Outlook for the Coming Elections in Indonesia.

(From Journal of Japanese Trade & Industry (JJTI))

Byline: Shiraishi Takashi

In Indonesia, elections are scheduled for the national and local parliaments on April 5, the first-stage presidential election will be held July 5 and - in the event that the first-stage election is inconclusive - the second-stage presidential election will be held on Sept. 20. Over the past year, in the lead-up to these elections, various polling organizations have been carrying out public-opinion surveys. However, to date the majority of these polls have surveyed either the residents of the major cities or the residents of several provinces, and there have been no nationwide surveys in the true sense of the word. From this perspective, the survey carried out by Lembaga Survei Indonesia (LSI), which was started with the support of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), is deserving of special attention. It is a full-scale survey carried out in 30 provinces - with the exception of Aceh - with the initial poll early last August surveying 2,240 people in 224 locations, and with follow-up surveys every three months. Let's take a look at the results of these polls and examine the trends in Indonesia's political affairs.

First we turn to the evaluation of the current political system. Indonesia's political system changed dramatically with the collapse of the Suharto regime in May 1998, changing from centralized authoritarian system to decentralized democracy. The legislature became a new power center alongside the president and the military, and local governments were more able to exert their power than ever before. How do the people view this new decentralized democratic system? According to the August 2003 poll, 65% of those polled responded in the affirmative to the statement "Democracy is the most desirable political system," that is, approximately two-thirds of respondents supported the current system. However, the rate of support for the existing political system declined from 71% in the poll of 2001.

In this regard, there is one other highly significant result - the re-evaluation of the Suharto regime. According to the survey, 26% of pollees responded affirmatively to the statement "The Suharto regime was not a good one." This is a major decline from the 2001 poll in which 60% were in agreement. Further, 53% reported that they were dissatisfied with the current democratic system, 56.4% said they thought the Suharto system was better than the current democratic system and only 40% of those polled said it was not desirable for active military officers to hold positions in the national government.

Taking all of this into consideration, we can make the following interpretations. The people support the current decentralization and democratization, however, approval rates are clearly slipping. In response to this, there is an increase in expressions of hope for a centralized authoritarian system, like that of the Suharto regime. This is because the current system would not seem to be completely fulfilling the expectations of the people.

What exactly do the Indonesian people expect of their government? Sixty percent of respondents pointed to the need to successfully address the economic crisis. They are probably referring to the desire to see actual improvements in the economy, in such concrete terms as an increase in employment and income. Under the Megawati administration, Indonesia's macroeconomic measures over the past two and a half years have moved toward stability. However, economic growth, at 3.44% in 2001 and 3.66% in 2002, has remained low, and enough jobs have not been created to absorb the 2.5 million new job-seekers who enter the market every year. In this situation, it should ...