Indonesia's proposed plan for party-funding causes a stir
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With most parties getting funding from private sources, the issue is finally being discussed
When Indonesia’s House of Representatives Deputy Speaker Hajriyanto Thohari unveiled a supposed plan to allocate – for the purpose of funding Indonesia’s political parties – a mind-boggling 16 trillion rupiah (US$1.5 billion) a year from the state budget, he caused quite a stir among those who care about the issue.
As it turned out, there was no plan and the senior Golkar politician had merely plucked the figure out of the air, halving what he falsely understood was the 2 per cent a year Japan spent for the same purpose.
What is important, however, is that Thohari was speaking at a forum where the subject was party public funding. It suggests that the political establishment is finally getting around to debating a subject that really should be taking on increasing resonance.
While there are notable exceptions such as the United States, New Zealand, India and Switzerland, most other democracies do provide state aid to parties to cover either routine administrative and/or election campaign costs.
With a recent Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) poll showing only 5 per cent of the electorate as card-carrying members – and just 2.5 per cent making donations – Indonesian parties get most of their funding from other private sources.
As a result, some have fallen dangerously under the control of oligarchic interests, a development that Jakarta-based electoral expert Paul Rowland feels is one of the biggest single threats to Indonesia’s nascent democracy.
Australian National University academic Marcus Mietzner agrees. In a ground-breaking 2007 paper on party public funding, he argued that corporate donations serve only narrow economic interests and rarely benefit parties as institutions.
In the case of the long-established Golkar party, for example, the grossly swollen central board means decision-making is now centralised around a tiny inner circle, making it little different from when it served as the late president Suharto’s machine.
Tellingly, where private donations have been scarce, parties have simply stolen from the public purse. That is the other pressing reason why it is time to think seriously about finding ways to remove temptation and put parties on a sounder financial footing.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s Democrat Party and the once squeaky-clean Justice and Prosperity Party (PKS) have been so battered by corruption allegations that they are both likely to do poorly in the 2014 legislative elections.
Even with the current staggering levels of graft in Indonesia, Thohari’s left-field figure – while representing just 1 per cent of the budget – is a home run further than even what generous governments like Japan, Sweden and Israel pay political parties.
Australia, for example, forks out US$2.40 a vote to all candidates and parties polling 4 per cent of the total primary vote in the House and the Senate – a bill that is estimated to top out at about $40 million a year.
Canada bans corporate contributions, with parties relying on a collective $33 million in public donations, subsidised through a tax credit system and a per-vote subsidy for parties which win at least 2 per cent of total support or 5 per cent of the vote in each district.
Even so, the Conservative administration recently sliced the subsidy from $2 to $1.53 and wants to eliminate it by 2015. But Ottawa will continue to reimburse half of the estimated $110 million spent most recently by parties on election campaign financing.
As for the current state of play in Indonesia, the government – after abruptly cutting subsidies by 90 per cent in 2005 – now pays a paltry 108 rupiah (one US cent) a vote, or an annual $1 million.
But the public mood suggests that even a small increase would be too rich for most Indonesians who, to give politicians their due, have little inkling of the high cost of holding office.
Indeed, if the government wants Indonesians’ acceptance of a bigger public funding budget, it will require a national consensus in which voters see not only genuine value in the idea, but also gain confidence that parties will give up their nefarious practices.
Money will, of course, always be a factor in Indonesian politics, whether the government funds parties or not. The important thing is to limit its influence and to force parties to focus on platforms and policies that give voters a meaningful choice.
Mietzner points out that while corruption has always been rampant, the cut in subsidies in 2005 only further entrenched illicit fund-raising practices, including offering state enterprise positions to the highest bidder and making money out of import quotas.
This, he noted, was only one way that party bag men had intensified the practice of exploiting legislative and executive institutions. It is, for example, an open secret that ministries are often compelled to pay the House commissions to do their job of passing legislation.
Now starkly exemplified by the Democrats and PKS, the trend towards “chequebook democracy” has not only reinforced the image of parties as rent-seeking and self-serving, but undermined their internal coherence and their ability to perform basic democratic functions.
Given the steady procession of lawmakers filing through the nation’s corruption courts, restoring the integrity of the 560-strong House of Representatives is a major priority. But so should other measures aimed at improving the way it goes about its business.
Former National Mandate Party lawmaker Alvin Lie, who now heads a consultancy alerting clients to upcoming legislation, is disappointed that there has been no follow-up to a blueprint for reform prepared by the 2004-2009 parliament of which he was part.
That plan proposed, among other things, that Parliament be given independence from the executive in budget management, with a professional manager replacing the senior State Secretariat bureaucrat who currently fills the position of secretary-general.
Reformers also pushed for representative offices in each electoral district, staffed by an executive secretary, so constituents can air complaints and seek information without having to journey to Jakarta, as they do now.
Sobering for many observers is a CSIS survey, which showed that only 18 per cent of respondents had actually met their representatives and less than 12 per cent knew how to contact them.
That is not how it should be in a democracy
