Indonesia’s 2009 Elections: The New Electoral System & the Competing Parties
Stephen Sherlock
Indonesia in 2009 is entering into its third democratic elections since the fall of the authoritarian Suharto regime in 1998. The literature on the previous two elections, in 1999 and 2004, tended to focus on issues of democratic principle, such as whether the elections would be free and fair and conducted without violence, the attitude of the military and whether the losers would accept the decision of the electorate. There were also questions about the capacity of election administrators to deal with the logistical problems of conducting elections in a huge and geographically dispersed country like Indonesia. These questions have now largely been answered in a positive way. Not only have there been two successful rounds of nation-wide elections, but there have also been successive regional executive elections for provincial governors and district heads since 2004. And despite controversy about aspects of the electoral system, various disputed results and criticism of the quality of electoral administration, Indonesia now has a functioning and tested system of democratic elections. It has certainly not been affected by the “democratic rollback” that has struck some democratising countries (Diamond 1997, 1999, 2008) that appeared to be part of a wave of democratisation in the last part of the twentieth century (Huntington 1991).
Debate about democratic governance in Indonesia has now moved on to different matters. The last year has seen vigorous debate about new electoral laws which were passed by the parliament (DPR) in October 2008. Since the passage of the laws there have also been a number of challenges in the Constitutional Court, some of which have been successful in overturning important aspects of the legislation. At a time when the election was rapidly approaching, the rulings of the Court opened up some major questions about the way the election would be conducted and how votes would be counted. Thus although the basic shape of the Indonesia electoral system has been established, details of the system are still being hammered out. Compared to the scale of changes since 1998, these alterations are matters of detail, yet in most established democracies such reforms would be seen as having a major affect on the conduct of politics.
This paper analyses the new electoral laws and the reforms to the system that it introduced, as well as the effect of the challenges in the Constitutional Court. It examines how the new law and regulations will influence the way the parties and candidates conduct their campaigns and the type of coalition-building that will take place, as well as the impact on the likely results of the election, including both the number of parties that will win representation and the type of candidates that will be elected.
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