As a result of the democratisation era, now Indonesia has a very complex election
system. The 2009 general election is illustrative. In one day, the elections were held
to select candidates for four different legislative bodies: 560 legislators for the DPR
(House of Representatives), 132 legislators for the DPD (House of Regional Repre-
sentatives), and 16 , 253 legislators for parliament at provincial and district/munici-
pality levels. There were 171 , 265 , 442 eligible voters, 519 , 920 polling stations, 76 , 711
village election committees and 6 , 471 sub-district election committees with 471
General Election Commissions (KPUs) at district/municipality level and thirty-
three KPUs at provincial level. Voter turnout was 70. 99 per cent for the legislative
election, and 72. 56 per cent for the presidential election.^36 The April 2009 general
elections indicate an ability to organise complex, multiple elections without
violence.^37 There was an overall sense that people had been allowed to have their
say, as anything less could have threatened the process of democratic consolidation
in Indonesia.
ii. religion and state
Unlike the constitutions in Iran, Egypt and (the Basic Law of) Saudi Arabia, no single
word in the Indonesian Constitution refers to Islam as the state ideology, despite the
efforts to include among the amendments the legal basis for the implementation of
sharia, known as the Jakarta Charter.
38
In fact, the text of the Constitution does not
give Islam special rights and provisions; at the same time there is no provision which
states that the state shall not interfere in religious affairs, nor that religion shall not
interfere in the affairs of the state. The lack of such a provision leads T.B. Simatupang,
a Protestant scholar, to interpret this as meaning that ‘ThePancasila-state is respon-
sible not only for ensuring religious freedom, but also for promoting the role of
religions in society’.^39 It is in this sense that the Department of Religious Affairs was
founded in 1946. It supervises religious education, Muslim marriages and theHajj
(pilgrimage). It also has separate directorates for the other religions, such as Catholi-
cism, Protestantism, Hinduism and Buddhism.^40
(^36) The data is taken from Komisi Pemilihan Umum, ‘Pemilu 2009 dalam angka’ available at
http://www.kpu.go.id/dmdocuments/angka_ 26 _ 30 .pdf.
(^37) See ‘A Decade of Democracy in Indonesia: The 2009 Legislative Election’, Report of
International Election Observation Mission, The Asian Network for Free Elections
(ANFREL), available atwww.anfrel.org/report/indonesia/ 2009 /Indonesia_GeneralElec-
tion 2009 .pdf.
(^38) Robert Elson, ‘Another look at the Jakarta Charter controversy of 1945 ’( 2009 ) 88
Indonesia 105.
(^39) See Robert Lumban Tobing, ‘Christian Social Ethics in the Thoughts of TB Simatupang:
The Role of Indonesian Christian in Social Change’, PhD thesis, University of Denver,
1996.
(^40) For a full account see Arskal Salim,Challenging the Secular State: The Islamization of
Law in Modern Indonesia(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2008 ).