AUGUST 15, 2014 Indonesia’s democratic moments Indonesia defies the doubters with a demonstration of mass democracy. By Ariel Heryanto Jokowi’s success is indebted to the spontaneous popular support of largely non-organised groups of ordinary Indonesians. Photo: Liputan6/Herman Zakharia. Indonesia’s highly successful presidential election has been welcomed worldwide. But, in the English-language international media, the achievement has often been noted with familiar smugness. Indonesia is described as a ‘young’ democracy, and its highly successful election as an anomaly. With the legacies of colonialism lingering on, many Indonesians think their country could not possibly outperform those of North America, Western Europe or Australia in democratic rituals. Indonesian friends were perplexed when I reminded them that in some of the supposedly ’mature’ democracies, politics has been dominated for decades by the same two major parties, whose policies and ideologies are barely distinguishable, leaving the majority of citizens politically powerless and radically alternative politics unthinkable. They thought I was joking when I referred to some of those countries, where elections seem so infantile that they require voting to be mandatory. In the Middle East, the world’s coalition of zealous advocates of democracy and human rights sponsored an imposed election—at gunpoint. Against such a backdrop, the 2014 Indonesian presidential election appears remarkable by world standards. Voting is not compulsory in Indonesia. Yet volunteer groups took leading roles to make the election a spectacular success, rendering political parties almost irrelevant. President-elect Joko Widodo is a paradox. Better known as Jokowi, he stands out as extraordinary among politicians, in Indonesia and beyond, for being so ordinary in appearance, speech and background. So much has been written about him and his qualities. More needs to be written about others who made him president of the world’s third-largest democracy. Jokowi’s success is indebted to the spontaneous popular support of largely non-organised groups of ordinary Indonesians during the last few weeks before election day. They converged in various forms, with a high degree of fluidity. According to one estimate, there were as many as 1000-odd, scattered pro-Jokowi groups of varying sizes. The term ‘people’s power’ is inapt to describe them. It is associated with street mobilisation, masculine force and martyrs of violence in the downtowns of Manila, Bangkok, and Cairo. In contrast, Jokowi’s supporters are inclined to soft power, such as puns, visual arts and music on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. Women and the underprivileged are reportedly overrepresented. Mostly apolitical in their daily lives, they proudly belong to none of the contesting political parties. Some commentators have given Jokowi more credit than he deserves for mobilising the masses. Others have criticised him for failing to mobilise his supporters to launch a counterattack against the aggressive smear campaigns against him. Both views are problematic. Jokowi had limited resources, capacity and interest to mobilise these masses. The masses mobilised him—to block his rival, Prabowo Subianto, from becoming president. Early on Jokowi’s supporters impatiently pressed him to run for president, when he was hesitant. In contrast to the flow of the familiar money politics, individual citizens proudly published bank slips on social media, showing off their tiny share of donations to Jokowi’s election campaign. Unpaid volunteers designed and ran the huge pro-Jokowi concert on 5 July that attracted over 100 000 people. Lest the political party officials steal the show, these volunteers limited the space on stage for these officials to appear. The rise of such a massive popular movement took most Indonesians—including Jokowi—by surprise. His official campaign team tried, unsuccessfully, to coordinate and manage the sudden burst of massive support during the campaign. But the supporters were too free and autonomous. They followed directions, not from Jokowi’s campaign team, but their own diverse logics, instincts and interests. International commentators have appeared to be the least prepared to grapple with this new phenomenon. For too long dedicated scholars of Indonesia, and top government-sponsored policy analysts, have focused on the nation’s top elite, and occasionally those Indonesians who make headlines for revealing whatever goes wrong with the country—the terrorists, the tsunami victims, the poorest and most disadvantaged. The nation’s huge middle class is overlooked, misunderstood, or dismissed. Elite-centric analyses represent the easiest type of investigation for those outsiders who have no or limited mastery of the language, or living experience in the country. However, most middle class Indonesians speak some English. And they dress, eat, read, sing and engage in pastimes like their counterparts across the globe. In the few existing analyses of the Indonesian middle class, the contempt or envy of the authors are almost always awkwardly present. Jokowi’s victory is still under legal challenge from his rival, Subianto. Most Indonesians believe the challenge will be futile. For Jokowi, winning the election is one thing; running a new government for the next five years is another matter. These are Indonesia’s democratic moments. No one can predict confidently what lies ahead. Professor John Roosa, from the University of British Columbia, witnessed with dismay the rising tide of ‘patronizing words of caution about overly high expectations’ from foreign observers that filled the media space. He cautioned us not to presume that Indonesians ‘didn’t know [Jokowi] would not be able to change Indonesia overnight’. Roosa added that it was significant that Jokowi has been ‘constantly avoiding making grand promises and instead emphasizing the direction in which he’s working’. From the many published journalistic and academic commentaries, it is easy to get the impression that, for many distant observers, Indonesia can never get anything right. It was too traditional, so colonialism was deemed benign to introduce modernity. Soon after independence, Indonesia was considered too close to being a communist country, thus the 1965 massacres were justified. Now it is regarded as too fragile or inexperienced to be a democracy in the image and imagination of the so-called liberal democracies of the West. Some of these instant observers demonstrate dismissive attitudes tainted with racism. Others appear to have loved Indonesia so much for so long that they have built a sense of possessiveness and over-protectiveness around it. There is always something that overly worries or disappoints them about Indonesia. Their analyses reveal not so much about Indonesia, but where they come from. Ariel Heryanto is professor and Deputy Director (Education) at The School of Culture, History and Language at Australian National University. 11:44PM | URL: tmblr.co/Zjiaon1ON7VcK
Posted on: Mon, 18 Aug 2014 23:22:29 +0000
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