An Election to End All Elections?

When, during Indonesia’s first presidential debate on 12 December 2023, candidate Anies Baswedan remarked that people had lost faith in Indonesia’s democratic process, his rival, current frontrunner Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto responded animatedly, “If democracy failed, it would have been impossible for you to be the governor!”. Prabowo’s snipe at Baswedan alluded to the latter’s term as the elected governor of Jakarta (2017-2022), whose candidacy Prabowo backed. While some interpreted his remark as a defence of Indonesia’s electoral system, Prabowo has long been averse to what he calls the corrosive impact of “imported” forms of democratic competition, including direct elections. Against a backdrop of democratic decline under the Joko Widodo (Jokowi) administration, this situation poses questions about how electoral democracy may fare under a possible Prabowo presidency.

Sitting on the nationalist right of Indonesia’s political spectrum, Prabowo’s party Gerindra rejects what it claims has been the liberal-democratic direction of post-1998/9 reforms. Gerindra advocates a return to a system based on Indonesia’s original 1945 Constitution. This would entail an annulment of constitutional amendments made between 1999-2002 that underpin democratic elections, human rights protections, and presidential term limits (two five-year terms).

Prabowo and Gerindra’s stance has been more than rhetorical. In late 2014, having lost his firstbid for the presidency to Jokowi, Prabowo led a multi-party parliamentary coalition which passed a revised Electoral Law bill reinstating, albeit temporarily, the pre-2005 situation allowing the parliamentary appointment of regional heads, including governors. After fierce public backlash, a presidential intervention by Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) restored direct elections. SBY, in his final months in office, issued two decrees nullifying this attempted legislative coup.

Elite machinations to extend presidential term limits and to reduce direct elections have coalesced the ideological objectives of factions seeking to erode, if not reverse, post-reformasi (reform) democratic gains. This has worsened with Jokowi’s ambition to consolidate and perpetuate his legacy. In 2023, the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR) and Regional Representative Council (DPD) called for the MPR’s reinstatement as the country’s supreme executive, with the DPD declaring that post-1999 constitutional changes had “moved away from Pancasila”. DPD chair, La Nyalla Mattalitti, argued that direct presidential elections had “destroyed national cohesion” and that they should be replaced by the New Order-era practice of indirect ‘election’ of the president by MPR members.

Those pushing for electoral and constitutional rollback have conspicuously refrained from raising it as a campaign issue in 2024. Nevertheless, Gerindra’s deputy chairman, Habiburokhman, has said that the MPR and DPD’s proposals for a return to a pre-reformasi Constitution would be revisited once a new government is formed. He commented that any prior discussion could “provoke public suspicion” of intent to delay the 2024 elections or to end subsequent ones.

The preference shown by many political parties for greater control over executive leader appointment processes reflects agitation at what they see as the vagaries and increasing expense of direct elections plus the need to find “electable” candidates.

Candidate Prabowo has given assurances of his commitment to democracy, with the open-ended proviso that it “still has many deficiencies”. Less openly autocratic than in his 2014 and 2019 presidential campaigns, Prabowo’s 2024 rebrand is not just image- and personality-based but also political, responding to a changed landscape where public support for democracy remains high. This is even as democracy has been substantively hollowed out under a popular president. Constitutional autocracy, a la the Prabowo of 2014, has become unnecessary for Prabowo 2024 to consolidate and maintain power. Furthermore, it is risky to reveal such autocratic tendencies, insofar as it provokes backlash and generates opportunities for his rivals to criticise him or engage in populist posturing. This is not to suggest that Prabowo has abandoned his broader ideological objectives but rather that he has again recalibrated his strategy, using a different means towards a similar end.

The position of major parties regarding the future of direct elections appears largely instrumental. The National Awakening Party (PKB), which Baswedan’s running mate Muhaimin Iskandar heads, has advocated for the regional parliaments’ appointment of governors. This is despite Baswedan’s popular election as Jakarta governor, like Jokowi before him, being foundational to his viability as a presidential candidate now. The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), whose candidate Ganjar Pranowo was a two-term elected governor of Central Java, has also indicated support for the idea. The DPR recently put forward draft legislation for a framework for governing Jakarta once the new capital city Nusantara officially replaces it as the nation’s capital. The bill proposes that future governors would be appointed by the president on the DPRD’s recommendation – an idea touted by the PSI, the self-proclaimed youth party now led by Jokowi’s youngest son, Kaesang Pangarep.

The preference shown by many political parties for greater control over executive leader appointment processes reflects agitation at what they see as the vagaries and increasing expense of direct elections plus the need to find “electable” candidates. Any further narrowing of the field for political contestation, such as a return to closed-list voting systems or parliamentary appointments of regional leaders, would close the door on the possibility of any disruptive outsiders contesting gubernatorial or legislative posts. This would be most detrimental to those sectors of civil society without ties to, or utility value for, political elites who will face greater barriers to electoral participation and vulnerability to repression. This would extend to outlier parties excluded from a ruling coalition. As we have seen over the past decade, few have remained committed to being an effective opposition – a role which comes with risks, such as targeted criminalisation.

A Prabowo presidency, then, may see an expansion of “opposition-less” approaches to governing, framed by nationalist tropes of safeguarding unity. The logic of this approach, already embraced by Jokowi, is to remove parliamentary opposition and curtail the emergence of rival power bases. This is done not by overt repression but co-optation into large ruling coalitions managed via negotiations and inter-elite deals. Prabowo has said that he intends to include “all sides” in any future government. This would resemble his preferred integralist “consensus” (musyawarah)-based model, as envisioned in Indonesia’s 1945 Constitution, and serve to further strengthen the power of the executive.

In such a scenario, core democratic processes such as elections may be maintained, albeit on a reduced scale but largely stripped of their potential for delivering substantive change. Such processes will nonetheless continue to provide an important avenue for public participation and for conferring legitimacy on the status quo. If Prabowo can maintain his popularity like Jokowi has done, he may feel emboldened to flex his authoritarian muscle and push once more for a roll-back of the post-1999 constitutional amendments and the end of direct elections.

2024/25