Soeharto's control eroded by election campaign

June 17, 1992
Issue 

By Max Lane

As expected, the Soeharto regime's GOLKAR party suffered a small drop in its vote in last week's election. Early counting shows GOLKAR dropping from 72% to 67%. The Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI), which ran the closest thing to an opposition campaign to date, increased its seats in the national parliament from 40 to 56, and the Muslim-backed United Development Party (PPP) went from 61 to 63.

A GOLKAR majority was assured because of the regime's monopoly of access to villages and the intimidating practice of forcing people to vote at their workplace on a workday.

There have also been widespread reports of suspicious results and malpractices. In some areas, the provincial party leaderships of both the PDI and PPP refused to accept the results.

A crucial feature during the last three years has been the weakening hold of President Soeharto over the political agenda. His grip began to erode because of two factors. Firstly, his ties with the country's huge business conglomerates and his attempt to build a family conglomerate have alienated him from the officer corps, which has slowly been pushed aside by the conglomerates and civilian technocrats. The army is now left only with the role of bully boy whenever workers, students or peasants protest.

But the most important factor has been organised, grassroots protest campaigns over land disputes, workers' wages and conditions and human rights, during the last two years in particular. These persistent actions, sometimes involving only 20 or 30 people but also frequently involving thousands, have broadened the political agenda.

In the lead-up to the elections, Soeharto tried to galvanise support for his government and put pressure on what the government sees as a key component of the opposition by announcing an end to all aid links with the Netherlands. The move was milked for all the nationalist sentiment that it could possibly produce.

The government then went on the attack against the non-government organisations by banning them from receiving Dutch aid. The regime also started to ban meetings of the so far fairly moderate pro-democracy group, Forum Demokrasi.

But the election campaign emphasised the failure of Soeharto's attempt to win back the political initiative. The mass support and relative daring of the PDI campaign contrasted with the relative collapse of the campaigns of the two parties actively supporting Soeharto for president, namely GOLKAR and the PPP. Their campaign rallies were much smaller and far less spontaneous than those for thePDI.

According to Kompas newspaper, there were 2 million supporters wearing the red PDI T-shirts on the streets on the last day of the campaign.

PDI spokespersons, such as Guruh Soekarnoputra, again and again raised the democracy question. Guruh also raised this issue in a televised campaign speech, after reminding his audience that the speech had been censored.

The use of popular figures such as Guruh to espouse democratisation rallied the discontented people in Jakarta and other big cities behind the PDI. What limited the political effectiveness of these mobilisations was the absence of any specific political demands.

There was also a significant increase in support for boycotting the elections altogether (called Golput, from golongan putih, white group, because it proposed marking the white part of the ballot paper rather than one of the party symbols).

The boycott was adopted by the grassroots networks in most cities and so, for the first time, there were organised rallies — in defiance of the regulations — to call for a boycott. In Semarang two students were arrested and charged for organising such a rally. In Yogyakarta students were detained for putting up Golput posters and handing out leaflets.

Students organised a rally of at least 2000 people in Yogyakarta. According to a wire agency report, at least 1000 people marched towards the regional parliament building waving white flags and chanting slogans calling on voters to abstain. Members of the PPP and PDI also took down all their posters and flags.

Boycotters in Indonesia deliberately cast informal votes. While the informal vote is being counted in this election and is being announced at the village level, the media have so far not reported any informal vote totals.

The events confirm the existence of mass discontent and the desire for democratisation.

We can expect increasing tension over the issue of the presidency and vice-presidency. It is now only a question of political will on the part of the three parties and the armed forces in parliament as to whether they nominate additional candidates to Soeharto. If they all, once again, nominate Soeharto only, they will lose their last bit of credibility. Even GOLKARrealises this — its campaign workers were told to steer away from the Soeharto issue because it was a vote loser. The extra-parliamentary groups will also lose credibility if they do not escalate their pressure on this issue.

Secondly, we can expect more activity at the grass roots. Terrible social and economic conditions for a significant section of a better educated and more politically aware population lead to campaigns and ials. This is when military harassment occurs, and this is what provides the basis of the mass support for "openness".

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