Inevitability of the Political Party to Reform

Last week, we were shocked by the mass arrest of 41 of the 45 members of the Malang Council, East Java. Almost all political parties were "represented" by the 41 people. Previously, the country\'s political world was rocked by a case of alleged bribery in the Riau-1 Steam Power Plant project.

HERYUNANTO

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Nearly every week, the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) arrests perpetrators of bribery and corruption practices.

Last week, we were shocked by the mass arrest of 41 of the 45 members of the Malang Council (DPRD), East Java. Almost all political parties were "represented" by the 41 people. Previously, the country\'s political world was rocked by a case of alleged bribery in the Riau-1 Steam Power Plant project in Riau province.

The deputy chairperson of the House  Commission VII of the Golkar Party, Eni Maulani Saragih, was arrested by the KPK after she was caught red-handed accepting a bribe. The case of Riau-1 steam power plant project also involved the former secretary-general of the Golkar Party and the Social Service Minister of the Working Cabinet, Idrus Marham. Prior to the announcement as a suspect by the KPK, Idrus resigned from his position as social service minister and Golkar Party leadership.

Similar cases involving public officials from political parties nearly never stops, including cases of bribery and gratuities of various projects received by former Jambi governor Zumi Zola from the National Mandate Party (PAN),  as well as a corruption case centered around road widening funds allegedly involving Nur Mahmudi Ismail, the former Depok mayor and former president of the Justice Party, the forerunner of the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS). Zumi Zola was named a corruption suspect by the KPK, while Nur Mahmudi was named a corruption suspect by the Depok Police.

Why are our politicians never deterred from corruption? What is wrong with our political parties after democratizing for almost two decades in the post-New Order era? Besides having the functions of articulation and aggregation of interests, political communication, political socialization and education, political recruitment and means of regulating conflicts, in theory, political parties are the "bridges" that connect the people and the government. The aspirations of the people are processed by political parties in the House of Representatives to later be converted into public policies. In short, political parties are one of the important pillars of a representative democratic system in addition to the executive, legislative and judicial institutions, general election, free press and civil society that are autonomous toward the state.

Beyond the theoretical perspective, in the context of our country, political parties have historically played an important role in searching and finally "finding" Indonesia’s identity, including fighting for a foundation of diversity for an independent Indonesia. The figures of independence, from HOS Tjokroaminoto, Soekarno, Hatta, to Sjahrir and M Natsir, did not only raise the parties, but also made the political parties as the engine of the struggle for Indonesia, which is more just and prosperous. The important and strategic role of political parties lasted until the end of the 1950s, before the parties were buried by Sukarno under Guided Democracy (1959-1965) and Soeharto for nearly 32 years of the New Order\'s authoritarian regime (1966-1998).

The collapse of the New Order became a golden opportunity for political parties to once again play a role in politics. Nearly 200 political parties were born or reborn ahead of the 1999 general election. The third amendment to our constitution in 2001 placed political parties as the only institutions that have the functions and responsibilities of recruiting public officials through general election, both legislative and presidential elections. The expectation of the public toward political parties was growing again. Through the presidential democratic system that was increasingly strengthened, political parties were expected to become the solution in institutionalizing a system of checks and balances between executive and legislative institutions, so as to form an effective government from the general election results.

Present reality of political parties

The rising expectations of political parties often contradict the political reality. In our present democratic practice, the reality of political parties is really bad. Transparency International indicates that the public perception of political parties is poor, namely they are viewed as the country’s most corrupt institution, and political party politicians as the most corrupt actors. The Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) public survey (2018) in 34 provinces also confirmed that political parties were one of the worst performing institutions. Instead of being a solution, political parties often become a part of our democratic problems up to this moment.

Direct regional elections, which have been held since 2005 and are now carried out simultaneously, also produce problematic regional heads. According to KPK data, as of 2018, there have been 106 cases of regional heads being arrested for corruption, 77 of them were regents and mayors, while 14  were governors. This reality is not only troubling because it destroys our democracy, but it is also very worrying because it produces rent-seeking regional heads.

Our anxiety increased when there were allegations that Sandiaga Uno paid a Rp 500 billion (US$33.796 million) “political dowry” to PAN and the PKS to approve him as a vice-presidential candidate for Prabowo Subianto. The accusation from Andi Arief, the deputy secretary-general of the Democratic Party, finally disappeared because the General Election Supervisory Body (Bawaslu) did not find proof of the allegation.

The bad image of political parties is not solely related to various cases of bribery and corruption, but also with to poor leadership patterns. The leadership development and regeneration tend to be personal and oligarchic in most parties, so that the institutions, which are supposed to be public legal entities, are actually trapped as private firms owned by the general chairpersons and/or powerful political party members. In several political parties, the chairpersons – who are also the founders of the parties – even have absolute power, so that the parties are really the identity of the chairpersons. Whatever the chairperson decides, that is the party’s decision.

Why is this so? Part of the reason lies in the fact that the party elites do not have genuine ideas about the direction of reform and post-Soeharto democracy. Moreover, the pressure for reform is more the  "sweat" of the movements of civil society and students than as a "service" from political parties. In this connection, it is understandable when people call political parties that are enjoying our democracy at this time a stowaway of the reform train. On the other hand, the focus of the attention of pro-democracy activists and various elements of civil society in the 1998-1999 critical period was to offer civil liberties, including the existence of political parties as a pillar of the democratic system. No one thought that political parties would become the source of our democratic problems, the way they are today.

