Tough news to wake up to this morning. Indonesian democracy took a major hit in the middle of the night, with voting rights rolled back a decade due mainly to the cowardly actions of outgoing President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s Democratic Party. But all is not lost, the bill will almost certainly be challenged in the country’s Constitutional Court, so don’t give up hope yet.
Everybody’s covering it so we’ll just give you the highlights (or rather the lowlights).
The vote on the RUU Pilkada bill, which would scrap direct regional elections of governors, mayors and district heads was supposed to happen yesterday, but intense lobbying kept talks going until early this morning.
The vote was supposed to be extremely close. Early on, the Merah Putih Coalition, put together by losing presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto, looked like they had the majority of votes need to pass the bill.
Then, SBY and the Democratic Party said they would oppose the bill, a move that we thought was a major game changer as it swung the number of votes to a slim margin against the bill.
We were wrong. Late into the night, the Democratic Party dropped the bomb that they were going to remain neutral and walk out on the vote. Many observers thought the Democrats’ opposition to the bill was a face-saving measure, and it looks like those observers were right.
Thanks to the Democracts’ betrayal, the bill passed by a vote of 226-135.
We can’t even articulate our outrage at SBY and the “Democrats” so we’ll just link to this Jakarta Globe Editorial that sums up our feeling as well: Shame on SBY and His Non-Democrats.
The latest news is that SBY, who was in New York during the vote, is very disappointed by the walkout, although when Democratic lawmaker Ruhut Sitompul tried to contact SBY by SMS, asking for his input on the vote earlier in the night, the only reply he got was. “Sorry I’ll call you later.”
So what’s next?
Although polls suggested that 80% of Indonesians were against banning direct regional elections, protests against it were somewhat sedate yesterday (one can imagine most protesters decided to go home before the after midnight vote).
So a Constitutional Court challenge is pretty much a given, but given the scant direction the Constitution actually prescribes towards elections, the judges will have quite a bit of leeway in how they decide.
As happens so often in Indonesia, such legal proceedings tend to be decided in the court of public opinion as much as in the courtrooms themselves. Merah Putih did their best to sneak this bill through with as few people noticing before the end of the legislative session, to get their revenge on upstarts like Jokowi for challenging the entrenched elites.
If this bill passes, then Prabowo and his cronies will get their win after all. Only the courts, and the protests of the Indonesian people at large, stand in their way.
