous" administrators or political parties in Jakarta.
This phenomenon is termed "political dowry", a kind of political “bride price” for candidates to bear if they seek a party’s recommendation to contest the regional elections. Therefore, La Nyalla Mattalitti’s open statement, in which he admitted to have been "extorted" of billions of rupiah by a political party in connection with his aspirations to become an East Java gubernatorial candidate, is just the tip of the iceberg of the deeply ingrained and damaging phenomenon of the political dowry and payments that are behind the frenzied celebration of the regional elections.
A party official once revealed that the price for a rekom varied depending on the economic potential of a region and candidate’s electability. The rekom price for a strategic territory or region with sound economic potential is more expensive than that for "arid" areas.
The same goes for the rekom price for non-cadre figures with less electability, which will be more expensive than for those who are party cadres that are deemed to have high electability potential. For candidates who are popular public figures, party cadres and have high electability potential, the parties will not ask for a dowry, but to "simply" cover the political costs for promotions, socialization and campaigns.
The most serious impact of the increasingly expensive political dowry is a government that has been formed upon corrupt and transactional regional elections. Successful candidates will find it almost impossible to repay the political cost of billions of rupiahs, funded in part by way of loan advances, by relying merely on their salaries as regional heads. The only way is to sacrifice the public interest, namely by allowing regional budget (APBD) development projects to be arbitrarily awarded to those entrepreneurs that financed them in the regional elections.
In the end, the people become nothing more than an electoral statistic that can only pin their hopes and dreams on one regional election to the next.
Syamsuddin Haris
Research Professor, the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI)
