“Retreat from Democracy?

”
by Tim Lindsey

Andrew MacIntyre

T
im Lindsey’s excellent essay, “Retreat from Democracy?” (Australian
Foreign Affairs 3, July 2018), lays out clearly just how much the political
climate in Indonesia has changed over the past decade. The optimism
about extending democratic reform is gone, as is the hope that sys-
temic corruption might be wound back, and there is an increasingly
conservative mood as religious chauvinism is fanned by Islamist hardliners.
Such changes are a cause for genuine concern. But the picture is not all
bleak. Perspective and expectations make a difference. Compared to Indonesia’s
recent past, the picture is depressing. But compared to the experiences of other
young democracies, it is less so.
Democratic consolidation is rarely smooth. Young democracies typically
undergo duress due to intense action and counteraction as reform is negotiated,
to say nothing of the everyday political battles among competing economic,
social and other sectional interests. Indonesia is no exception.
Earlier this year the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index reg-
istered a sharp fall in the quality of Indonesia’s democracy. Professor Edward
Aspinall has documented the various areas in which reform in Indonesia has
stalled or been eroded. While it is quite possible that Indonesian democracy
could continue to deteriorate, at this stage the fundamental commitment
to free elections and peaceful transitions between governments is holding.
Political preferences have shifted in a conservative direction and intolerance
has increased, but electoral democracy itself has endured.
The shift to the right has become starkly apparent in the last few years.
President Joko Widodo’s shock announcement in August that conservative

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Muslim cleric Ma’ruf Amin would be his running mate in the April 2019 election
is the most recent political tidemark. The crackdown on LGBTI communities
and oft-­heard anecdotes about Christians having to keep an ever lower profile,
or of progressive Muslims being ostracised from their social media networks,
are all manifestations of the new moral and social conservatism.
For anyone inside or outside Indonesia hoping for a strengthening of its
democracy, this shift is troubling. What effect might it have on relations between
Australia and Indonesia?
Any conceivable government in Indonesia will be a coalition of parties,
and as such an amalgam of interests. So it is not clear that, for example, the rise
of conservative Muslim groups will have a significant effect on economic pol-
icy beyond adding some extra weight to existing nationalistic arguments. But
without doubt, the swing to the right means Australia should expect a more
conservative stance from Indonesia on social issues. This will present challeng-
ing questions around values for a range of Australian organisations engaging in
Indonesia – including, notably, universities. The treatment of religious minori-
ties and LGBTI communities are conspicuous examples of Indonesia’s differing
values. Issues around cultural identity and rights for minority groups are others.
In terms of strategy and defence, the new conservatism in Indonesia may,
paradoxically, foster greater alignment between Canberra and Jakarta. The con-
servative Muslim political forces that drive intolerance of minorities advocate
an equally strong distrust of China. This arises variously from longstanding anti­
pathy towards Indonesians of Chinese descent, opposition to the way Beijing
treats Chinese Muslims in Xinjiang, and a nationalistic reaction to the surge of
Chinese foreign investment in Indonesia. Indonesia’s leaders and especially its
military establishment have long been wary of China. The rising influence of
conservative Muslim forces is likely to add a significantly stronger political base
to this pre-­existing policy orientation.
Ten years ago, when Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was at the height of his
presidency, and the acute instability of the early post-­Suharto years had been
overcome, Douglas Ramage and I wrote a report, “Seeing Indonesia as a Normal
Country” (as Lindsey notes in his essay). We highlighted how much things had
improved, but argued that the bilateral relationship under Yudhoyono was as

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good as it was going to get for the foreseeable future. We did not forecast the
extent of Indonesia’s swing to the right, but the core instinct was sound.
For Australian foreign policy interests, the single most important vari-
able is Indonesia’s continued economic progress. This is the underpinning of
its social and political fortunes. And here the prospects are hopeful. Although
Indonesia seems unable to emulate the growth rates of the best-­performing
Asian economies, sustained growth around 5 per cent annually is still good. If,
as most analysts project, this can be maintained, the prospects for democracy
enduring remain alive.
And in the longer term, while Indonesia has recently become less inclu-
sive and less tolerant of diversity, there are still grounds for believing in what
Ramage and I referred to as its “fundamental pluralism”. This was a reference to
the long arc of the social history of the archipelago we know today as Indonesia
and the effect of its geographical and cultural diversity. Yes, we must be con-
cerned with Indonesia’s current realities, but its underlying diversity will not
suddenly disappear, and can be counted on to assert itself over time.

