Page 165 - SCANDAL AND DEMOCRACY

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activist mobilization via social media generated sufficient public pressure to induce
politicians to reverse course.
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Commentators who wrote on these attacks on the KPK tended to be pessimistic,
seeing in them evidence of the agency’s vulnerability to eventual co-optation or col-
lapse. Yet each time, mainstream and social media mobilized civil society interven-
tion, and the KPK survived as the institutionalization of reformasi ’s original demands
for transparency. Backed by the public’s support, even protectiveness, KPK investi-
gators persevered, angering targets and inviting more attacks. Yet in mid-2016, the
agency announced plans to expand its jurisdiction to the private sector. In December
2016, President Jokowi finally declared his “full support” for strengthening the KPK at
a national conference on eradicating corruption. Nonetheless, parliament launched
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another of its attempts to curb the KPK with an inquiry into its purported overreach,
sparking “public condemnation” so strong that even Prabowo’s party was forced to
withdraw its support for the investigation.
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Weathering lawsuits and other threats, news outlets also continued to report
KPK findings supplemented by their own investigations, setting in motion scan-
dals that exposed corruption and often led to policy change, resignations, or prison.
By mid-2017, the KPK was again investigating Speaker Novanto, this time for his
involvement in a $244-million identity card scam called eKTPgate. After months
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of dramatic developments in the case, the Jakarta Corruption Court found Novanto
guilty of complicity in the scam and sentenced him to fifteen years’ imprisonment
with a subsequent five-year ban on any political activity—a stinging rebuke for a man
who personified the power and corruption that the Golkar party had acquired during
the three decades of the Suharto dictatorship. The former DPR Speaker and Golkar
chair now sits in prison in the Sukamiskin Penitentiary in Bandung.
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In the aftermath of the Speaker’s spectacular downfall, members of the DPR
approved a new bill (RUU KUHP) further curtailing the KPK’s powers, the latest
and perhaps the most strategic attempt to curb the autonomy of this independent
investigative body. Whatever fate might await the KPK, both the eKTP scandal and
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the attacks on the commission were manifestations of the “agitation, change, and
danger” that are, as Alexis de Tocqueville once said, inescapable in maintaining demo-
cratic freedom. The outcomes of such contests are ephemeral, but conflict itself is a
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constant.

The Process of Democratic Consolidation
Throughout Indonesia’s twenty-year transition, synergies between public mobi-
lization and self-serving political maneuvering helped ward off authoritarian rever-
sal. Although each crisis seemed intensely individual in the historical moment, these
recurring battles reveal an emerging pattern that lends them greater signifi cance, rep-

resented in figure 1 .
At the outset of each incident, media players, such as journalists and their respec-
tive news outlets, reported intraelite conflict and revelations of wrongdoing, some-
times triggering scandals, and then provided platforms for critical debate and political
attack. In any transition, this sequence, even those elements that may seem detrimen-
tal to healthy public discourse, can perform numerous functions that facilitate contin-
ued democratic consolidation, or at a minimum, slow a slide into pseudodemocracy
or electoral authoritarianism. By increasing information available to the public, the
media can induce civil society mobilization. When citizens receive new information,