 |
|
A failure of leadership: The decay of Indonesian parliamentary democracy 1950 - 1957. SYNOPSIS The failure of parliamentary democracy in Indonesia in the years 1950 to 1957 was due to the limited ideological basis upon which the Indonesian elite based and understood it. To the elites, democracy was an ideal and a symbol, which in practice should be kept firmly within the hands of themselves. The parliamentary system they set-up, based on the Dutch model of multi-party representation, became little more than a venue for the parties to fight amongst themselves. While unstable coalition governments spent more time handing out patronage and working to secure their own power, than governing the country. In such a political climate the parties remained the political tools of a small self- serving elite, who saw themselves as being above the rest of Indonesian society. The 1955 elections which were to have solved some of these problems, failed to do so however, and ended up discrediting the very democratic system they were supposed to have strengthened. Yet the main cause of the failure of parliamentary democracy in Indonesia, was the political parties and the politicians. It was they who created the system, and it was they who failed to make it work. The period of parliamentary democracy in Indonesia between 1950 and 1957 was a time of great opportunity and uncertainty. It was in this period that democracy had its best, and until recently, its only chance, to prove itself workable in Indonesia. Yet for democracy to work in the new nation of Indonesia, it had to overcome significant cultural and social difficulties that ran deep within Indonesian society. The very notions and ideas that made up the Indonesian elite's understanding of what democracy was and how it should work, significantly weakened and undermined the whole of the democratic system as set-up by the elites. The limited ideological basis of Indonesian democracy was to play an important role in its eventual demise. The political model that the Indonesians chose for their parliamentary system also fundamentally undermined parliamentary democracy. It led to a string of unstable coalition governments, that saw the parties forced to increasingly concentrate on holding power, and distributing patronage, than on running the country. In such a situation the political parties became little more than the instruments of self-serving elites and politicians. The fact that the politicians had appointed themselves to Parliament in 1945, and did not decide to allow elections until 1955, was indicative of them seeing themselves as the new ruling class. When the elections were eventually held in 1955, instead of resolving some of the problems with the political system, as many hoped they would, the elections only made the situation worse. They failed to give one party an absolute majority, forcing the need to continue with unstable coalition governments, and contributed to the declining support for parliamentary democracy. Yet the real culprits in the failure of Indonesian parliamentary democracy were the political parties and politicians. It was they who created the system, and it was they who were unable, and in many ways unwilling, to make it function properly. The failure of parliamentary democracy in 1957 was due in no short measure to the very ideological foundations on which it was built. These foundations, the ideas of exactly what democracy was to the Indonesian elite, meant that the democratic system itself was, in important respects, undermined by the very people who created it, even before it began functioning. From the start, Indonesia's elite had a limited view of what democracy was, and what it included. For many, it was more of an abstract idea, or symbol, of what the new Indonesian state should be, or attempt to be. It was seen as a force for nation-building and for ensuring the legitimacy of governments, and included notions of political parties, responsible Cabinets, and elections. For most, it did not include ideas such as individual rights, majority rule, minority rights, and the legitimate role of opposition parties.1 One reason for this limited conception of democracy was due to the influence inherited from the colonial government, with its centralised political structure where all the real power was controlled by the colonial government, and from its attitude of paternalism.2 In effect, what this meant was that the Indonesian elite chose as its model a form of democracy that included only the basic requirements for a democratic system to function. That is, a President, a Parliament, a Cabinet, and the recognition of political parties to represent the interests of the elites themselves. It was in many ways something of a mechanistic view of democracy; just enough to make it work, but not so far as to undermine the central role and power of the Parliament and the elites. Such a notion of democracy was hardly strong on the ideal of representation, where Parliament and the politicians were to represent the people. For many of the elite, it was less a case of government of the people, and more one of government over the people. This was very much in line with the Javanese concept of power, where, as Kingsbury shows, " . . . power is abstracted from the influence of ordinary people . . ."3 True, the people could vote in elections, but there was