Another factor, which is rooted in the success of the New Order authoritarian regime, is brainwashing our nation so that the understanding of politics and noble values, that should be attached to the concept of politics, experiences a kind of siltation. Politics is finally understood simply as a struggle to seize and maintain power. As stated by Harold D Lasswell, politics is ultimately only a matter of who gets what, when and how. The impact on our political parties is extraordinary. Ideology is not only absent from the life of political parties, but has even turned into something illicit. Even if there is any, the ideology of the political parties is only an accessory to fulfill requirements. The focus of political parties is to seize and retain power without taking into consideration the basis of ethics, methods and procedures, and the standard of politeness according to democratic rationality.

Acute problems and political party reform

It is not surprising when later, political parties inherit various acute problems. The first of four of them is the absence of ethical standards as a reference for the behavior of political parties and political party elites, so that electoral competition through general elections and regional elections is treated as a free market for anyone. There is no burden for politicians whatsoever if at any time they are "jumping the fence" or moving to other political parties, because there is no moral standard that is institutionalized and internalized into the life of political parties. The tip of the iceberg, which indicates the absence of this ethical standard, is the failure of the DPR Honorary Council to impose sanctions and ethical penalties on Setya Novanto in the case of "daddy is asking for shares".

Second, there is relatively no internal democracy, so that the political parties are managed according to the tastes of the general chairmen. Members, cadres and administrators don\'t know why Badu can be a legislative candidate, even though he is not a member, let alone a party cadre. Members, cadres and party administrators also often do not have the ability to choose party leaders or reject certain policies, because the decision-making process is carried out in a closed and oligarchic way.

Third, a standardized cadre system has relatively not been developed yet, in the sense of being an inclusive, periodic, in stages and sustainable, as well as an open, democratic and accountable recruitment system. As a result, competition in general elections and regional elections has become a "free market" so that anyone can be a legislative candidate or a candidate pair for regional elections as long as they are popular, have sufficient financial capital and have personal ties with the party leaders. Capacity and integrity are frequently defeated by the contents of the bags, aka the ability to pay a “dowry” to party administrators. The mushrooming phenomenon of celebrities as legislative candidates reflects this reality.

Fourth, there is no good and accountable financial governance system. On the one hand, political parties do not have sufficient funding sources because membership fees are not running as expected and state subsidies are limited. However, it is also difficult to deny that almost none of the political parties have a transparent and accountable financial accounting and reporting system. Dependence on the supply of "unclean" funds from cadres in the executive and legislature makes the financial "liquidity" of some of our political parties be known only by a handful of party financiers centered on the general chairmen and/or the party owners.

In addition to political problems, institutionally, our democracy today is also imprisoned by party system problems that are less compatible with the presidential system. The extreme multiparty system that has developed since the 1999 general election does not only result in ineffective national and local government systems, but also tends to be trapped in transactional politics. The parties make political power be owned as a basis for rent-seeking rather than fighting for public policies. The mass corruption practice of the DPRD as in the case of Malang, among others, is the impact of the extreme multiparty system.

Herein lies the inevitability of political party reform, namely in the framework of realizing democratic and institutionalized political parties with integrity, as well as party system reform toward a moderate multiparty system that is expected to increase the effectiveness of the presidential system at the national level and regional government systems in the provinces, regencies and cities. Without reforming political parties and their party system, our democracy is no more than a procedural electoral democracy.

Since political reform began to roll almost two decades ago, political parties are the only public institutions that have not been touched by reform. The blurred portrait of the parties will never change if there is no serious effort to change them for the better. There are at least three paths that can be taken. First, the party line itself – in the sense that politicians need to be aware of changing themselves. Second, the regulation path by the state. Third, community path. The experience of the two decades of reform shows there is nearly no hope if we wait for the initiative of change from the elite and political party leaders. Meanwhile, changes through the state\'s path necessitate the existence of government initiatives as one of the elements to make a ruling to revise and refine regulations and/or laws on political fields.

If the initiative to change does not come from the parties and state elites, the only hope of change is the emergence of strong pressure from various elements of civil society. They can remind the parties and the state that the direction of our party life and democracy does not only deviate from the ideals of reform, but is also increasingly moving away from the mandate of the founding fathers through the opening of the Constitution, namely the realization of popular sovereignty, social justice and prosperity.

KOMPAS/HERU SRI KUMORO

Syamsuddin Haris

In this regard, there are at least two important contexts for political party reform that need to be accommodated through the revision of the Political Party Law. First, the formation of laws that are expected to encourage – and if necessary to oblige – changes in the internal characters of the parties so that parties which are democratic, institutionalized and with integrity can be realized. This necessitates the reform of political parties, which include the institutionalization of ethical standards, internal democratization, regeneration and recruitment systems, and good and accountable financial governance. The second context of the urgency of the revision of the Political Party Law is the creation of a law which does not only form the basis for the formation of a party system that facilitates the effectiveness of the presidential democracy, but also accommodates the emergence of political representatives and leaders who are capable and have integrity and a strong sense of responsibility.

Since 2018, the state through Government Regulation No. 1/2018 on political party financial assistance has increased subsidies for political parties by almost 1,000 percent, from Rp 108/vote to Rp 1,000/per vote. As a compensation for increasing state subsidies significantly, there is no other choice for political parties except to reform themselves. The cost of politics is too expensive for this nation to pay if general elections and regional elections only produce corrupt political party politicians, procedural democracies, and bad governance. Through an article he wrote, Our Democracy (1960), Bung Hatta reminded us that "the party does not become the goal [and] the state becomes its tool".

Syamsuddin Haris, Research Professor of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI)