The New Local Politics and the Rise of Local Strongmen in Indonesia Big Bang Decentralization
Amalinda Savirani (School on Local Politics and Autonomy Gadjah Mada University)
After almost five years on the implementation of the law on decentralization, the Indonesian has witnessed many changes in the dynamics of local politics. Unfortunately, the dynamics has not yet lead to the ideal of decentralization namely the increase of people participation that will then create a vibrant civil society. Moreover, substantial increase on the quality of public services has not yet been reached. In short, idealistic view on the implementation of decentralization that has been heralded by the literature and also by the international communities such the World Bank, has been limited to be found empirically.
This paper will focus on the issue the emerging of local strongmen in the new local politics. This is in line with the basic knowledge on the implementation of decentralization policy that very much depends on the quality of leadership. Most of the leader in the local has always been a strongmen, politically and economically speaking. There are many aspects of local leadership that I will show in the paper. This has something to do with the social origin of the figures, which then affect the type of leadership one will have.
Two cases will be shown, those are the case of the current bupati (head of kabupaten or district) of Bantul in Yogyakarta and the former head of district parliament of Buleleng district in Bali. Through these two cases I will argue, firstly, the decentralization policy has facilitated the rise and the entrenchment of local strongmen in their respective societies. This emergence and entrenchment have neither necessarily benefited the people, nor supported the agenda of decentralization. Secondly, I will argue that the rise of local strongmen in the local politics is a reflection of state’s strength and it is very much contrary to many arguments that emphasized on the emergence of local strongman as a reflection of society’s strength (Migdal, 1988).
Thirdly, there are many aspects involves in the birth of local strongmen namely the role of (local) political party. The two figures that I will use in this paper were the cadre of local political party. The paper will show that there has been an opposite tendency between the project to decentralize power into the local level from the national government in one hand, and the tendency to centralize the political party on the other hand.