Andrew MacIntyre, deputy vice-­chancellor of global development and

director of the Australian APEC Study Centre at RMIT University

128 AUSTRALIAN FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Amalinda Savirani

T
im Lindsey’s essay presents a bleak future for Indonesian liberal
democracy, which he claims is in “retreat”, with a possible return to
what has been labelled the “Neo New Order”. He argues that there is
growing dissent among the dominant Muslim groups in Indonesia,
and predicts a fading away of the Indonesian concept of “Bhinneka
Tunggal Ika” – unity in diversity, an ideology that has held sway in this country
since it was born, two years after Reformasi. He argues that, ironically, growing
intolerance is facilitated by the democratic principles of freedom of speech and
freedom of association.
While not denying any of the points Lindsey makes, I see his article as a
simplification of the current situation in Indonesia, in three key ways.
First, his analysis tends to be Jakarta-­centric. While the political reality
in Jakarta is indeed too important to ignore, the reality outside Jakarta chal-
lenges a monolithic perspective, according to which there is a single movement
to defend conservative Islam, with Islamic Defenders Front (Front Pembela
Islam, FPI) and a loose coalition of Islamist groups from National Movement
to Guard the MUI Fatwa (GNPF-­MUI) as its main supporters. Second, Lindsey
tends to ignore the connection between the rise of Islamic conservatism and
economic development – namely, the increase in economic inequality, an
important factor when analysing Jakarta’s urban poor. Third, while Muslim
citizens have been among the supporters of this movement, there is also a civil-­
society movement that has largely ignored identity politics, and since the 2017
Jakarta election has focused on campaigning for policies regarding housing and
land security.

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 Let me unpack these three points. First, to many analysts and political pun-
dits, what happens in Java, and specifically Jakarta, seems to represent Indonesia
as a whole. This is understandable, as almost 60 per cent of the Indonesian pop-
ulation lives in Java. This matters a lot electorally. In addition, all of the largest
media organisations in Indonesia are based in Jakarta. The island and its capital
have always been key to understanding Indonesia. But to focus solely on Jakarta
is misleading, as Indonesia is large and diverse, and its political realities change
outside Jakarta. For example, the leading coalition for the 2019 presidential
election – Partai Demokrasi Indonesia Perjuangan (PDIP), the Indonesian
Democratic Party of Struggle, and Gerakan Indonesia Raya (Gerindra), which
competed fiercely in the 2014 presidential election and in Jakarta and West Java
in the last gubernatorial election, was in coalition during the 2018 local elections
in forty-eight regions. Another example is FPI, which is popular in Jakarta only
but not in the regions. They are even banned in Pontianak of West Kalimantan.
At the individual level, Greg Fealy’s reportage during the mass rally in Jakarta
known as “Defending Islam Action III” shows that not all of the participants
who attended were supporters of the same agenda.
Second, there has been a sharp increase in inequality in Indonesia, which
also contributes to this recent surge of Islamic conservatism. Although data
from the Indonesian Central Bureau of Statistics (Badan Pusat Statistik) has
shown a decrease in the national poverty rate from 12.5 per cent in 2011 to
9.8 per cent in 2018 – a figure claimed to be the lowest in this country’s history –
increased inequality is a new feature of Indonesia’s economy: the total wealth of
the four richest Indonesians is equal to that of the poorest 100 million. The gov-
ernment’s infrastructure plan allocates more than US$500 billion or IDR6000
trillion (almost 430 times the budget of the poorest province of Papua) to infra-
structure projects to help alleviate this wealth divide, but the plan has not yet
had any substantial effect.
The inequality is most visible in the urban context, such as in Jakarta. The
city’s policies towards the poor have been harsh, with thousands of poor fami-
lies forcibly removed from slums in a wave of evictions in 2015 and 2016. Shortly
after these evictions, FPI offered shelter and basic amenities to the victims. No
other political parties came to help. Ian Wilson’s research in Jakarta shows that

130 AUSTRALIAN FOREIGN AFFAIRS

rising inequality contributes to rising conservatism among the urban poor who
are Muslim.
Third, due to this stark inequality, the majority of the urban poor supported
a candidate during the 2017 Jakarta gubernatorial election who had no plans
for evictions. This community has been the victim of evictions and so priori-
tises securing housing rights over promoting Islamic identity on their political
agenda, despite being Muslim. This movement among the urban poor demanding
improved access to housing forms part of a loose coalition with non-­government
organisations, architects and academics, and this coalition operates beyond
economic and class divisions. They have worked collaboratively beyond their
various cultural and religious identities. Although their influence remains lim-
ited among Indonesian civil movements, this effort shows how identity politics
can matter less than pragmatic politics.
Analysis of rising Islamic conservatism in Indonesia should take into
account the existing economic divide and various social movements in Jakarta,
as well as a view from the local level, beyond Jakarta. This approach would offer
a more nuanced and complete understanding of the “retreat from democracy”.
While Lindsey makes many valid points in his article, to suggest there is one sin-
gular pattern across Indonesian politics, and to predict the rise of and return to
the New Order, denies the heterogeneity of Indonesian politics.

