A failure of leadership: The decay of Indonesian parliamentary democracy 1950 - 1957.
A failure of leadership:The decay of Indonesian parliamentarydemocracy 1950 - 1957.SYNOPSISThe failure of parliamentary democracy in Indonesia in the years 1950 to 1957 wasdue to the limited ideological basis upon which the Indonesian elite based and understoodit. To the elites, democracy was an ideal and a symbol, which in practice should be keptfirmly within the hands of themselves. The parliamentary system they set-up, based onthe Dutch model of multi-party representation, became little more than a venue for theparties to fight amongst themselves. While unstable coalition governments spent moretime handing out patronage and working to secure their own power, than governing thecountry. 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. The1955 elections which were to have solved some of these problems, failed to do sohowever, and ended up discrediting the very democratic system they were supposed tohave strengthened. Yet the main cause of the failure of parliamentary democracy inIndonesia, was the political parties and the politicians. It was they who created thesystem, and it was they who failed to make it work.The period of parliamentary democracy in Indonesia between 1950 and 1957 was atime of great opportunity and uncertainty. It was in this period that democracy had itsbest, and until recently, its only chance, to prove itself workable in Indonesia. Yet fordemocracy to work in the new nation of Indonesia, it had to overcome significant culturaland social difficulties that ran deep within Indonesian society. The very notions and ideasthat made up the Indonesian elite's understanding of what democracy was and how itshould work, significantly weakened and undermined the whole of the democratic systemas set-up by the elites. The limited ideological basis of Indonesian democracy was toplay an important role in its eventual demise. The political model that the Indonesianschose for their parliamentary system also fundamentally undermined parliamentarydemocracy. It led to a string of unstable coalition governments, that saw the partiesforced to increasingly concentrate on holding power, and distributing patronage, than onrunning the country. In such a situation the political parties became little more than theinstruments of self-serving elites and politicians. The fact that the politicians hadappointed themselves to Parliament in 1945, and did not decide to allow elections until1955, was indicative of them seeing themselves as the new ruling class. When theelections were eventually held in 1955, instead of resolving some of the problems with thepolitical 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 withunstable coalition governments, and contributed to the declining support for parliamentarydemocracy. Yet the real culprits in the failure of Indonesian parliamentary democracywere the political parties and politicians. It was they who created the system, and it wasthey 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 thevery ideological foundations on which it was built. These foundations, the ideas ofexactly what democracy was to the Indonesian elite, meant that the democratic systemitself was, in important respects, undermined by the very people who created it, evenbefore it began functioning.From the start, Indonesia's elite had a limited view of what democracy was, and whatit included. For many, it was more of an abstract idea, or symbol, of what the newIndonesian state should be, or attempt to be. It was seen as a force for nation-buildingand 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 individualrights, majority rule, minority rights, and the legitimate role of opposition parties.1 Onereason for this limited conception of democracy was due to the influence inherited fromthe colonial government, with its centralised political structure where all the real powerwas controlled by the colonial government, and from its attitude of paternalism.2 Ineffect, what this meant was that the Indonesian elite chose as its model a form ofdemocracy 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 torepresent the interests of the elites themselves. It was in many ways something of amechanistic view of democracy; just enough to make it work, but not so far as toundermine the central role and power of the Parliament and the elites.Such a notion of democracy was hardly strong on the ideal of representation, whereParliament and the politicians were to represent the people. For many of the elite, it wasless 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 Kingsburyshows, " . . . power is abstracted from the
influence of ordinary people . . ."3 True, thepeople could vote in elections, but there was still a strong belief in the traditional idea thatthe rulers embodied the interests of all the people, so that once elected, the Parliamentshould be free to govern as it perceived those interests. Feith recognised this when hewrites:parliamentary institutions were not seen as fulfilling representative functions. In fact, the ideaof representation was almost entirely absent from Indonesian ideas of democracy.4The unrepresentative nature of such a notion of democracy was made worse by the factthat many in the elite did not include the idea, or see ...
