Tom Pepinsky

Author: tompepinsky

  • Official Results

    The official results of the 2009 legislative elections are in. Here is the breakdown of all the parties that got enough votes to get seats in parliament.

    Party Perc. Seats
    Democratic Party (PD)  20.85 148
    Party
    of the Functional Groups (Golkar)     		 14.45 108
    Indonesian
    Democratic Party–Struggle (PDI–P)     		 14.03 93
    Prosperous
    Justice Party (PKS)     		 7.88 59
    National
    Mandate Party (PAN)     		 6.01 42
    United
    Development Party (PPP)     		 5.32 39
    National
    Awakening Party (PKB)     		 4.94 26
    Great
    Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra)     		 4.46 30
    People's
    Conscience Party (Hanura)     		 3.77 15

    These results show a couple of things. First, the biggest parties by far are the non-Islamic ones (these are the first three). Second, the personal parties of former military leaders do surprisingly well, given that with the exception of PD they were formed just about a year ago (these are the last two). Let's look now at the development of parties over time.

    Three Rounds of Democratic Elections

    5-11-09

     

    I leave off Hanura and Gerindra because trends don't make sense with one data point each. But if you look at the trends over time, you can that there are only two parties that have increased their vote shares since 1999: PD and the conservative Islamist PKS. (In 1999 PKS ran under a different name.) All other parties have seen their support eroding: the nationalist ones (Golkar and PDI-P, the moderate Islamic-nationalist ones (PKB and PAN), and the Islamic one (PPP). (Two additional conservative Islamic parties, PBR and PBB, did so poorly in this election that they no longer have seats in parliament.) Even PKS, though, didn't do great…it's vote share is up less than 1% from 2004, and in absolute terms it actually received fewer votes compared to 2004. The only party that really increased its vote share is PD.

    I'm trying to wrap my mind around what this all means. One might read this as encouraging: Islamist support is dwindling. I think that this is right, but there's another, less optimistic way to read this. The traditional nationalist powerhouses are becoming obsolete. The newcomer nationalist party is doing very well, but we know that it won't survive to 2014 because it's purely a personal vehicle for SBY. There's no successor being groomed, and SBY can't run again in 2014, so we can't expect PD to draw any support in 2014. So who will step up? A lot of civil society people worry that if Golkar and PDI-P can't reverse their steep declines–and I don't foresee them being able to do this–the most likely option will be PKS, whose on-the-ground organization is the envy of all other parties (even if its popular support right now isn't very high). This would be worrying.

  • An Afternoon Walkabout

    One of the things that loyal Indolaysia readers might not understand is that this is not a vacation, or even really a working vacation. It’s a research trip, and research (1) takes a lot of time and (2) is very tiring. This means that I don’t get to do the things that I really like to do, like exploring parts of Jakarta that I’ve never seen before or getting out to the beaches or parks in West Java.

    Nevertheless I took the opportunity yesterday afternoon to have a little walkabout from 3:00 until around 7:00. In all the time that we’ve been to Jakarta, neither JMP nor I have been to Pasar Baru, a market district in north-central Jakarta. So I decided to visit it.

    Pasar Baru

    5-10-09

    It was neat for a couple of reasons. First, it’s always fun to see a new part of town. But honestly, what was more interesting to me was the opportunity to watch people, in particular to see Indonesia’s very small Indian community. These are not expatriates, but rather Indonesian citizens born and raised here. In the city of Medan, in North Sumatra, most Indians are of Tamil extraction, but in Jakarta and elsewhere on Java, they are mostly Sikhs and Punjabis. In both cities, though, Indians are associated with the textile trade. So Pasar Baru is a great place to see them.

    It was so nice out yesterday that I decided to walk the whole way back to my hotel, a distance of maybe a mile and a half. On the way back, I got to see the largest mosque in Southeast Asia (Mesjid Istiqlal) and right next to it a beautiful old Dutch church known as the Emmanual’s Church. After that I strolled by the American embassy. You can’t actually walk next to it because it’s so heavily fortified, but you can walk across the street from it. There was a fascinating piece of graffiti on a wall on the other side of the street that I wanted to take a picture of, so I opened my bag and dragged out my camera. But before I could open the shutters, all of the sudden a bunch of Marines with machine guns started towards me. “Sorry sir, no pictures.” They were accompanied by some of the biggest and baddest Indonesian military guys that I have seen. Even though my picture was going to be facing the other direction from the embassy. I guess they were just being careful.

    See more pictures of my walkabout here.