Elections, repression and authoritarian survival in post-transition Indonesia and the Philippines

Abstract

This paper compares post-transition Philippines and Indonesia, examining the ways in which authoritarian practices survive and are shaped by regime transition. It examines the transition process in each case, to identify the problems of management and control that regime elites set for themselves in the post-dictatorship period. It is argued that Philippine elites set out to disaggregate and domesticate an already mobilized opposition movement, while the Indonesian authorities strove to keep similar popular politics from mobilizing. The paper then considers how these political objectives find expression in the structuring of two important institutional fields – the electoral and policy making processes – concluding with an examination of how these considerations influence patterns of repression. In particular, the paper also investigates whether repression targets primarily proscribed modes of activity, or sets out to threaten and intimidate proscribed organizations and people. Differences in electoral and policy processes, as well as in patterns of repression, demonstrate the ways in which authoritarianism can survive regime transitions and can undermine the promise of democracy in the post-dictatorship period.

Keywords:

• Repression
• authoritarianism
• democratic consolidation
• social movements
• civil society
• Southeast Asia

Acknowledgements

This work was first presented at the Workshop on Contemporary Authoritarianism in Southeast Asia: Structures, Institutions and Agency, organized by William Case and held at the City University of Hong Kong's Southeast Asian Research Centre. The author happily acknowledges his debt to the Centre, workshop participants, and in particular, to Professor Case. Fieldwork for this project was in part supported by a Fulbright research grant.

Vince Boudreau is Professor in the Department of Political Science at the City College of New York where he also directs the Colin Powell Center for Policy Studies. He writes about social movements, political repression and Southeast Asia. His last book was Resisting Dictatorship: Repression and Protest in Southeast Asia. He is currently working on a book length treatment of the role social movements engaged the political process in post-transition Indonesia and the Philippines.

Notes

¹Recorded interview with Senator Jovito Salonga, Quezon City, the Philippines, 29 March 2006.

²In a recorded interview on 30 March, during the 2006 electoral campaign, Bayan Muna secretary general Nat Santiago argued that, in many ways, alliances with politicians with no pretences to activism – what he called traditional politicians – were more manageable, predictable, and so preferable, to those among activist parties.

³An interview with Congressman Rene Magtubo is instructive on this point. Congressman Magtubo had been elected on the Partido ng Manggagawa (Workers' Party) ticket. As the 2006 elections approached, calculating that the political bloc could win more than three seats if it fielded another group of candidates, activists put together a slate under the banner of the allied Sanlakas Party. Soon, the two parties were forced to compete for activist and financial resources, which, despite the best intentions of everyone involved, created strains inside the network. Interview, 15 February 2006.

⁴Interviews with participants in NAPC under both Estrada (Princess Nemenzo, 1 April 2006) and Ana Teh (29 April 2006) Macapagal-Arroyo confirms this evolution. Nemenzo (a commissioner under Estrada) recounts how, under Estrada, NAPC commissioners worked to develop comprehensive anti-poor policies. Teh describes how, after the transition to Macapagal-Arroyo government, NAPC became more an implementing agency, chaired by the president and designed to deliver services in an expedited manner, often to mass organizations allied with civil society organizations that supported her government.

⁵Recorded interview, Dr Erman Hermawan, Deputy Secretary General, PKB, Jogjakarta, 12 May 2007; recorded interview, Iriantoko, CD Ketua PDI-P, Jogkarta, 3 May 2007.

⁶The argument that follows about the general contours of the policy-making process and the opportunities it affords for social intervention is based largely on an interview with the Director of the Pusat Studi Hukum dan Kebijakan, Bivitri Susanti, 16 April 2007, Jakarta.

⁷ On 31 April 2007 I was interviewing FAKI leader xxx in his home when a delegation of plainclothes policemen arrived and invited him outside the room to speak. Upon his return, Pak Burhan explained that a group of leftists were planning a demonstration the next day, and his group had been asked to stage a counter-demonstration. The next day, in fact, FAKI forces disrupted the planned march.