Indonesian Political Parties in the Future

Political parties play a central role in the multiparty democratic political system that we have embraced since 1999, and determine the circulation of the political elite in the regions and in the central government.

Kompas

Siswono Yudo Husodo

A total of 2,207 members of the provincial legislative councils (DPRDs), 17,610 members of the regency/city DPRDs in various regions, 560 members of the House of Representatives and People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR) as well as the president and vice president, along with 17 of the 34 ministers of the Indonesia Onward Cabinet 2019-2024, and three of the nine members of the Presidential Advisory Council (Wantimpres) recently sworn in are figures representing political parties.

Until 2024, political parties will be involved in the strategic agenda of selecting through screening interviews in the House candidates for state offices: Supreme Court Justices, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Constitutional Court, Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) leaders, ambassadors, commander of the Indonesian Military (TNI) and the chief of the National Police, Bank Indonesia (BI) governors, BI commissioners, General Elections Commission (KPU) members, Social Security Management Agency (BPJS) senior officials and others. Also, simultaneous regional elections in 2020, 2021, 2022 to elect governors/deputy governors in 34 provinces, regents/deputy regents in 416 regencies, mayors/deputy mayors in 98 cities. Ahead of 2023, provincial/regency/city DPRD candidates, House candidates, and president and vice-president candidates will be selected for the legislative and presidential elections in 2024.

Our state political schedule is very tight and political parties have the noble task of preparing Indonesia\'s best sons and daughters to occupy positions of political leadership. This makes the task of party leadership at the national level difficult and onerous.

Political parties must be led by national figures who are known by and familiar with national political elites and have a network of political elites in the regions. They are in charge of managing the party\'s organization and bureaucracy, fostering party officials and members throughout the country, leading all party members to channel the aspirations of the people, giving birth to new ideas for the advancement of the nation, state and society in all fields, conducting political education for the people, articulating ideas, aspirations, ideas from the people to be realized in the administration of the state and to publicize state policies.

Read more :Corruption Law Enforcement 2020

KOMPAS/HERU SRI KUMORO

Ahead of the election of the mayor of South Tangerang in 2020, billboards, banners and posters of a number of public figures and political parties are installed in public spaces such as roadsides in South Tangerang city, Banten, as seen on Sunday (24/11/2019).

The political dynamics of Indonesia are so complicated because of the large and diverse variety of our society. Therefore, in order to maintain the unity of this heterogeneous nation, political parties need to actively shape political culture, while shunning the use of ethnic, religious, racial solidarity as political choices, as well as hoax news, distortions of facts, offensiveness, slander and hate speech.

All parties are responsible for building a healthy political life so that political activities and political products add to the socio-economic energy of the people. In a country with an unhealthy political life, every political activity drains people\'s socio-economic energy. It is necessary to watch out for the

development of our political life by monitoring the spread of hoaxes, political remarks that endanger the state with statements before the election along the lines of “we will definitely win; if we are defeated, there must be someone cheating," and other such incitement.

Political parties must indeed practice politics as a bonum commune (politics as an effort to deliver the idea of the common good to realize public aspirations in a sustainable manner). All parties must try to avoid political retrogression, namely a deterioration in the quality of democracy. Building a constitutional system is a long-term systemic process and the responsibility of each generation is to hand over the country to the next generation in a better condition, including the constitutional system.

KOMPAS/HERU SRI KUMORO

President Joko Widodo (center), accompanied by Golkar Party general chairman Airlangga Hartarto (right) and the chairman of the 10th National Conference of the Golkar Party, Melchias Markus Mekeng (left), delivers a speech at the opening of Golkar’s 10th National Conference in Jakarta on Tuesday (3/12/2019).

Injured

So far, the central position of political parties has often been undermined in terms of ethics, morality, and performance. Often, the elites of political parties are entangled in corruption, which is expected to finance party activities among other things. Indonesia Corruption Watch noted that 254 legislative members were accused of corruption in the 2014-2019 period; 22 of these were members of the House; two of them were the speaker and deputy speaker of the House; four party leaders were convicted of corruption and bribery.

Party leaders must also think about getting legislative candidates in each electoral district and candidates for regional heads in the regional elections elected, which is expensive. The cost of winning a governorship is estimated to be Rp 50 billion at the minimum, for a regent/mayor it is no less than Rp 15 billion, and legislative candidates a minimum of Rp 1.5 billion. Managing parties is indeed very expensive in Indonesia, whose territory is as large as Western Europe. For a party congress, a meeting attended by many people, money is needed for transportation by airplane and accommodation in good quality hotels.

The consolidation meetings at the provincial, regency/city levels also cost a lot. It is very different from the era of the 1950s when the PNI, Masyumi, NU, PSI, PSII, IPKI, PKI, Murba activities were simply held by renting a large hall, the participants stayed at party members\' houses, fed from public kitchens by women’s activist groups. Obviously our parties are now more luxurious than they were during the Old Order.

If not, ethical, moral and legal violations will continue to occur.

We believe that democracy is the right system to build stability and progress in our nation-state. Therefore, it is necessary to have clear arrangements regarding the financing of political parties and the increasingly expensive state political process. If not, ethical, moral and legal violations will continue to occur.