Amalinda Savirani, lecturer in the Faculty of Social and

Political Sciences at Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia

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Ihsan Ali-­Fauzi

A
s a researcher working on religious conflicts in contemporary
Indonesia, I did not expect to read a brighter portrait of democ-
racy in the country than that presented in Tim Lindsey’s “Retreat
from Democracy?”.
Following the publication of the essay, the current Indonesian
president, Joko Widodo (Jokowi), announced Ma’ruf Amin as his running mate
for the 2019 presidential election – a development that reinforces Lindsey’s
argument. Jokowi’s decision, in opposition to the demand from civil society
groups who preferred Mahfud MD, a progressive lecturer and the former chief
justice of the Constitutional Court, was a blow to the ideals of civil liberty. A con-
servative cleric and the head of Nahdlatul Ulama, the country’s largest Muslim
organisation, Ma’ruf is the most important figure behind almost all of Lindsey’s
alleged instances of rising Islamic conservatism. He is the head of the Indonesian
Council of Islamic Clerics, which in 2006 issued a fatwa against secularism,
pluralism and liberalism. In early 2017, Ma’ruf testified in the blasphemy trial
against Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, or Ahok, a Christian-­Chinese governor of the
Indonesian capital who was seeking re-­election.
Any attempt to make Indonesia a more liberal country is far from easy – but
there are three main reasons for this that Lindsey doesn’t discuss.
The first concerns the ideological framework of Indonesia. When it was
born, Indonesia was not a religious nation, but it was built mostly by religious
nationalists who demanded that religion should play a major role in public
life. This is why we find a great paradox in our approach to managing religion:
while our constitution guarantees religious freedom, we also have an official

132 AUSTRALIAN FOREIGN AFFAIRS

blasphemy law that in practice allows the state to interfere in citizens’ pro­
clamations about religions. Bear in mind that Mahfud MD, when serving as chief
justice, ruled to uphold the blasphemy law in 2010.
Secondly, Reformasi was not achieved in 1998 through the overthrow of the
New Order; nor was it a transition led by members of the old regime. In contrast,
it was the result of joint action by the old authoritarian regime and opposition
groups. No wonder, as Lindsey suggests, many of the economic and political
actors from the previous period, some of whom were among the inner circle of the
former President Suharto, continue to play a decisive role in the Reformasi era.
Thirdly, our experience with democracy has been brief since indepen-
dence. Sadly, in the name of nation-­building, and on a pretext of preserving
Pancasila as our common denominator, Indonesia’s governments have time and
again responded to the expression of political Islam with repression. So, yes, our
Islam has been widely known as “smiling Islam”, but it may be a dishonest smile
and an artificial one.
Under Reformasi, these three elements combine to undermine moves
toward a more liberal state by allowing grey areas within the nascent regained
democracy to be manipulated. Legal institutions or regulations are used by
illiberal elements among Indonesia’s elite to play the “Islamic card” to serve
their own interests. In the case against Ahok, in which Amin played a signifi-
cant part, the right to protest was manipulated into hate speech, thanks to the
existence of the blasphemy law: Ahok’s speech was fabricated, prompting a large
portion of the Muslim community to believe he was insulting Islam; a religious
edict was released by MUI to sanction the speech as an insult; a movement was
set up to defend the edict, including a series of protests and demonstrations; and
finally, although a court was set up to judge if the defendant was guilty, the pro-
test outside the courtroom strongly insisted that he was indeed insulting Islam.
Worsening the situation, exclusionary politics are rising worldwide.
Reports about the treatment of Muslim immigrants in the United States and
Europe – and the tragedy faced by Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar – only fuel
Islamic conservatism here.
Indonesia’s move towards a more inclusionary democracy may require cre-
ative destruction: perhaps the Jokowi–Amin pairing will be a blessing in disguise

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and will create an urgent push to liberalise. This may be the most Indonesians
can hope for. While Jokowi’s choice of Ma’ruf as vice-­president would please the
conservative Muslim constituency, and hence minimise the presence of iden-
tity politics during the electoral campaign, we may also see the negative effects
of illiberal democracy heightened under Amin. Isn’t it during dark times that
we begin to see?

