Page 155 - SCANDAL AND DEMOCRACY

140 Chapter 8

Dynamics of Indonesia’s Democratization
While press freedom is commonly used as a barometer for democracy’s health,
Indonesia’s experience demonstrates the need to understand how media outlets per-
form that freedom, facilitate its exercise for others, and thereby become key actors
in sustaining democracy’s robustness over time. This assertion raises two questions:
How did Indonesia’s media, in serving their own interests and those of others, impact
the country’s democratic transition? And how does Indonesia illuminate the possi-
bilities of comparable change elsewhere around the globe?
Applying Adam Przeworski’s concept of “uncertainty”—the inherent unpredict-
ability of fair and open contestation—to the problem of democratic consolidation
indicates that a free and competitive media can serve as a main vehicle in breaking up
elite collusion. More specifically, the media’s regular showcasing of scandal can be a
key driver in promoting the transparency and the circulation of elites that are central
to a functioning democracy. Focusing on this undertheorized role of the media pro-
vides insight into why some democratic transitions succeed, leading to consolidation,
while others either fail or settle into a chronic state of pseudodemocracy.
During the first stage of Indonesia’s transition, members of the mainstream and
underground media facilitated a historic political opening and challenged the legiti-
macy of the Suharto regime. But it was in the immediate postauthoritarian period,
from 1999 to 2014, that these actors made their most critical contribution through
the more difficult process of consolidation. The Indonesian case thus sheds light on
the media’s centrality in furthering what Przeworski calls the institutionalization of
uncertainty—that is, the process by which the unpredictability of democratic contes-
tation comes to be tolerated and ultimately defended, functioning as both a force for
consolidation and a key deterrent to reversal.
2
Though Indonesia’s transition began on a hopeful note after Suharto’s forced
resignation in 1998, its prospects for consolidation were tenuous from the outset,
threatened by numerous factors that left the country vulnerable to reversal. Most
of the conditions that had sustained authoritarianism under Suharto’s thirty-two-
year reign—judicial corruption, electoral fraud, and a politicized military—remained
in place. Executive abuse of discretionary powers, moreover, persisted long after his
fall, perpetuated via practices that helped players manipulate the outcomes of public
contests.
If such practices persist in any transition, circumstances will be ripe for a return
to authoritarian rule or, at best, the emergence of a hybrid regime akin to the scholar
Larry Diamond’s “pseudodemocracy,” where formal democratic institutions, such as
multiparty elections, mask “the reality of authoritarian domination.” Under Suharto,
3
Indonesia had long cultivated its own “Pancasila democracy,” since recognized as
thinly veiled authoritarianism. The veil that allowed the regime to call the country
democratic was its routine exercise of multiparty elections that ended predictably in
victory for Suharto’s Golkar party.
4
With this history in mind, Indonesians pushed forward with electoral reform in
1998–99 to foster genuine competition among the new array of political parties. When
the country held its first postauthoritarian elections in June 1999, the unprecedented
win by an underdog opposition party, PDIP, appeared to be a significant achievement.
But as subsequent events showed, elections—even those that bring new leadership—
are not necessarily sufficient to consolidate democracy. Despite the fact that observers
declared these parliamentary elections “free and fair,” their results were as expertly