Tutorial

Marnursuro ti tunggal kaaruba, an Ilocano proverb says. “Each neighbor is a teacher.”
Next-door Indonesia provided a tutorial when 187 million voters, in 17,000 islands across three time zones, elected Jakarta Gov. Joko Widodo as the country’s 7th president. Voters handed Jokowi a six-percentage-point victory, or 8 million votes, over ex-general Prabowo Subianto.

US President Obama led the queue of those who called Jokowi to offer congratulations. “Through this free and fair election, the people of Indonesia have once again shown their commitment to democracy,” he said.

Indeed, “the outcome defines the thrust and direction, over the next generation, for a 250 million-strong country,” said Jakarta Post, reprinting a July 15 Inquirer column. “It’s the first election to see power transferred from a directly elected leader to another in what was once a dictatorship.” It bucks disputed polls in Malaysia and Cambodia to military junta rule in Thailand.
“Jokowi is a different animal,” wrote Elizabeth Pisani in her recently published book: “Indonesia, Etc.: Exploring the Improbable Nation.” She compares Jokowi with previous presidents and concludes: “He’ll be embedded within well-formed contours of Indonesian politics — one of the most transactional political systems in the world.”

Loser Subianto claimed “an estimated 52,000 polling stations have reported irregularities.” Prabowo’s wealthy tycoon-brother, Hashim Djojohadikusumo, vows to press a legal challenge.

A tarred human rights record, under the Suharto dictatorship, haunts Subianto. He married into power, his former wife being a daughter of Suharto. He failed to shuck off charges of human rights abuses while in the army where he led Indonesia’s special forces.

Many Indonesian activists morphed into desaparecidos allegedly on Prabowo’s orders. Most were victimized during the 1998 protests that toppled Suharto. This is his third unsuccessful bid to bag the presidency.

A challenge of 2014’s election is unlikely to succeed, analysts say. “That would not prevent Widodo from taking office in October,” predicted David Hill of Asia Research Center at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia. “The Constitutional Court will politely hear any formal challenge, but it will find no major corruption of the election occurred.”

Indonesia is one of Asia’s more stable democracies. It’s political system is mired in murky money deals that hobble economic growth. “The election of a relative outsider, with no connections to the Suharto era, represents an important opportunity to get the country back on track,” Capital Economics, an independent research firm, said in a note released Tuesday.

Widodo assumes office with less than 40 percent of lawmakers backing him, writes Simon Roughneen, the Irish journalist long based in Asia. He’ll need to emerge from shadows of the old guard. That includes former President Megawati Sukarnoputri, a key campaign supporter. Vice President Jusuf Kalla’s party backed Subianto.

“I’ll see your election victory proclamation, and raise an unbreakable five-year parliamentary coalition plan,” Roughneen quotes Prabowo as saying. He meant a “permanent” amalgam of parties in Indonesia’s incoming parliament. The bloc corrals over 60 percent of seats. “This is an overall coalition in the national and the regional and district legislatures,” declared Prabowo.

Prabowo’s coalition, will make it difficult for Joko to govern. They fired a warning shot across the bow even before the first ballot was cast in the presidential election. It is more democratic to make the post of parliament speaker an elected role, Prabowo’s supporters argued.

Currently, the job goes to a member of the biggest party in parliament. That would be Jokowi’s Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle. But, with a majority of seats, Prabowo’s coalition can aim at least to win the house speaker gig in the next parliament.

Will it hold firm? Or will defectors abandon ship to join the winning party? Philippine experience shows mass defections occur and parties cross over to whoever holds the Palace.

That is likely to fragment Prabowo’s coalition. It is currently backed by Golkar, a self-styled “party of government.” It is the second-largest party in parliament after PDI-P, but Suharto’s death left a vacuum.

Jusuf Kalla, Joko’s running mate and incoming vice president, remains popular among Golkar members. Some already push to oust current leader Aburizal Bakrie, a prominent Prabowo backer.

Even before Joko is sworn in, Golkar – or a bloc of the party – could already scramble to scram fast.

“Anyone wishing to join us to build the nation will be accepted,” Joko told Antara. An alliance reduces Joko’s vulnerability to opposition filibuster, Roughneen writes. But it courts interest groups he’d have to appease. And they’d constrict Joko’s intent to be his own man.

What is it about Prabowo twisting in the wind that resonates here?

He is face of a generation seeking to recover what Suharto’s dictatorship squandered. That’s like Senator Ferdinand Marcos trying, a generation later, to re-enter Malacañang after the Marcos plunder.

Younger Indonesians barely recall the massacre of dissidents. In Suharto’s hometown of Godeajn, they see him as a Javanese sultan. Younger Filipinos have amnesia about Ninoy

Aquino’s assassination. And the Ilocos, which pretended People Power never occurred, displays a dictator’s mummy.

Suharto’s wife Tien was dubbed “Madame Ten Per Cent.” Marcos widow has been called far worse. Indonesians this year voted against a return to sleaze. Does that tutorial hint at Filipino choice come 2016?