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influence of ordinary people . . ."3 True, thepeople could vote in elections, but there was still a strong belief in the traditional idea thatthe rulers embodied the interests of all the people, so that once elected, the Parliamentshould be free to govern as it perceived those interests. Feith recognised this when hewrites:parliamentary institutions were not seen as fulfilling representative functions. In fact, the ideaof representation was almost entirely absent from Indonesian ideas of democracy.4The unrepresentative nature of such a notion of democracy was made worse by the factthat many in the elite did not include the idea, or see the need for, checks and balances ofpower, except in the case of the powers of the President, whose constitutional powerswere progressively reduced throughout the 1950s.5 Parliament, apparently, was to beanswerable to no other authority than itself for most of the time.Clearly, for many in the Indonesian elite, democracy was more about ensuring theirinclusion in the political process, rather than creating a widely representative politicalsystem. It was designed to allow for the minimum amount of participation andrepresentation necessary for a democratic system to exist and function, while ensuringthat the system was firmly under the control of the political elite. Such a system wasinherently flawed as it represented the interests of only a very small minority, while theneeds of the majority were at best subordinated to the interests of the political elite, andat worst ignored. Democracy then, was supported as an ideal, but it was in its practicethat 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."6Yet the real problem with the democratic ideal was less about who would have thepower, and more about the state of Indonesian society in the immediate post-colonialera. At the time of independence, Indonesian political thinking and practice wasinfluenced by a jumble of traditional, imperial (both Dutch and Japanese), and modernWestern democratic ideas. What the Indonesian elite attempted to do was to keep manyof the ideas and practices of the traditional and colonial eras, and to place them within alimited democratic structure based on a Western political model. The problem was thatthe traditional and colonial systems with their authoritarian, centrist, and exclusive nature,were too incompatible with the Western democratic system. The police state structurethe Indonesians inherited from the Dutch and Japanese was simply unable to functionwithin the reality of a democratic system.7 To May, such an attempt was "a catastrophicexample of attempts to plant Western political . . . roots in unsuitable ground".8 Thefailure of the democratic era lays in the attempt to combine these three diverse andcontradictory systems.The failure of the parliamentary era was also a result of the political system theIndonesians chose to set-up. In choosing a democratic system the Indonesians used astheir model the Dutch parliamentary system with its multiparty structure.9 The problemwith this structure was that it allowed for and encouraged a large number of parties togain seats in Parliament. In 1951 the first Parliament had no less than seventeen differentpolitical parties, with no party holding more than 49 of the 232 seats.10 With no partyhaving the ability to form a government in its own right, coalition governments had to beformed, so that Indonesia found itself being governed by inherently unstable coalitiongovernments between 1950 and 1957. As Ricklefs points out, "this was hardly astructure to support strong governments."11And strong governments the coalitions most certainly were not. Because there wereso many competing interests in Parliament, the Parliament became less a place of debateand government, and more a place for the parties to compete for power and politicaldominance. With so many parties in Parliament the coalition governments were alwaysvulnerable to being voted out of office by the Parliament, which meant that in practice thevarious Cabinets were always in the hands of, and therefore at the mercy, of the otherpolitical parties.12 This led to there being a succession of short lived and unstablecoalition Cabinets. In fact there were no less than six Cabinets in the seven years from1950, with the longest lived being the Wilopo Cabinet of April 1952 to June 1953; amere fourteen months. The shortest being the Natsir Cabinet which lasted only sixmonths (September 1950 to March 1951).13 These governments fell not only from theirinability to deal effectively with the multitude of problems left over from the colonialperiod, and from new problems encountered since independence, but because the otherparties took deliberate steps to bring down the governments.14 It is no exaggeration tocall the parliamentary period, as Dahm does, "an unbroken series of Cabinet crises."15Such a situation was disastrous for Indonesia. With such short lived governmentsthere was neither a consistency of government policy, nor time to institute any politicalprograms. At a time when Indonesia was beset with enormous problems, such as theeconomy, which was in a state of hopeless stagnation and inertia, when Indonesia mostneeded stable and strong leadership, the parties were too interested in fighting amongstthemselves 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 theperiod immediately following the downfall of a Cabinet there was the inevitable bargainingand squabbling between the parties as they tried to build a new coalition in order to forma Cabinet. Such bargaining could, and did, go on for weeks at a time, while theproblems 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 newCabinet.17In such a situation the various governments found themselves spending most of theirtime trying to stay in power. This had adverse effects on policy which declined inimportance, as unstable coalitions fought within the Parliament, and within