Ihsan Ali-­Fauzi, founder and director of the Center for the Study
of Religion and Democracy at Paramadina University in Jakarta

134 AUSTRALIAN FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Tim Lindsey responds

I
am grateful to Andrew MacIntyre, Amalinda Savirani and Ihsan Ali-­Fauzi
for their thoughtful comments on my essay. Ali-­Fauzi and I seem to be
in heated agreement, and there is not much in MacIntyre’s or Savirani’s
remarks with which I would disagree.
However, I would question MacIntyre’s optimism that Indonesia’s
“underlying diversity will not suddenly disappear, and can be counted on to
assert itself over time”. The issue is not Indonesia’s remarkable ethnic, religious
and cultural diversity – that is a given. MacIntyre is correct that it will not dis-
appear, but it is precisely its existence that makes the intolerant majoritarian
position of conservative Islamists so concerning. The issue is whether the polit-
ical system will reflect and respect diversity and allow it to assert itself.
There is no shortage of plural societies in which minorities are excluded
from power by illiberal governments, and deprived of a voice and rights, over long
periods. Myanmar is just one obvious example in Indonesia’s region (one that
drew direct inspiration from Suharto’s New Order model); Malaysia has been
another. In fact, the political system in Indonesia has most often been illiberal,
and often authoritarian, giving much rhetorical attention to diversity but little
in practice. This was the prevailing model for most of modern Indonesian his-
tory: from 1945 to 1949 (during the revolution), and from 1957 (when Sukarno
declared a state of war and siege) to 1998 (when the New Order fell). Maybe it
is that which can be counted on to assert itself over time? Certainly, the current
decline in liberal democracy, which none of my correspondents dispute, suggests
that Indonesia is moving towards an illiberal form of procedural democracy, and,
for the first time, one in which conservative Islamism has a privileged position.

CORRESPONDENCE 135
 I do not mean to suggest that there is any inherent cultural predisposi-
tion towards authoritarianism in Indonesia. The fervour with which Reformasi
dismantled the New Order and the sophistication of the aspirational liberal
democratic model constructed between 1998 and 2002 are surely evidence
against that. However, I do believe that an illiberal and more authoritarian mode
of government suits the elites who control politics in Indonesia. They mastered
its dark arts during the decades of Suharto’s rule and expect to prosper under a
similar model. They are not troubled by merely procedural democracy because
their wealth and Indonesia’s grossly inadequate political party and campaign
financing laws mean they can be confident of winning enough elections to main-
tain influence.
An illiberal and more authoritarian mode of government also suits the
intolerant hardliner Indonesian Muslim Ulama Council (MUI), who have used
the “conservative turn” to move into the apparatus of government. We should
not forget that MUI was declared by Presidential Regulation 154 of 2014 to
be the “government’s partner” in Islamic affairs, its fatwas (despite lacking
legal authority) are routinely followed by the courts and, if Jokowi wins the
presidential election next year, MUI’s intolerant leader, Ma’ruf Amin, will be
vice-­president. This reinvention of MUI from regime puppet to conservative
political force would have been unimaginable under Suharto. Will a moment
come when the oligarchs and politicians decide the partnership has become
a threat? What would the outcome be of a clash between the rising MUI and
the entrenched elite? Would this trigger the “creative destruction” to which
Ali-­Fauzi refers?
My article was focused on national politics, which plays out in the nation’s
capital, Jakarta, but I accept the point that Savirani makes, echoing MacIntyre’s
remarks, that there is much diversity across Indonesia. However, that diver-
sity does not really alter the thrust of my argument, which is, of course, that it
is under threat from hardliner intolerance right across Indonesia. This intol-
erance is certainly not restricted to Jakarta. In fact, MUI’s regional branches
can often be a good deal more hardline and intolerant than MUI central. In
my article, I discussed the alarming position in Aceh in regard to LGBTI Indo-
nesians, and there are plenty of other examples of violent regional Islamist

136 AUSTRALIAN FOREIGN AFFAIRS

intolerance – for example, against Shias and Ahmadis – that I could have cited,
and which I have written about elsewhere. For these reasons, I am not convinced
that regional diversity makes a great deal of difference to the patterns of hard-
liner intolerance, except, perhaps, in areas where Muslims are not the majority.
(These are certainly not conflict-­free either, but the dynamics can be different.)
I would also not dispute that rising economic inequality also plays into the
religious tensions. In fact, this has always been true in Indonesia, which has a
very long history of political leaders mobilising the resentment of the Muslim
poor against non-­Muslim targets, including foreigners, Christians and the
Chinese. To say that many of those involved in hardliner protests are motivated
by economic resentment does not alter my central argument about the threat
conservative Islamists pose to Indonesia’s liberal-democratic aspirations.
I very much hope that MacIntyre and Savirani are right, and Indonesia’s
underlying diversity will assert itself over time, leading to a more tolerant and
liberal political system that can defend the rights of unpopular minorities and
is able to resist the influence of conservative Sunni hardliners. But for now,
Indonesia’s “swing to the right”, as MacIntyre describes it, suggests the trend
might be in the opposite direction, towards Ali-­Fauzi’s “dark times”.

Tim Lindsey, professor of Asian law and director of the Centre for
Indonesian Law, Islam and Society at the University of Melbourne

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