Some parties use a variety of means to finance their activities. There are contributions from central leadership figures, contributions from House members, provincial/regency/city DPRDs, sympathizers, and the general chairmen\'s personal funds. At present, the state assists in financing political parties. Every party vote in the last election merits Rp 1,000 per year. Likewise, in the provinces/regencies/cities. In Indonesia, no party has reached the ideal condition where political activities are financed by mutual assistance from membership fees.

The increase in Indonesia\'s middle class to around 85 million by 2020 can encourage the better financing of political activities. The current trend, where not a few voters make their choices transactionally, based on monetary offers, is expected to decline. However, doubts remain because during the 20 years of reform, the number of political transactions has continued to increase.

KOMPAS/HERU SRI KUMORO

House of Representatives (DPR) members sing the Indonesia Raya national anthem at a plenary meeting at the Senayan Legislative Complex, Jakarta, Tuesday (29/10/2019).

Political parties’ responsibility

Another problem that needs to be fixed immediately is the image of the House, which is very worrying. The number of laws completed every year is very small, far below the target of the national legislation program (prolegnas) and not a few are quickly overturned following a judicial review in the Constitutional Court.

People\'s faith in the House has also declined because some members have been guilty of bribery and corruption in unimaginable mega-scandals, high absenteeism, going on working visits overseas that have been exposed as mere tourist or shopping junkets or engaging in budget politics that are not effective in improving people\'s welfare.

The number of laws completed every year is very small

The 2014-2019 House experienced four changes of speaker, from Setya Novanto to Ade Komaruddin, back to Setya Novanto, and then turning to Bambang Soesatyo. The House was busy with itself, fiddling with the Law on the MPR, House, Regional Representatives Council (DPD) and DPRD elections after the election results; the MPR is led by one speaker and nine deputies; the constant tinkering with the election laws after every election gives the impression that the House is unable to make long-term legislation.

As one of the pillars of state power, political parties cannot allow the performance of the House/DPRDs to decline, and must maintain the morale of their members who sit in political institutions. In a democratic country, the goal of each party participating in elections is to get an increasingly large portion of the state power structure. The parties that get more votes, which are gathered in the coalition of the presidential election winner, can make more of its members ministers and other public officials such as attorney general, ambassadors, state-owned enterprise (SOE) commissioners, heads of agencies and so on. The opposition must be satisfied with positions in the legislature (a tool of the House and MPR).

Utilization of position in the state structure in the interests of parties must be carefully conducted because it is prone to violations of ethics and law. What happens frequently is the use of bureaucratic networks for winning parties, licensing facilities and budget allocations for colleagues in the parties.

That political fragmentation has resulted in inefficient political processes since the first election in the Reform era in 1999 in which 48 parties took part. At that time 18 parties got into the House. As a result, a national consensus was formed to gradually reduce the number of political parties democratically, with a legislative threshold that has gradually increased. The 2.5 percent threshold for a House seat took effect in the 2009 legislative elections.

Some 44 parties ran in the 2009 election (with seven local political parties in Aceh); 28 political parties did not pass the threshold. In the 2014 election in which 15 political parties took part (with three local political parties in Aceh), the threshold was raised to 3.5 percent. As a result, two parties did not pass the threshold. In the 2019 elections, the threshold was raised to 4 percent. A total of 16 political parties participated in the election and only nine got into the House. Parties that failed included Perindo, Berkarya, the PSI, Hanura, the PBB, the PKPI and Garuda. For the 2024 election, the threshold will be raised to 4.5 percent. The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) has proposed that the threshold be applied at the DPRD level as well.

There are no provisions regarding the ideal number of parties in a country\'s national legislature. The United States federal and presidential system has long had a two-party tradition. China has been governed by a single party since 1949. Parliamentary democracy in post-World War II Japan has seen several parties with one party (LDP) as the dominant party. In India, a federal-parliamentary state, there are currently 2,293 parties, seven of which are national parties. The Congress Party led India for 30 years since India\'s independence. Malaysia, a federal-parliamentary state, has many parties, with UMNO and its ally, the Barisan National, being the dominant force having led Malaysia for 61 years.

Indonesia used to have a three-party system (Golkar, PPP, PDI). In the future, due to the heterogeneity of our nation, it might be ideal if there were five parties in the House. This number will make the political process efficient and sufficient to accommodate the aspirations of a heterogeneous people.

The country will be healthy if its political parties are healthy; both those in government and those in opposition. Every party elite needs to be aware that our vast country and large population lives in a world of increasingly high dynamics, with a multifaceted complexity of problems, accompanied by a formidable tug-of-war with international interests.

In such a situation, the responsibility of political parties is to encourage the formation of state institutions, especially the House, which are of high quality and a government capable of leading this nation-state through complicated terrain. Political parties must also participate in guarding the various changes needed by the Indonesian nation-state in a world that is progressing very rapidly and is changing very fast. Hopefully.

Siswono Yudo Husodo, Chairman, Board of Trustees, Pancasila University Foundation.