Graft Forces Indonesian President to Take Party Helm

NEWS ANALYSIS

By JOE COCHRANE

Published: April 1, 2013

JAKARTA — Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is the first directly elected president in Indonesian history. And as he entered the last 18 months of his second and final five-year term in office Monday, he was set to become the country’s first-ever lame-duck leader.

Ferenc Isza/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is the first directly elected president in Indonesian history.

But in the uncertain political atmosphere of Indonesia’s young democracy, it has not quite worked out that way. Mr. Yudhoyono, by all appearances, was thrust back into the center of the country’s political ring over the weekend, as he was named chairman of his governing Democratic Party by proclamation during an emergency congress in Bali, to replace a party leader felled by a corruption scandal.

Party members and analysts said Mr. Yudhoyono, a retired army general under whose leadership Indonesia has continued its steady democratic transition — and today boasted one of the world’s best-performing economies — had little choice but to take the reins officially. Beset by multiple corruption scandals, the party was also facing a mid-April deadline to register candidates for legislative elections next year and would not have been able to do so without a chairman in place.

“President Yudhoyono doesn’t want to be chairman of the party, but it’s an emergency situation,” said Ramadhan Pohan, an Indonesian lawmaker and deputy secretary general of the Democratic Party. “No one else can step in and do this. There is no Democratic Party without Yudhoyono.”

That in itself may be a bigger problem. While Mr. Yudhoyono may merely be trying to salvage the political party that he and his wife founded in 2001, some analysts say he is only further cementing the tendency toward political cults of personality, which is the main downside to Indonesia’s democratic era after decades of military-backed authoritarian rule. Each of Indonesia’s main political parties is centered on one key leader, leaving little room for internal democratic debate, party platforms or even ideologies, beyond being “nationalist” or Islamic-based.

“They invest in figures, not the mechanisms of modern political parties, to resolve problems,” said Philips J. Vermonte, head of the politics and international relations department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta. Mr. Vermonte said that while it made sense for Mr. Yudhoyono to take over the chairmanship of his party, “I don’t think it’s ideal for the political system because it depends again on one popular figure.”

The party congress on Bali, which was televised live nationally, was held to replace Anas Urbaningrum, who resigned as the Democrats’ chairman in February after the independent Corruption Eradication Commission named him as a suspect in a huge scandal involving the construction of a national sports complex in West Java Province.

Divided by infighting ahead of the one-day congress Saturday, with Mr. Urbaningrum’s supporters nearly mutinous and other party leaders plotting to become chairman and, presumably, improve their chances to become the Democrats’ presidential candidate in July 2014, party leaders opted to bypass an open vote and put forward only Mr. Yudhoyono’s name.

Party leaders said the president had grudgingly accepted but said he would not serve beyond the election cycle next year. He also appointed an executive chairman to handle his party’s day-to-day business.

A string of corruption scandals dating back to 2010 has seen the Democrats’ poll numbers drop into the single digits and has left the party without a viable presidential candidate from among its senior leadership, as Mr. Yudhoyono is barred by the Constitution from seeking a third term. Mr. Yudhoyono’s task is not only to turn around his party’s fortunes, but to protect his own legacy as a president who won two terms on a policy of zero tolerance for corruption in one of Asia’s most graft-ridden nations.

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