still a strong belief in the traditional idea that the rulers embodied the interests of all the people, so that once elected, the Parliament should be free to govern as it perceived those interests. Feith recognised this when he writes: parliamentary institutions were not seen as fulfilling representative functions. In fact, the idea of representation was almost entirely absent from Indonesian ideas of democracy.4 The unrepresentative nature of such a notion of democracy was made worse by the fact that many in the elite did not include the idea, or see the need for, checks and balances of power, except in the case of the powers of the President, whose constitutional powers were progressively reduced throughout the 1950s.5 Parliament, apparently, was to be answerable to no other authority than itself for most of the time. Clearly, for many in the Indonesian elite, democracy was more about ensuring their inclusion in the political process, rather than creating a widely representative political system. It was designed to allow for the minimum amount of participation and representation necessary for a democratic system to exist and function, while ensuring that the system was firmly under the control of the political elite. Such a system was inherently flawed as it represented the interests of only a very small minority, while the needs of the majority were at best subordinated to the interests of the political elite, and at worst ignored. Democracy then, was supported as an ideal, but it was in its practice that democracy was limited, as a widely inclusive system did not suit the elite of the time, so that it was "accepted only tentatively by the greater part of the political public."6 Yet the real problem with the democratic ideal was less about who would have the power, and more about the state of Indonesian society in the immediate post-colonial era. At the time of independence, Indonesian political thinking and practice was influenced by a jumble of traditional, imperial (both Dutch and Japanese), and modern Western democratic ideas. What the Indonesian elite attempted to do was to keep many of the ideas and practices of the traditional and colonial eras, and to place them within a limited democratic structure based on a Western political model. The problem was that the traditional and colonial systems with their authoritarian, centrist, and exclusive nature, were too incompatible with the Western democratic system. The police state structure the Indonesians inherited from the Dutch and Japanese was simply unable to function within the reality of a democratic system.7 To May, such an attempt was "a catastrophic example of attempts to plant Western political . . . roots in unsuitable ground".8 The failure of the democratic era lays in the attempt to combine these three diverse and contradictory systems. The failure of the parliamentary era was also a result of the political system the Indonesians chose to set-up. In choosing a democratic system the Indonesians used as their model the Dutch parliamentary system with its multiparty structure.9 The problem with this structure was that it allowed for and encouraged a large number of parties to gain seats in Parliament. In 1951 the first Parliament had no less than seventeen different political parties, with no party holding more than 49 of the 232 seats.10 With no party having the ability to form a government in its own right, coalition governments had to be formed, so that Indonesia found itself being governed by inherently unstable coalition governments between 1950 and 1957. As Ricklefs points out, "this was hardly a structure to support strong governments."11 And strong governments the coalitions most certainly were not. Because there were so many competing interests in Parliament, the Parliament became less a place of debate and government, and more a place for the parties to compete for power and political dominance. With so many parties in Parliament the coalition governments were always vulnerable to being voted out of office by the Parliament, which meant that in practice the various Cabinets were always in the hands of, and therefore at the mercy, of the other political parties.12 This led to there being a succession of short lived and unstable coalition Cabinets. In fact there were no less than six Cabinets in the seven years from 1950, with the longest lived being the Wilopo Cabinet of April 1952 to June 1953; a mere fourteen months. The shortest being the Natsir Cabinet which lasted only six months (September 1950 to March 1951).13 These governments fell not only from their inability to deal effectively with the multitude of problems left over from the colonial period, and from new problems encountered since independence, but because the other parties took deliberate steps to bring down the governments.14 It is no exaggeration to call the parliamentary period, as Dahm does, "an unbroken series of Cabinet crises."15 Such a situation was disastrous for Indonesia. With such short lived governments there was neither a consistency of government policy, nor time to institute any political programs. At a time when Indonesia was beset with enormous problems, such as the economy, which was in a state of hopeless stagnation and inertia, when Indonesia most needed stable and strong leadership, the parties were too interested in fighting amongst themselves in