Indonesia’s Regional Representative Assembly: Democracy, Representation and the Regions A report on the Dewan Perwakilan Daerah (DPD) Stephen Sherlock Centre for Democratic Institutions July 2005 About the Author ............................................................................................................ 3 About the Centre for Democratic Institutions .......................................................... 3 Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 4 What is the DPD?............................................................................................................ 6 Constitutional role and powers....................................................................................... 6 An advisory body not an upper house ............................................................................ 8 An assembly for the regions.......................................................................................... 10 Structure of the DPD ................................................................................................... 10 Leadership of the DPD.......................................................................................... 11 Ad‐Hoc Committees.............................................................................................. 12 Steering Committee ............................................................................................... 12 Legislation Committee .......................................................................................... 13 House Affairs Committee ..................................................................................... 14 Committee for Inter‐institutional Cooperation ................................................. 14 Ethics Council......................................................................................................... 14 Secretariat of the DPD.................................................................................................. 15 Who are the Members of the DPD?.............................................................................. 16 Paths to power............................................................................................................... 19 Social and Occupational Backgrounds of DPD Members............................................ 20 The DPD electoral system: how representative?.......................................................... 24 Representation and “politics”....................................................................................... 27 Representation in the SNTV electoral system .............................................................. 29 Work in progress?: The first year of the DPD.............................................................. 31 Making a non‐party assembly work ............................................................................. 36 Conclusion......................................................................................................................39 Appendix: DPD Members, Provinces & Votes ....................................................... 44 2 About the Author Stephen Sherlock is an Associate at the Centre for Democratic Institutions and a political analyst and development consultant, specialising in Indonesia and South and Southeast Asia. He worked for eleven years as an analyst and policy adviser on Indonesia and East Timor in the Australian Parliament and now divides his time between Indonesia and Australia, as a consultant on governance and political change. Email: [email protected] About the Centre for Democratic Institutions CDI was established in 1998 to assist in the development and strengthening of democratic institutions in developing countries. Its mission is to harness Australian and international best practice in support of developing countries’ needs for democratic governance. CDI’s work combines technical assistance and capacity building programs, networking, and interpersonal and knowledge exchange, including the dissemination of CDI’s original research on democracy and its institutions. Its focus countries comprise Indonesia and Timor‐Leste in South East Asia and Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu in Melanesia. Centre for Democratic Institutions Research School of Social Sciences Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 Australia Phone: 61 2 6125 3197 Fax: 61 2 6125 9726 Email: [email protected] Website: www.cdi.anu.edu.au 3 Introduction The Indonesian state has been in a process of transformation since the fall of the Suharto regime in 1998. The first wave of reform under the unelected Habibie government of 1998‐99 saw the removal of restrictions on civil rights such as freedom of speech, association and assembly, the creation of a range of new political parties and organisations and the country’s first democratic election in over 40 years in June 1999. The movement of the parliament (DPR1) back into the centre stage of political life and the subsequent election of a new President then led to a series of constitutional reforms that were completed in 2003. The constitutional reforms strengthened the powers of the parliament and eliminated most of the powers of the previously powerful quasi‐legislative body, the MPR.2 The power to elect the President was removed from the MPR and was placed in the hands of the people through direct election. In addition, a new assembly, the Dewan Perwakilan Daerah (DPD) or Regional Representative Assembly/Council was created with the intention of increasing the role of the regions in making laws. As a new representative assembly with some quite unusual features, the DPD has not yet been analysed in any detail. This study provides an introduction to the structure and operation of the DPD and examines some of the key issues that have emerged in discussion and debate about the DPD in its early formative period. The study considers certain questions about whether the DPD is as representative of the regions as its proponents would claim, whether it has provided a new entry point for regional aspirations into political and policy debate and what problems the DPD faces in attempting to define a role for itself in the future of Indonesian politics. The DPD grew out of the view that Indonesia’s regions should have a greater role in policy‐making at the national level and that that role should be played by a second chamber of the central parliament. The argument developed in this paper, however, is that the DPD has not yet shown that it can actually provide significant input into the national legislative process or act as voice of the regions. The major problem is that the DPD is only an advisory body and its areas of responsibility are quite limited and, as yet, ill‐defined. Efforts by DPD Members to increase their powers have become a major preoccupation for the assembly and have arguably diverted its attention from the more immediate task 1 Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat (DPR) – People’s Representative Assembly. 2 Majelis Permusyawaratan Rakyat (MPR) – People’s Consultative Council. 4 of demonstrating that it can effectively use the powers it already has. Critical issues such as the definition and extent of the DPD’s powers and how the assembly should interact with the legislative deliberations of the DPR have not been seriously considered and have been dealt with on an ad‐hoc basis. The result is that the DPD’s only notable achievement to date is being what its leaders have called an “ombudsman” or a “post office”, gathering grievances and petitions amongst governmental and private institutions and individuals in the regions. The structure of the DPD is modelled on the DPR, but it is questionable whether the internal organisational arrangements that are appropriate for the DPR are actually the best for a very different body like the DPD. DPD Members are elected as individuals and are not permitted to be sponsored by political parties. Despite concerns that political parties would attempt to take over and control the DPD through indirect means, it appears that there has not been any major organised forays into the assembly by the parties. A possible exception is that of Golkar, whose members and ex‐members are prominent in the DPD. This does not seem, however, to be the result of a concerted effort by the party, but instead is a reflection of the fact that the majority of people with governmental and political experience in Indonesia have had some connections with Golkar in the past. The DPD has become an alternative path through which former political operators from the New Order have been able to recreate themselves in the democratic environment and protect themselves from challenges to their influential status. Apart from people with a background in the New Order, the DPD is also composed of other identifiable kinds of individuals. The large number of businesspeople elected to the DPD suggests that the assembly has become a means by which independently wealthy people can win a national office without depending on the support of political party. There is also a clearly identifiable pattern for local figures with traditional sources of status and influence to win a place in the DPD. Regions with strong localised support for religious organisations like NU, Muhammadiyah or the churches have tended to elect individuals with these backgrounds to the DPD. The election results also show that it is a major advantage to be known in