Political Participation in Indonesia

Political Participation in Indonesia

By David Raja Marpaung

(email:davidrajamarpaung@gmail.com)

An interesting factor of the 2014 Presidential Campaign has been the power of the various citizen-led campaigns through which the Jokowi-JK campaign was promoted, showing that political volunteerism in Indonesia has emerged as a powerful political force. The 2014 Indonesian presidential election has been remarkable. Not only in comparison to the country’s long history of dictatorship that crumbled less than two decades ago, but also to democratic processes worldwide.

Jokowi’s success is hugely a result of the spontaneous popular support from largely non-organised groups of ordinary Indonesians. They converged in various forms, with a high degree of fluidity. Famous artists and public intellectuals form parts of it, but the majority are everyday commoners. Like Jokowi, his supporters are inclined to soft power, such as puns, visual arts and music. Women are reportedly overrepresented. Mostly apolitical in their daily lives, they belong to none of the contesting political parties. Their work overshadowed the political machinery in ensuring Jokowi’s victory.

 What brought the emergence of these forceful masses?  Jokowi personifies, and thus attracts, millions of his compatriots who have commonly endured decades of political abuse by the political elite. A second factor strengthened it, namely the widespread apprehension of a possible return ofNew Order authoritarianism if Prabowo won the election. But both factors only explain the interest, not the capacity of the masses to assert their will.

Chinese Ethnic Participation

The Chinese community makes up between 1 and 2% of Indonesia’s 245 million residents but controls more than half the national economy. Most Chinese immigrants are Christians. The 30-year regime of Suharto segregated Chinese socially and culturally: they were not allowed to be in Jakarta after 10pm and had to return to Chinatown. What’s more, they were forbidden from writing in Chinese script except in Buddhist temples and the community was targeted in violent uprisings in the nineties.

The chairman of the Association said: “Most Chinese-Indonesians still regard politics as a taboo matter. They fear talking about politics, let alone being involved in it." The legal system has discriminated against people on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, territory and social status since the Dutch colonial era.  

But at the election campaign, Jokowi had proven spent much of his time trying to assure voters that he is a muslim despite assertions that he is a chistian of chinese descent in a country where many resent the often wealthier ethnic chineese.