Parliament rather than dealing with the problems of the country.16 In fact, at times, the nation was without any effective government or Cabinet whatsoever. In the period immediately following the downfall of a Cabinet there was the inevitable bargaining and squabbling between the parties as they tried to build a new coalition in order to form a Cabinet. Such bargaining could, and did, go on for weeks at a time, while the problems of the nation were ignored. This was the case in 1953 after the fall of the PNI-Masyumi coalition (Wilopo Cabinet), where it took more than six weeks of negotiations, and five attempts, to form a new coalition, before the parties could agree on a new Cabinet.17 In such a situation the various governments found themselves spending most of their time trying to stay in power. This had adverse effects on policy which declined in importance, as unstable coalitions fought within the Parliament, and within the coalitions themselves, in order to hold onto power.18 Such an unstable and volatile environment forced the parties in government to make holding onto power their priority, as to make a decision on how to deal with a problem was to invite an attack from the other parties in Parliament, which could lead to a crisis, and the risk of losing power. So bad was the situation that it became impossible to form a stable government at any time throughout the period 1950 to 1957. Therefore, instead of instituting policies and governing the country, the parties in government used their position and power to strengthen and entrench their position in the political system. They did this by placing their own members into government posts and removing or demoting those of their political enemies.19 This was important in two respects; it gave political parties direct control over the public service, so that even when their policies and plans were opposed by the Parliament, the parties in power could still attempt to initiate their policies directly through the public service. And even when not in office they could use their power in the civil administration to thwart the policies of their political enemies in the hope of destroying their governments. These activities naturally led to increasing levels of corruption within the political system, and were a source of continuous controversies and fighting between the parties, which further undermined the Parliament and the democratic system.20 Nor did the inevitable scandals from the public exposure of such activities do anything to endear the Parliament or democracy to the people. Nevertheless, being in government was critical for the parties, as they relied on the power of patronage to maintain their political influence. Being in the government gave the parties great scope to use the power of patronage to their own advantage, and the disadvantage of their enemies. Parliament, and Indonesian politics, became increasingly less about the struggle between ideology and policies, and more about the struggle between the parties over the ultimate source of patronage; the Cabinet. May shows this clearly when he writes: While arguments raged over foreign and domestic policy, the constant theme in the shifting alliances and coalitions was the battle for sources of patronage, by means of which a comfortable living could be assured and loyalties bought."21 These parliamentary battles bore all the hallmarks of the traditional courtly politics, where Cabinet became the inner court. In many respects the Parliament, from the inability, even unwillingness, of its members to make it function properly, was doing more to undermine democracy in Indonesia than virtually any other group. Parliament by the mid 1950s was clearly disfunctional, and had become a place, not to get things done, or to serve the interests of the nation, but a place to give particular self-serving groups in the elite, and their supporters, access to power and wealth. The problems with Indonesian democracy were not simply due to the multiparty structure of the Parliament itself, but were very much caused by the political parties and politicians who created it, and who were supposed to make it work. This was because the parties were not created to represent the interests of various groups in the wider public, rather the parties were created to represent the interests of particular groups of Indonesia's elite. For many of the politicians the parties became little more than vehicles for their own personal political ambitions.22 This is not surprising, as the Parliament from 1950 until the 1955 election was essentially based on the KNIP (National Central Committee of Indonesia) which was set-up in 1945. This political body was made up of parties that were appointed, not elected, so that in at least one respect democracy in Indonesia did not really begin until the 1955 elections.23 Thus, for its first six years after independence, the Parliament was made up by parties and politicians who had chosen themselves to be the nation's leaders, the people having no say in the matter. To May, such parties and politicians were nothing less than "a self-appointed elite."24 This new political elite was in fact a very small group of people who were quite effective at gaining and holding political power in their own hands. According to Feith, the political elite numbered between 200 and 500 persons, who together and between