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Indonesia democracy charts a new high: BPS
Jakarta Post - August 14, 2015
According to the IDI 2014, an evaluation program launched by the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) on Thursday, the performance of the country's democracy scored 73.04 points out of 100 in 2014, up by 9.32 points from the previous year.
"This score is the highest level in the six years since the index was first begun [in 2009]," BPS chairman Suryamin told a press conference at his office in Central Jakarta.
The IDI has three possible ratings: poor (below 60 points), fair (60-80 points) and good (above 80 points). Based on this scale, Indonesia's democracy, with its 73.04 points in the 2014 IDI, could be categorized as "fair".
BPS said the achievement had exceeded the government's target of 73.00 points as stipulated in the National Mid Term Development Plan (RPJMN) for 2010-2014. When the IDI was first established in 2009, Indonesia's democracy index stood at 67.30. President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo has set a target of 75.00 points in the RPJMN for 2015-2019.
BPS said that the IDI was a composite index of three key areas, 11 variables and 28 indicators. The key areas were civil freedom, political rights and democratic institutions.
Civil freedom was the only area in which Indonesia fitted in the "good" category, scoring 82.62 points out of a possible 100. For the other two key areas, political rights and democratic institutions, Indonesia achieved the ranking of "fair", scoring 63.72 and 75.81 points respectively.
While political rights only achieved a "fair" rating, it enjoyed the biggest boost in points thanks to the success of the 2014 general elections, especially in the quality of the fixed voters list (DPT). The score of this variable soared to 74.64 points, up from 30 points in 2009.
However, improvements in the country's political system were largely brought about by improvements in systemic and procedural matters, not necessarily the maturity of the political process itself, according to Suryamin. He cited the scores of violent rallies, which increased from 18.71 points in 2013 to 23.73 points in 2014.
"Freedom of expression is already strong in procedures, but it is expressed through violence," Suryamin said. "The voters list is also getting better but it is still tainted by money politics and threats toward voting rights. While we are conducting general elections periodically, political parties as the main actors are still practicing an oligarchic culture and they are failing to encourage regeneration."
The poor quality of political parties in Indonesia was also reflected in the DPRD, which had the lowest score of 39.51 points compared with other variables.
"Their performance is still bad. For example, they do not allocate much to regional budgets for education and health and they do not monitor regional governments effectively. They also often fail to give sensible recommendations to the government," said Suryamin.
Siti Musdah Mulia, a senior lecturer at Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University (UIN), said that the country's democracy was also being held back by discriminatory regulations, with written rules codifying gender, ethnic and group discrimination. This part of the IDI scored 80.30 points in 2014, a decline from 80.81 points in 2013.
"For example, regulations on prostitution that say that only women engage in this practice are one-sided because men, by the nature of the act itself, must also engage in prostitution. There's also the obligation to wear Islamic clothing for civil servants. That shouldn't be applied because there are both Muslim and non-Muslim civil servants. Let them choose for themselves what they consider to be appropriate clothing," said Siti, who is a member of the IDI expert team.
Out of 33 provinces, Jakarta scored the highest with 84.70 points, while Papua had the lowest score with 62.15 points.
"In 2014, there were four provinces who graduated to a 'good' rating. These were Jakarta, North Sulawesi, Yogyakarta and West Kalimantan. Although the rest received a 'fair' rating, there were no 'bad' ratings, compared to six 'bad' ratings in 2013. It means that there has been progress in all provinces," Suryamin said.
BPS said that the IDI aimed to provide an illustration of the development of political democracy in Indonesia through statistics. To arrange the index, BPS worked with four institutions, namely the National Development Planning Agency, the Home Ministry, the Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Ministry and the United Nations Development Program.
Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/08/14/ri-democracy-charts-a-new-high-bps.html.
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