[Kabar-indonesia] 'Clientelist' parties endanger Indonesia's democracy

[Joyo at aol.com]

The Jakarta Post
Friday, October 13, 2006

Op-Ed

'Clientelist' parties endanger democracy 

Yulius P. Hermawan, Bandung

People often complain that political parties are not concerned about public 
interests. They find that political parties exist only when the general 
elections are held, retreating from any kind of public activities after the election 
is over. Political parties are thus concerned more with organizational 
consolidation rather than with the public agenda.

We still remember how dozens of parties had been established prior to the 
1999 and 2004 elections. The parties made any bid they could to be eligible to 
compete in the general elections. The eligible parties then boosted their 
chances of winning support from constituencies. They displayed their concern with 
public matters by pledging to alleviate poverty, to promote free education, to 
enhance the quality life of the common people and to deal with other issues. 
They also organized mass rallies that involved dozens of members and 
sympathizers. 

During the election periods, farmers, vendors, fishermen and factory workers 
joined hand in hand with intellectuals, businesspeople and 
professionals-turned politicians to canvass votes in their attempts to win the general elections. 
We called this period the festival of democracy. The festivity was over 
immediately after the new members of the House of Representatives and regional 
councils had been elected. 

There is much evidence to suggest that political parties are not interested 
in public affairs in the post-election period. The media recently highlighted 
how farmers found hardly any support among the political elite for the campaign 
against the government's rice imports which were feared would push down local 
rice prices. 

Workers similarly found no support for their demand for proper wages. Vendors 
had to strike against local government plans for relocation. Other sections 
of society struggled hard to garner the necessary support from party 
politicians. 

Under these circumstances, mass rallies have been frequently held in the 
post-Soeharto Indonesia, as people at large see that the formal channels do not 
work properly. Mass rallies are used to ensure that the authorities listen and 
then respond to their demands. The worst aspect of this is that clashes between 
the demonstrators and police officials are unavoidable. 

What have our parties been doing? Why are they unresponsive to ordinary 
people's interests? 

My point of view is particularly concerned with the main characteristic of 
parties as clientelist organizations, which obviously makes the party an 
ineffective agent for the articulation of people's interests. Indonesian parties are 
a political vehicle used by politicians to occupy public offices and to 
establish access to state projects. 

Party leaders always talk nonsense. Other leaders cannot talk at all and let 
their personal aides talk on their behalf. Both the talkative and 
close-mouthed leaders need to secure control over certain incentives by which they manage 
to remain in the top leadership. 

If we observe the party structure closely, we will see that political parties 
are not different from personal enterprises. 

The patronage features a structure that involves a pattern of interactions 
between the general chair and his or her followers, operating in the party 
organization. In the patronage structure, the general chair occupies the apex of 
the pyramid of power and holds control over authoritative resources. By 
retaining this control, the party leader could exercise a commanding role. 

The chair recruits selected party members to become his or her inner circle 
of the clientelist cluster. The inner circle of clients are supposed to 
maintain the permanent support of the whole party community. Members of the inner 
circle play their role as patronage brokers or petite-patrons. Other ordinary 
activists become client-commoners. The principles that organize the interactions 
between the politicians in the structure are reciprocal relationships and the 
functioning of mutually beneficial transactions. 

Each member of the inner circle is entitled to formal roles to maintain 
relations with the party representatives in the legislature, with the party leaders 
at the regional chapters and the district branches, and with the business 
community and auxiliary organizations. 

In order to strengthen the patron's position, the members of the inner circle 
are assigned to various strategic posts in the party structure, in the 
legislature, in the government offices and in the affiliated organizations. Some 
members of the inner circle are appointed to become the party floor leaders and 
chairs of the ad hoc committees in the House to ensure that the party's stance 
in the legislature represents the central patron's position, and also to 
pledge that any decision made in the legislature would not endanger the patron's 
position as party leader. 

The patron distributes scarce resources to his or her personal aids. The 
scarce resources would be further redistributed to selected party activists 
through various channels at different levels and offices. The pattern of 
distribution and redistribution of resources more or less contributes to the formation of 
the hierarchical structure of patronage. 

This type of patronage system has functional and structural dimensions. 
Patronage is established to secure the party leader's power in the party and in 
governmental office, to maximize the central influence upon the local activities, 
to ensure the implementation of the central party's policies at regional 
chapters and local branches, to mobilize local support in order to enhance the key 
patron's influence upon the party activities and to ensure the key patron's 
influence on the legislative activities. 

The party leaders and officials accordingly have to spend their energy in 
dealing with the opposition within the party. They have to build their own 
faction to secure the patron's position of power. The faction will attempt to force 
the opposition to change their stance or quit the party. The conflict between 
factions becomes much more intense and makes party consolidation impossible. 

This observation helps us to understand why parties tend to ignore public 
agenda. The absence of parties from public affairs is obviously a by-product of 
the establishment of a patronage system. 

The establishment of such a patronage system endangers democracy within the 
party organization. It hampers the imposition of impersonal order. The party's 
formal rules cannot function as organizing principles because party leaders 
tend to eschew the informal procedures. The procedures contradict and undermine 
the formal rules. It is evident in most parties that the leaders attempted 
ruthlessly to exercise their influence on the process of the elections of party 
leaders and of the selection of candidates for the House, councilors and 
governors, mayors and regents. 

The patronage system clearly creates an unhealthy degree of internal 
competition and makes the party less effective as a constituency representative. If 
the characteristics persist, people will see that the ongoing transition to 
democracy leads to corrupt politics rather than to democratic consolidation. 

The writer is a lecturer at the Department of International Relations, 
Parahyangan Catholic University, Bandung. 

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Joyo Indonesia News Service
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