them held and exercised the greatest amount of political power in the newly independent Indonesia.25 Most of these politicians saw the holding of power, and the benefits of government, as a right, which was much in line with the Javanese tradition of those who can seize power should wield it.26 As such, the politicians had little, if any, commitment to the idea, let alone the practice, of grass-roots representation.27 Feith in fact sees the politicians as being a particular social group in themselves. He argues that this is due to their having a common schooling; from their having taken part in nationalist political organisations; from most living in Jakarta; and with most coming from the higher levels of Indonesian society and mixing socially in the same circles, that they made up the political elite. Feith writes: Its members had a fairly strong sense of constituting a single group, all political divisions notwithstanding - and this is particularly true of the year 1950. 28 This idea of seeing the politicians as a separate class in Indonesian society is echoed by Ricklefs, who saw the political elite as "a new urban superculture."29 Clearly, most politicians did see themselves as being above the rest of Indonesian society, even as a new form of traditional aristocracy, and therefore those who were the most fit and able to lead the new nation. Such an attitude was not conductive to notions of representation, but had more in common with traditional and colonial attitudes to governance than with modern Western democracy. It led to the situation where there was no clear line or division between the personal interests of the politicians and parties, and the public interest.30 Moreover, it was a way for the political elite to justify their dominance of both the political process and political power, and would have contributed to the level of corruption within the political system. Thus, as May shows, in such a political culture "politics was little more than a game, imported with other luxuries from the West, and played only by a few hundred men."31 This was the state of affairs with both the Indonesian Parliament and the political system by the mid 1950s. By the time of the elections of 1955 it was clear that both the Parliament and democracy were not working in Indonesia. The elections were seen as a way of resolving some of the problems of the Parliament, in particular, by giving one party an absolute majority in Parliament.32 For many, the elections were not about expanding democracy and giving the people a vote, they were about resolving the political problems within the elite, which it was hoped would bring the long needed political stability.33 And political stability was desperately needed; as Caldwell and Utrecht shows, "by the time of the election the country was facing economic and political chaos."34 Yet the elections failed to resolve any of the problems of the political system, and brought no stability whatsoever. In fact, the elections made things even worse. The number of parties in the Parliament was increased to twenty-eight, with no party having more than fifty-seven seats, and only four parties having more than eight seats.35 Whereas in the old Parliament it was a struggle for dominance between two parties (PNI and Masyumi), in the new Parliament it was a struggle between four parties (PNI, Masyumi, NU, and PKI), which meant that the new Parliament was even more divided and unstable than before the elections. The need to form coalition governments continued, but with the Parliament now effectively controlled by four mutually antagonistic parties, there was virtually a situation of political stalemate in the Parliament.36 The elections had created a Parliament even more disfunctional than the one before the elections. To many Indonesians, the elections were considered to have been little more than a farce.37 Moreover, the elections showed that there were emerging political divisions between Java and the outer islands.38 Democracy, as practiced by the parties and politicians, was not bringing the nation together, it was beginning to tear it apart. The elections were a failure, both in terms of resolving the problems in the Parliament, and in advancing the democratic system and ideal throughout Indonesia. Since the elections had produced no solutions, but had in fact brought more problems in their wake, the elections represented another step in discrediting the whole of the parliamentary and democratic system.39 For many in Indonesia, such as Sukarno, the state of the Parliament and the failure of the elections were proof that Western style democracy could not work in Indonesia. The idea of democracy was too alien to Indonesian culture, as the nation was simply too backward to work within the model of a modern Western democratic system. Sukarno wrote: Generally the peasants are still half-feudal in their thinking, they live in a mystical dreamworld indulging in fancies. They are not modern and rational . . . They still revere the feudal nobility a great deal . . . In everything they are backwards and oldfashioned . . . They have an old-fashioned social structure. In short, their whole social economic life is still old-fashioned - and also their ideology is obviously oldfashioned. 