Jakarta - After nearly 10 years, democracy in Indonesia has not produced quality leadership at central and regional levels, a seminar concluded Wednesday.
"Quality political parties, capable of producing quality leaders, are essential to create a good democracy in a country," State Secretary Hatta Radjasa announced at a seminar presented and attended by leading political figures.
Hatta said leaders did not necessarily have to be members of a party.
"Individual leaders who are not from parties would enrich and challenge Indonesia`s political leadership," he said.
After 32 years under an authoritarian regime, Indonesia became a democracy in 1998. Since that time the new democracy has seen four presidents and a grueling fight between dozens of political parties.
Hatta said a political candidate`s recruitment and training would be valuable to help political parties build reliable and quality leadership.
He said since Indonesia had adopted democracy into its national political system, it had been challenged to design the "software" and "hardware" of a democracy.
"The culture of society-based democracy is the most suitable form of democracy for this country," said Hatta, who is a National Mandate Party executive.
Hatta said democracy is not only a tool to reach power, but also is a set of humanitarian values held by society, which should be able to drive change.
Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) secretary general Pramono Anung said political parties had relied too much on their political figures` charisma alone. While recruitment of party members remains ineffective, parties will continue to fall short of finding quality leaders and the much-needed circulation of party elite will be absent, Anung said.
To ensure political stability, Pramono suggested that Indonesia limits the number of political parties eligible to contest in elections.
"It`s not only about reducing the number of political parties, but also about ideology," Anas said.
Indonesian politics has been marked by two mainstream ideologies; nationalism and Islam. Muslim-based parties, however, have never won enough votes to control the parliament. Despite the fact that Muslims make up the majority of Indonesia`s population those parties have steadily lost public support in elections. Nationalist-oriented parties meanwhile have managed to woo support from Muslim voters.
Anas Urbaningrum, deputy chairman of the Democrat Party, said recruitment of leaders would require improvement of the election system.
Source: www.thejakartapost.com (26 Januari 2008)
