Anti-Corruption Major Electoral Consideration for Indonesian Voters

By Lauren Gumbs

 

Indonesian voters will translate a rising public bile with corruption and oligarchy into voting preferences, leaning away from the tainted Demokrats toward parties with strong anti-corruption platforms and quality leadership.

According to the latest Centre for Strategic International Studies (CSIS) poll, the public favours Joko Widodo (Jokowi) as presidential candidate for PDI-P, and at a distant second, Prabowo Subianto of Gerindra, however as many as 30 percent are still undecided.

Jokowi is a proletarian man of the people whose integrity and appeal dilute the fact that he is slightly green on the international scene, versus Prabowo, a nationalist traditional elite with established military, political, and business roots and a questionable human rights record.

Support for both their parties, PDI-P and Gerindra, are on the rise while Partai Demokrat’s is waning, largely due to the deluge of corruption scandals over the last two years.

Golkar will likely crash and burn with today’s admission from former Chief Justice and Golkar legislator, Akil Mochtar, that he requested three billion rupiah (246 thousand) from Golkar lawmakers who were bribing him for an electoral ruling in their favour.

There can be no realistic option for PDI-P leadership other than Jokowi, as he is miles ahead of the nearest challenger Prabowo, and Megawati Sukarno Putri hardly gets a look in as a presidential candidate.

The poll showed that corruption however is a game changer and that voters will overwhelmingly switch support if any party is involved in a corruption case. Half of those polled said they would change their mind in the face of corruption compared with human rights issues at a mere eight percent and campaigning by the party of the candidate at just 6.8 percent.

Civil society activism and the Corruption Eradication Commission’s (KPK) success rate have done wonders for democratic consolidation and the erosion of a deeply ingrained culture of corruption. This election may be the most democratic yet, with more informed voters making rational choice decisions than ever before.

However there is a tendency for identity politics to parallel rational choice voting, and a propensity for intolerance to mirror religious identity, especially in cross tabulations of Islamic party voters as opposed to nationalist party voters.

Those voting for Islamic parties were more likely to object to or dislike having a house of worship from another religion in their neighbourhood. The figures for objection and distaste by nationalist party voters, admittedly lower, were not particularly encouraging either.

Even though corruption is a major political issue, issues of human rights and minority discrimination are not in the foreground. As long as nationalist parties substantially reflect Islamic aspirations within the status quo, such enculturated religio-identity prejudices do not discount the intolerant (unknowingly or otherwise) from voting nationalist.