Elections in Indonesia: The New Order and Beyond

It has sometimes been argued that many Indonesians had little sympathy with western notions of elections being events for the contesting and transfer of power and that they rather supported the New Order's use of festivals of democracy', elections as occasions at which the mass of ordinary Indonesians were given the opportunity to celebrate the country's achievements under the rule of its New Order leadership as well as legitimize the continued rule of these leaders. But the need to stage-manage these elections' as New Order triumphs finally undid the regime. The beginning of the long fall of Suharto could arguably be sited with the prelude to the 1997 general election, when the ejection of Megawati Sukarnoputri from leadership to opposition PDI party was engineered in 1996. The President's authority was weakened - and crumbed even further at the onset of the economic crisis that followed a few months later. Events since Suharto's resignation in May 1998 have been far from orderly, but today manyIndonesians would argue that the current turbulent political scene - not so different from the parliamentary vitality (not chaos') of the 1950s - is the true face of Indonesian politics, that the stability of Suharto's New Order was an aberration. The June 1999 national elections saw Megawati's rejuvenated PDI take the biggest vote, but not a majority, and many other parties are now represented in parliament. This result, many would argue, is Indonesia's true festival of democracy'. Looking beyond the narrow details of the June 1999 national election, this book explores the wider issues sketched above. With chapters describing the last New Order election and the first free election in the post-Suharto era, this volume makes an important contribution to our understanding of the demise of the New Order, and the directions being taken by the emerging regime.