the coalitionsthemselves, in order to hold onto power.18 Such an unstable and volatile environmentforced the parties in government to make holding onto power their priority, as to make adecision on how to deal with a problem was to invite an attack from the other parties inParliament, which could lead to a crisis, and the risk of losing power. So bad was thesituation that it became impossible to form a stable government at any time throughout theperiod 1950 to 1957.Therefore, instead of instituting policies and governing the country, the parties ingovernment used their position and power to strengthen and entrench their position in thepolitical system. They did this by placing their own members into government posts andremoving or demoting those of their political enemies.19 This was important in tworespects; it gave political parties direct control over the public service, so that even whentheir policies and plans were opposed by the Parliament, the parties in power could stillattempt to initiate their policies directly through the public service. And even when not inoffice they could use their power in the civil administration to thwart the policies of theirpolitical enemies in the hope of destroying their governments. These activities naturallyled to increasing levels of corruption within the political system, and were a source ofcontinuous controversies and fighting between the parties, which further undermined theParliament and the democratic system.20 Nor did the inevitable scandals from the publicexposure of such activities do anything to endear the Parliament or democracy to thepeople. Nevertheless, being in government was critical for the parties, as they relied onthe power of patronage to maintain their political influence. Being in the government gavethe parties great scope to use the power of patronage to their own advantage, and thedisadvantage of their enemies. Parliament, and Indonesian politics, became increasinglyless about the struggle between ideology and policies, and more about the strugglebetween the parties over the ultimate source of patronage; the Cabinet. May shows thisclearly when he writes:While arguments raged over foreign and domestic policy, the constant theme in the shiftingalliances and coalitions was the battle for sources of patronage, by means of which a comfortableliving could be assured and loyalties bought."21These parliamentary battles bore all the hallmarks of the traditional courtly politics, whereCabinet became the inner court.In many respects the Parliament, from the inability, even unwillingness, of its membersto make it function properly, was doing more to undermine democracy in Indonesia thanvirtually any other group. Parliament by the mid 1950s was clearly disfunctional, and hadbecome a place, not to get things done, or to serve the interests of the nation, but a placeto give particular self-serving groups in the elite, and their supporters, access to powerand wealth.The problems with Indonesian democracy were not simply due to the multipartystructure of the Parliament itself, but were very much caused by the political parties andpoliticians who created it, and who were supposed to make it work. This was becausethe parties were not created to represent the interests of various groups in the widerpublic, rather the parties were created to represent the interests of particular groups ofIndonesia's elite. For many of the politicians the parties became little more than vehiclesfor their own personal political ambitions.22 This is not surprising, as the Parliament from1950 until the 1955 election was essentially based on the KNIP (National CentralCommittee of Indonesia) which was set-up in 1945. This political body was made up ofparties that were appointed, not elected, so that in at least one respect democracy inIndonesia did not really begin until the 1955 elections.23 Thus, for its first six years afterindependence, the Parliament was made up by parties and politicians who had chosenthemselves 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."24This new political elite was in fact a very small group of people who were quiteeffective 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 betweenthem held and exercised the greatest amount of political power in the newly independentIndonesia.25 Most of these politicians saw the holding of power, and the benefits ofgovernment, as a right, which was much in line with the Javanese tradition of those whocan seize power should wield it.26 As such, the politicians had little, if any, commitmentto the idea, let alone the practice, of grass-roots representation.27Feith in fact sees the politicians as being a particular social group in themselves. Heargues that this is due to their having a common schooling; from their having taken part innationalist political organisations; from most living in Jakarta; and with most coming fromthe higher levels of Indonesian society and mixing socially in the same circles, that theymade up the political elite. Feith writes:Its members had a fairly strong sense of constituting a single group, all political divisionsnotwithstanding - and this is particularly true of the year 1950.28This idea of seeing the politicians as a separate class in Indonesian society is echoed byRicklefs, who saw the political elite as "a new urban superculture."29Clearly, most politicians did see themselves as being above the rest of Indonesiansociety, even as a new form of traditional aristocracy, and therefore those who were themost fit and able to lead the new nation. Such an attitude was not conductive to notionsof representation, but had more in common with traditional and colonial attitudes togovernance than with modern Western democracy. It led to the situation where therewas 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 theirdominance of both the political process and political power, and would have contributedto the level of corruption within the political system. Thus, as