Page 157 - SCANDAL AND DEMOCRACY

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disfavor and mediate score settling not as a neutral conduit but as an adjunct of execu-
tive power.
5
In the less centralized politics of the post-Suharto period, autonomous elite rival-
ries, shaped by media exposure and civil-society response, increasingly decided who
would rise and fall. As mediators of intraelite conflict, the nation’s media, now more
detached from state power, acted both independently and as vehicles for rival politi-
cal forces, adding a much higher degree of uncertainty to competitions over power,
patronage, and public opinion.
This loss of executive control over the outcomes of intraelite conflict was most
evident in the succession of scandals from Baligate to Banpresgate. The former rul-
ing party, Golkar, used media-driven scandals to impeach Abdurrahman Wahid.
Then difficulties in containing scandal and conflict began to impact the same actors
who had helped orchestrate Wahid’s fall, particularly Akbar Tanjung, Golkar’s chair
and best hope for retaking the presidency in 2004. Throughout these controversies,
there was also ample evidence that major players from all the political parties were
trying, as Tanjung had, to rig the system, colluding to cancel out their respective
political sins and maintain their current positions. But collusion and cover-up became
more difficult as the media, driven by market competition and partisan maneuvering,
began to impose greater transparency.
As revelations set off cycles of revenge, scandals began fracturing elite pacts and
taking on a life of their own in ways impossible under the New Order. Each time such
arrangements broke down, Indonesian political life became more fluid and more open,
moving democratization forward. Most critically, the media—now greatly expanded,
more amorphous, and highly competitive—could no longer simply broker cynical
deals for elite benefactors. As warring factions used the media to maneuver against
each other and as news outlets weighed in independently, media exposés and con-
tentious public discourse began to play a central yet unpredictable role in mediating
these proliferating intraelite conflicts. It was the playing out of political conflict via
the media, more than any other change associated with the transition, that allowed
Indonesia to move away from authoritarian stasis and closer to the institutionalized
uncertainty of democracy.

A Decade of Consolidation, 2004–2014
In the decade of democratic consolidation after 2004, the fi tful struggle between
a prodemocracy coalition comprising elements of civil society and certain members
of the media, on the one hand, and an ad hoc alliance of actors favoring reversal, on
the other, culminated in the 2014 presidential campaign, which became, in eff ect, a
showdown between these contending forces. During the same decade, the overall
trend toward transparency and open political contests continued, reinforced by con-
stitutional amendments passed in the first years of reformasi that strengthened par-

liament, removed nonelective legislative seats, established new protections for civil
liberties, and introduced direct elections for president and vice president. Through
these changes, reformers revised Indonesia’s constitution to invest citizens with the
right to freedom of speech and a free media, and to draw clearer divisions among gov-
ernment institutions, imposing checks on their jurisdictions and powers.
Each of these developments also advanced democratic consolidation by making it
more difficult to game the system and block the circulation of leadership. Contests for
the executive became more transparent and competitive as direct elections and new