3 - REFORMING THE CONSTITUTION AND THE ELECTORAL SYSTEM

Summary

The fall of an authoritarian regime provides the opportunity for democratic reformers to establish democratic institutions. Democratization usually requires the drastic amendment of the old constitution or the drafting of a completely new one while existing electoral laws need to be overhauled. Post-authoritarian regimes, however, are not always dominated by democratic reformers. The implementation of political reforms is not necessarily smooth and must often be adjusted to suit interests surviving from the authoritarian regime and new political forces emerging in the wake of its collapse. In Indonesia's case, as described in Chapter 2, the new Habibie government consisted mainly of carry-overs from the Soeharto regime, while the legislature produced by the “managed” 1997 general election continued to be dominated by Soeharto's Golkar party and its military allies. The path to democratic reform, therefore, was by no means clear, yet it was this government and legislature that initiated the process of democratic transformation leading to Indonesia's first free elections in more than four decades. The 1999 elections, however, did not produce strong and cohesive government but institutions fragmented between competing parties and factions. Reflecting a common view, the Australian legal scholar, Tim Lindsey, noted that “Few believed that the current MPR, an institution with a justified reputation for party political in-fighting and horse trading, could produce the majority necessary to resolve debates that have divided Indonesia since independence in 1945.”

These institutions, nevertheless, embarked on further reform which resulted in a fundamental revision of the constitution and further development of the electoral laws. The British political scientist, Andrew Ellis, concluded that “the MPR made decisions of substance, the most important of which being the move to a separation of powers principle and a conventional presidential system”. This chapter seeks to explain how substantial reforms were adopted by unpromising institutions. By 2004, when the second post-authoritarian elections were held, most of the arguments between rival parties and factions over the provisions of the constitution and the electoral laws had given way to a consensus that was broadly acceptable to most major groups and conformed to recognized democratic standards. This did not mean, however, that all challenges had been overcome, but the remaining problems lay less in the institutional framework than in the performance of many of the politicians democratically elected to the reformed institutions.