May shows, in such apolitical culture "politics was little more than a game, imported with other luxuries fromthe West, and only played by a few hundred men."31This was the state of affairs with both the Indonesian Parliament and the politicalsystem by the mid 1950s. By the time of the elections of 1955 it was clear that both theParliament and democracy were not working in Indonesia. The elections were seen as away of resolving some of the problems of the Parliament, in particular, by giving oneparty an absolute majority in Parliament.32 For many, the elections were not aboutexpanding democracy and giving the people a vote, they were about resolving thepolitical problems within the elite, which it was hoped would bring the long neededpolitical stability.33 And political stability was desperately needed; as Caldwell andUtrecht shows, "by the time of the election the country was facing economic and politicalchaos."34Yet the elections failed to resolve any of the problems of the political system, andbrought no stability whatsoever. In fact, the elections made things even worse. Thenumber of parties in the Parliament was increased to twenty-eight, with no party havingmore than fifty-seven seats, and only four parties having more than eight seats.35Whereas in the old Parliament it was a struggle for dominance between two parties (PNIand 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 dividedand unstable than before the elections. The need to form coalition governmentscontinued, but with the Parliament now effectively controlled by four mutually antagonisticparties, there was virtually a situation of political stalemate in the Parliament.36 Theelections had created a Parliament even more disfunctional than the one before theelections. To many Indonesians, the elections were considered to have been little morethan a farce.37 Moreover, the elections showed that there were emerging politicaldivisions between Java and the outer islands.38 Democracy, as practiced by the partiesand 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 theelections had produced no solutions, but had in fact brought more problems in theirwake, the elections represented another step in discrediting the whole of theparliamentary and democratic system.39 For many in Indonesia, such as Sukarno, thestate of the Parliament and the failure of the elections were proof that Western styledemocracy could not work in Indonesia. The idea of democracy was too alien toIndonesian culture, as the nation was simply too backward to work within the model of amodern Western democratic system. Sukarno wrote:Generally the peasants are still half-feudal in their thinking, they live in a mystical dreamworldindulging in fancies. They are not modern and rational . . . They still revere the feudal nobility agreat deal . . . In everything they are backwards and oldfashioned . . . They have an old-fashionedsocial structure. In short, their whole social economic life is still old-fashioned - and also theirideology is obviously oldfashioned.40Since those in Indonesia with a modern Western style education at the time were only avery small minority, it is clear that Sukarno was talking about the vast majority of thepopulation. If even the politicians, many of whom were Western educated, could notmake Western style democracy work, then who could? It was in the aftermath of theelections that Sukarno began promoting his model of 'Guided Democracy', which wouldsoon replace parliamentary democracy in Indonesia.The real irony of the 1955 elections was that even as they represented at leastsomething nearing real democracy, they were also the death knell for Indonesiandemocracy. The elections represented the beginning of the end for Indonesia'sexperiment with, and attempt at, parliamentary democracy.In conclusion, parliamentary democracy failed in Indonesia because both the politicaland social cultures of the nation were simply unable to operate within it. Indonesia in the1950s was essentially a backward feudal society, with only the beginnings of a modernpolitical culture forming. The attempt by the Indonesians to merge aspects of the oldtraditional and colonial systems within a modern Western democratic structure wasvirtually doomed to failure from the beginning.Yet if any single thing is to blame for the failure of the parliamentary system, then thisblame falls squarely at the feet of the parties and politicians. It was they who chose andcreated the model of democracy instituted in Indonesia, and it was they who wereresponsible for making it work. It was less a case of them not being able to make itfunction, and far more a case of them not allowing it to function properly. It was theparties and politicians who were far more interested in gaining government to increasetheir power of patronage and political power, than in running the country properly. Thisis clear from the fact that they waited over five years after independence before callinggeneral elections, which were actually more about resolving their own problems thanthose of the country. Clearly, politics and government was a game to these people, inwhich the winner expected to take all, and more often than not tried to. The fact that the1955 elections simply perpetuated such a state, and if anything made it worse, was prooffor many that modern Western democracy could not work in Indonesia. But whereasSukarno thought it was the culture of the peasants that was the real stumbling block todemocracy, it was, as it turned out, the educated class, those modern Indonesians whosaw themselves as the future, as the nation's best and brightest, who oversaw the failureof democracy. In the end, it was the creators of Indonesian parliamentary democracywho 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 andSchemers. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.Ricklefs, M. C. 1981. A History of Modern Indonesia. London: Macmillan.------------------------------------------------------
