Page 175 - SCANDAL AND DEMOCRACY

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authoritarian rule, these tendencies are manifest in the pressures for a return to the
old order and continued control sought by oligarchs over material resources and polit-
ical power. In the absence of countervailing forces, such pressures would likely lead
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to a reconstitution of the collusion and corruption of the original regimes. For both
established and emerging democracies, there often needs to be some force, apart from
the formalities of court and constitution, to check these trends and strengthen trans-
parency and open contestation. In most cases, effective checks come from some com-
bination of intraelite competition, civil society mobilization, and media investigation.
Amid an untidy spectacle of electoral fraud, political compromise, or parliamen-
tary paralysis, members of the media, whether intentionally or inadvertently, can
play a pivotal role in breaking up collusive pacts and restoring the fluidity of uncer-
tain outcomes so fundamental to democratic contestation. In Indonesia, oligarchic
elites continue to dominate the nation’s economy. Following this trend, media own-
ership has grown increasingly concentrated in the post-Suharto era, a development
accelerated by digitalization. Within this new landscape, oligarchs, taking advan-
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tage of the media’s freedom, have only grown more powerful. But ownership is still
not monolithic. Independent players wield influence, and oligarchs use the media
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not only to protect their interests but also to compete with rivals, thereby opening
up political space that allows democratic consolidation to continue. As they pursue
multiple agendas within this space, the media remind us once again that democracy is
not a fixed and final product but rather a process of endless contestation. The system
may seem volatile, the media spectacles dispiriting, and the future perpetually uncer-
tain. But this ungainly combination can check collusion and promote the circulation
of leadership, the essential attribute of any democracy.
Without discounting the importance of economic and judicial reforms, the most
complex and contradictory aspect of change in Indonesia, from the perspective of this
analysis, has been in the political arena, with a succession of corruption scandals that
have exposed endemic graft among the nation’s highest officials. By airing these scan-
dals and imposing transparency on intraelite conflict, the media have played a central
role in dissolving the authoritarian stasis fortified for over forty years by corruption
and collusive pacts. Played out in the public sphere in these decades of transition,
such contestation has rejuvenated the pluralist competition that is the core of democ-
ratization in Indonesia and, arguably, elsewhere around the globe.