situation in the country concerned, such as its geography, ethnic composition,
demography, political formats, legal systems, and so on. Unfair elections will
produce a government which manipulates the people’s voice.
When President Soeharto stepped down in May 1998 , he left political laws which
had been used to support his regime. The legislature was a controlled and subservi-
ent body, elected every five years. Ten parties contested the first New Order
elections held in 1971. In preparation for those elections, President Soeharto
transformed Golkar, founded in 1964 by the Army as a loose coalition of anti-
communist organisations, into a political party. Golkar, with heavy backing from
the military, won 63 per cent of the vote in the 1971 elections, surpassing even its
own expectations.^32 In 1973 , Soeharto forced the other parties to merge into two
separate parties: Nationalist (PDI (the Indonesian Democracy Party)) and Islamic
(PPP (the United Development Party)).^33
The Soeharto regime held general elections in 1977 , 1982 , 1987 , 1992 and 1997 ,
in which only Golkar, the PDI and the PPP were permited to compete. Elections
used a proportional-list system, based on Indonesia’s then twenty-seven provinces,
with complete central party control over the choice of candidates. There was no
system through which voters could adjust the ranking of the individual candidates
on the list. There was no requirement that candidates reside in the region where
they were competing. Political campaigning was regulated for content as well as
for time and place. Access to media was limited, candidates’ broadcast speeches
had to be vetted and the final tabulation of results was a closed process.
Only Golkar had party offices at the village level throughout Indonesia.^34 In the
Soeharto era, Golkar won more than 60 per cent of the vote in each of six heavily
stage-managed elections between 1971 and 1997.^35
When Habibie took over the presidency from Soeharto, his government opened
opportunities for new political parties. In the 1999 general elections there
were forty-nine out of 148 political parties that met the eligibility criteria and the
legal requirements to compete. Only twenty-four political parties contested
the 2004 general election. The reduction was due to stricter criteria outlined in a
new law issued after the 1999 election. In order to contest elections, parties needed
established organisations in two-thirds of the provinces instead of only one-third,
as in 1999 , and the electoral threshold required of parties in the 2004 elections
in order to be eligible to contest in 2009 was raised to 3 per cent of seats in the
(^32) Kenneth Egerton Ward, ‘The 1971 Election in Indonesia’, Centre of Southeast Asian
Studies, Monash University, 1974 , 15.
(^33) Kenneth Janda,Political Parties: A Cross-national Survey(New York: The Free Press,
1980 ), pp. 707 – 9.
(^34) R. William Liddle, ‘The 1997 Indonesian elections: personal power and regime legitim-
acy’,Muslim Politics Report, 14 July–August 1997 , 1 – 6.
(^35) H.D. Haryo Sasongko,Pemilu’ 99 : Komedi atau Tragedi(Jakarta: Pustaka Grafiksi, 1999 ),
p. 28.