A former Jakarta governor seeking Indonesia’s presidency said democracy is declining in the country and pledged to make changes to get it back on track.
Anies Baswedan (pic) said that concerns about neutrality in the current government and the institution arose when the frontrunner in the presidential race, Prabowo Subianto, picked the son of the current president as his running mate.
The issue of neutrality has not existed in Indonesia’s elections since the fall of dictator Suharto in 1998, Anies said.
“This means that there is a decline in trust, it means that our democracy is experiencing a decline in quality, it means that many legal rules are being bent,” he said.
Indonesia, with a diverse population of more than 270 million, is the world’s third-largest democracy after India and the United States, and it has South-East Asia’s largest economy.
The Feb 14 election will determine who will succeed the popular President Joko Widodo, who is serving his second and final term.
The country’s Constitutional Court made an exception to the age requirement of 40 for vice-presidential candidates that allowed Gibran Rakabuming Raka, Joko’s son, to run at only 36.
Later, the chief justice, who is Joko’s brother-in-law, was removed by an ethics panel for failing to recuse himself and making last-minute changes to election candidacy requirements.
The ruling has been a subject of heated debate in Indonesia, and Gibran’s candidacy is widely seen as implicit support from Joko for Prabowo’s third bid for the presidency.
Prabowo has vowed to continue the president’s development plan, in what experts view as an attempt to draw on Joko’s popularity.
However, the executive director of the Association for Elections and Democracy or Perludem, Titi Anggraini, believed that corruption, vote buying and lack of opposition representation in Indonesia’s parliament were also contributing to the decline of the country’s democracy.
“The problem was unlikely to be solved in the near future and would likely require reforms to the current electoral system, party regulations, public funding and strict law enforcement,” Titi said.
Anies and the third candidate, former Central Java governor Ganjar Pranowo, have stayed in the second and third positions in recent opinion polls, and he said he is staying focused on delivering his own flagship programmes in a bid to ensure February’s presidential polls goes to a runoff.
“I’m serious about bringing changes to the economy to make Indonesia more equal in prosperity,” he said.
“We want our democracy to be returned to a real democracy and there is no more fear of expressing opinion, no more self-censorship in the media, no more criminalisation of people who criticise the government.”
Anies, a progressive Muslim intellectual who has been considered as the “antithesis” to Joko by many, is widely known for opposing Joko’s brainchild of moving Indonesia’s capital from crowded Jakarta to a new capital, Nusantara.
“I want to show that infrastructure development must be broader,” Anies said when asked about people’s worry that his stance could affect investor mood for the project.
“We’ve planned to build 40 upgraded cities, not build a new city, across Indonesia so that micro-infrastructure is built,” Anies said, adding that micro-infrastructure such as clean water, gas and electricity improves households.
Anies was education and culture minister before Joko removed him from the Cabinet in 2016.
Religious identity politics in the 2017 election for Jakarta governor were seen as distancing him from moderate Muslims.
His choice of Muhaimin Iskandar as his running mate is viewed as an attempt to rebuild that support.
Muhaimin’s PKB party has strong ties with Indonesia’s largest Islamic organisation, Nahdlatul Ulama, which boasts over 45 million members.
Anies and Ganjar were neck and neck for the second spot in recent public opinion polls after he was consistently in third place for months.
His intellectual performance in two televised debates has encouraged voters to choose him and increased his votes, media reports said.
At campaign rallies on Sunday in Lampung province on Sumatra island, Anies was greeted by thousands of his supporters, including Islamic teachers, clerics, farmers and youth.
“I see an intelligent and energetic figure in him,” said Purwaningsih, a fruit farmer and mother of three.
“His success as Jakarta governor is a reference for us to choose him to lead Indonesia,” she said.
“Hopefully he can bring about significant changes, both in the government structure and in the society, especially for farmers.” — AP
