Parties to Win and Voters to Lose With Proposed Amendment

The PDIP, Golkar and Gerindra factions in parliament support ending direct elections and hope to return to a similar system used under President Soeharto where the presidency was decided by the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) rather than by a popular vote.

The Republic of Indonesia has implemented several types of systems of government since declaring independence in 1945. It used a presidential system until around 1949 and then shifted to a pseudo-parliamentary system for a decade. Then, during the Soeharto era, Indonesia used a semi-presidential system where voters elected political parties rather than the individual representatives, who would then occupy the parliament (DPR) and the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR). During his more than 30-year rule, The Golkar party had the largest faction in the MPR (and DPR) and was sure to appoint Soeharto as president. Golkar became Soeharto’s political vehicle during the New Order; dominated the parliament and became a rubber stamp for President Soeharto.

After Soeharto’s downfall, the internal dynamics in parliament changed with the addition of many more parties being elected and the lack of a dominant party. For example, in the 1999 general election, Megawati’s PDIP Party came out on top by winning 33% of the vote in the general election, but went on to be skipped over for the presidency by her rivals as they were able to garner more votes from other parties in MPR and appointed Abdurrahman Wahid as president instead. Wahid was the founder of the PKB party, the third largest party in parliament at that time.

Although Megawati was later appointed as vice president after intense lobbying, a large portion of the electorate felt disenfranchised and frustrated with the system. The election system was later changed by a constitution amendment which allowed voters to directly elect their representatives and president in 2004.

To serve their own political self-interests, the largest political factions in parliament such as PDIP, Golkar, Gerindra and Nasdem, have now become more vocal in their support for amending the constitution (via GBHN) that would ultimately return to a New Order style system, where the MPR would become the highest governing institution in the land thereby returning the mandate to MPR to determine the nation’s president rather than by popular vote. The amendment by default would also bring the end to direct elections and return to an indirect election where voters would only vote for the party in the general elections rather than the representatives themselves. In effect, this would be a return to a semi-presidential system as the president would be responsible to MPR and could be removed from office if need be, as occurred with President Wahid in 2001. As ANU experts such as Marcus Mieztner and Edward Aspinall stated in back in 2014, “The 1945 Constitution leaves the MPR unregulated” and “served both Sukarno and Suharto well in creating their respective authoritarian regimes.”

The amendment would be a win for most parties and loss for the voters. Ironically, Megawati, via the PDI party, is the now the initiator of this amendment initiative despite fighting such a system in the early 1990s under the New Order.

It’s interesting to note that under Indonesia’s multiparty system, no party has received more than 33% of the vote in the general election since 1999.

Direct elections in Indonesia can be expensive for political parties and there’s no certainty that the candidate will be favored by the voters, but with indirect elections you have a much smaller number (just over 700) of individuals to convince and political tradeoffs and negotiations can be made in exchange for support after the general elections results are clearly known. Unless a party has a candidate that has grassroots popular support such as with Jokowi in 2014, direct elections dilutes the power and leverage of the party in winning the presidency.

Some in the Widodo government have argued that direct elections have become undemocratic because only candidates that can afford the “astronomical campaign costs” can participate in the system. However, that’s a weak argument as the cost issue lies within the parties themselves which require candidates to compete internally for the party’s endorsement, where the selection of which is often based on their financial contributions to the party.

Megawati has supported the constitutional amendment for several years now but has become more vocal this year. One possible reason for this might be that she hopes to ride the Jokowi wave and continue PDIP’s ten-year reign after his second term and to better position family politicians such as daughter and MPR speaker, Puan Maharani, in the 2024 election as a presidential or vice-presidential candidate. The next presidential election will likely include a post-Reformasi generation of young and experienced candidates prepared to compete for the popular vote, while Puan is widely believed to be a less popular figure from the Soekarno clan. An indirect system would make this goal more achievable for Puan because the presidential and vice-presidential candidates are endorsed and appointed by MPR, not the voters.

Although the initial main points of the amendment draft are being discussed among lawmakers behind closed doors, the process to amend the constitution will likely be long. With that said, it is set to be completed before the 2024 election. Because of this, the process should be followed closely and be open to input from the public.