40 Since those in Indonesia with a modern Western style education at the time were only a very small minority, it is clear that Sukarno was talking about the vast majority of the population. If even the politicians, many of whom were Western educated, could not make Western style democracy work, then who could? It was in the aftermath of the elections that Sukarno began promoting his model of 'Guided Democracy', which would soon replace parliamentary democracy in Indonesia. The real irony of the 1955 elections was that even as they represented at least something nearing real democracy, they were also the death knell for Indonesian democracy. The elections represented the beginning of the end for Indonesia's experiment with, and attempt at, parliamentary democracy. In conclusion, parliamentary democracy failed in Indonesia because both the political and social cultures of the nation were simply unable to operate within it. Indonesia in the 1950s was essentially a backward feudal society, with only the beginnings of a modern political culture forming. The attempt by the Indonesians to merge aspects of the old traditional and colonial systems within a modern Western democratic structure was virtually doomed to failure from the beginning. Yet if any single thing is to blame for the failure of the parliamentary system, then this blame falls squarely at the feet of the parties and politicians. It was they who chose and created the model of democracy instituted in Indonesia, and it was they who were responsible for making it work. It was less a case of them not being able to make it function, and far more a case of them not allowing it to function properly. It was the parties and politicians who were far more interested in gaining government to increase their power of patronage and political power, than in running the country properly. This is clear from the fact that they waited over five years after independence before calling general elections, which were actually more about resolving their own problems than those of the country. Clearly, politics and government was a game to these people, in which the winner expected to take all, and more often than not tried to. The fact that the 1955 elections simply perpetuated such a state, and if anything made it worse, was proof for many that modern Western democracy could not work in Indonesia. But whereas Sukarno thought it was the culture of the peasants that was the real stumbling block to democracy, it was, as it turned out, the educated class, those modern Indonesians who saw themselves as the future, as the nation's best and brightest, who oversaw the failure of democracy. In the end, it was the creators of Indonesian parliamentary democracy who were its destroyers. ---------------------------------------------- Endnotes 1. H. Feith, The Decline of Constitutional Democracy in Indonesia, London: Cornell University Press, 1962, p. 42. 2. D. Kingsbury, The Politics of Indonesia, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1988. p. 35. 3. Ibid., p. 24. 4. Feith, op. cit., p. 40. 5. Ibid., p. 41. 6. Ibid., p. 45. 7. M. C. Ricklefs, A History of Modern Indonesia, London: Macmillan, 1981, p. 225. 8. B. May, The Indonesian Tragedy, London: Routledge & Keegan Paul, 1978, p. 70. 9. Ricklefs, op. cit., p. 230. 10. B. Dahm, History of Indonesia in the Twentieth Century, London: Praeger Publishers, 1971, pp. 150 - 151. 11. Ricklefs, op. cit., p. 230. 12. M. Caldwell, & E. Utrecht, Indonesia, An Alternative History, Sydney: Alternative Publishing Co-Operative Limited, 1979, p. 96. 13. Ibid. 14. Dahm, op. cit., pp. 160 - 161. 15. Ibid., p. 160. 16. May, op. cit., p. 71. 17. Ricklefs, op. cit., p. 234. 18. Ibid., pp. 234 - 235. 19. Caldwell, & Utrecht, op. cit., p. 99. 20. Ibid. 21. May, op. cit., p. 70. 22. Caldwell, & Utrecht, op. cit., p. 97. 23. Dahm, op. cit., p. 114, & p.120. 24. May, op. cit., p. 76. 25. Feith, op. cit., p. 108. 26. May, op. cit., p. 70. 27. Ricklefs, op. cit., p. 225. 28. Feith, op. cit., p. 109. 29. Ricklefs, op. cit., p. 225. 30. Caldwell, & Utrecht, op. cit., p. 97. 31. May, op. cit., p. 70. 32. Caldwell, & Utrecht, op. cit., p. 100. 33. May, op. cit., p. 74. 34. Caldwell, & Utrecht, op. cit., p. 100. 35. Ricklefs, op. cit., p. 238. 36. Ibid. 37. May, op. cit., p. 75. 38. Ricklefs, op. cit., p. 238. 39. Ibid. 40. Sukarno, sited in, C. L. M. Penders, The Life and Times of Sukarno, London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1974, p. 47. ----------------------------------------------------- References Caldwell, M & Utrecht, E. 1979. Indonesia, An Alternative History. Sydney: Alternative Publishing Co-Operative Limited. Dahm, B. 1971. History of Indonesia in the Twentieth Century. London: Praeger Publishers. Feith, H. 1962. The Decline of Constitutional Democracy in Indonesia. London: Cornell University Press. Kingsbury, D. 1998. The Politics of Indonesia. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. May, B. 1978. The Indonesian Tragedy. London: Routledge & Keegan Paul. McDougall, D. 1997. Studies in International Relations: The Asia - Pacific, the Nuclear Age, Australia. Sydney: Hodder Education. Penders, C. L. M. 1974. The Life and Times of Sukarno. London: Sidgwick & Jackson. Tinker, H. 1987. Men Who Overturned Empires: fighters, Dreamers and Schemers. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press. Ricklefs, M. C. 1981. A History of Modern Indonesia. London: Macmillan. ------------------------------------------------------ |
