Tag Archives: party membership

The Ever-Increasing Commercialization of Election Campaigns and Party Politics

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In an article published by the Straits Times on 18 December, Wahyudi Soeriaatmadja, the Indonesia Correspondent of Singapore’s flagship daily, describes in detail his observations during the ongoing presidential election campaign. (LINK: Hired crowds in demand for Indonesia political rallies | The Straits Times). These observations are so interesting because the phenomenon of more and more professional and commercialized election campaigning and party politics is spreading to many places and continents. What is especially exciting here is the fabulous Indonesian creativity in this field.
 
The article describes how Mr Lukman, a 45-year-old parking attendant, runs his “rent-a-crowd” service. Once hired by a candidate or party, Lukman gathers at least 200 persons and brings them by bus to the event. He charges 100.000 rupiah (6,5 USD) per “supporter” plus food and bus transport.  

Great care must be taken to pick people who look like real and enthusiastic supporters. Lukman selects the ones “who wear tidy clothes, those who look like college students, the 18-year-olds, the zillennials.” Obviously, many of the 200 million voters are already suspicious of the fake supporters, so the hired ones must act up real enthusiasm, cheer and dance. Since the salary is paid only after the event, not sufficiently convincing supporters risk a part of their pay.

Often enough, the hired troops don’t know who they are supposed to cheer until they arrive at the venue. For them, of course, it does not matter, they are like the extras in mass scenes film shootings. So, the “industry” is facing an increasing demand for sincere and convincing cheering support. A spokesman for the ruling Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), told The Straits Times that the party does not use and has never tolerated such services. True or not, it is a basic fact, that money is a decisive requirement of election campaigning, of course not only in Indonesia. But the democratic development of the country has seen several creative solutions to candidacy and electoral success, up to the phenomenon that rich candidates can choose among competing parties for a promising slot.

In Europe with a century-long history of political parties and the corresponding political theory, the developments are comparable to the ones in Southeast Asia, except for the fake cheering crowds, hired for the occasion. Campaign events, even with prominent speakers, ministers and prime ministers, risk looking bad on pictures and TV videos because, often enough, the expected crowds are not materializing. And most of the traditional campaign features are provided by PR agencies anyway. The party members sacrificing evenings and nights for hanging campaign posters are practically history. That is being accompanied by shrinking party membership in most European countries. The once dominating Christian Democrats of Italy have disappeared, once struggling right-wing parties are growing and booming in many countries, like recently in the Netherlands, mainly because voters are frightened by uncontrolled immigration. In Germany, the 160-years-old Social Democratic Party, is continuously shrinking in membership and polling results, though still in an uneasy coalition with Greens and Liberals under a social-democratic chancellor. A workers’ party for most of its life, the SPD is no longer seen as fighting for the working class or the little man on the street. Consequently, during the last few decades, the internal social coherence of the party has changed dramatically. Still some fifty or seventy years ago, the small local branches offered a sort of family bonding, the members knowing each other, and the local treasurer visiting the members at home to collect the monthly membership fees. All that is history, of course, and that has direct repercussions for the ideological and programmatic consistency of the SPD and many similar parties. Probably, the changing party landscapes are less based on values, programs, and group-interest but more dependent on professional management, financial resources, political psychology, and the real or media-hyped charisma of the leaders.
For Southeast Asia see:

Southeast Asia is East…and West is West

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Partyforumseasia: The vast scholarly literature on political parties is often rather theoretical, and academic ambitions make “theorizing” a necessity for the young scholars. Starting to analyze the parties in “Non-Western” systems with the tool box from Europe, where most of the scholarly models have been developed, can be tricky, though. At face value, there are all the well known attributes, headquarters, members, presidents, vice-presidents, branches, central committees, internal elections, even membership fees. However, to start with the latter, membership fees in Southeast Asia’s parties are symbolic at best, if collected at all. With election campaign costs spiraling and reaching absurd levels, the funding is getting more and more the central problem. That affects the image of many parties and their leaders because money has to be found, and  corruption scandals erupt frequently. In some countries in the region, the voters expect tangible returns for their votes which has lead to so-called “pork-barrel politics”. The candidates, rather often, invest into their campaigns, are expected to “help” their voters once they are elected, and consequently need to recoup the invested sums one way or the other. For many of them, just recouping is not enough, they can also enrich themselves via their political engagement. It is maybe one of the big differences compared with Europe that there are many more “unusually rich” politicians in Southeast Asia.  This is not saying that politicians in Europe are underpaid, but a mandate in most parliaments is financially not attractive for professionals and even less for entrepreneurs who earn much more.

Partyforumseasia has been interviewed by Global Review with a list of questions about the characteristics of political parties in Southeast Asia.
What are the differences between Western and Southeast Asian parties?

You find questions and answers under this Link

Comments and opinions are most welcome!

In case the above link does not work, try to insert the following:

Interview with Dr. Sachsenröder about South East Asian parties: „Many political scientists base their analysis too much on the paradigms and theories developed in Western Europe“/“The growing urban middle classes are definitely more open. But they are no barrier against the Islamic revival and authoritarian dominance“

 

How Many Parties???

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Partyforumseasia: The last edition of the British News Magazine “The Economist“, January 14th, runs two articles on the ideal number of parties in a parliament. The first one comes with the headline “More choice is a good thing, but within limits”, the second one focuses on the ever more splintered party landscapes in Europe with the headline “That means better representation but clunkier governance”. (LINK)
econoIn contrast to the widespread proportional systems on the European continent, the UK has had little experience with coalitions (conservatives and LibDems under PM Cameron after 2010 are not a good example). The British First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) majoritarian system is probably no longer reflecting the cleavages in the society, and the successful years of ideological parties like Labour and other Socialists are even more outdated.

Now, what does the number of political parties mean in Southeast Asia? And does it have an impact on good or bad governance?
For a start, here is a comparison of the numbers:
number-of-parties

 

 

 

 

 

 

In general, the electoral processes reduce the number of political parties in the parliaments of Southeast Asia but don’t prevent smaller parties or independent candidates to enter. With the maturation of the political systems and the better informed electorate, parties everywhere feel some pressure to accommodate competition and opposition one way or the other.

The “other” way can be seen in Cambodia, where a ruling party under strongman Hun Sen feels threatened by a more united opposition or in Malaysia under similar circumstances. Since the old ways of buying over the voters are not safe enough, the strategy at hand is simply destroying the opposition leaders by physical intimidation and series of dubious lawsuits.

Indonesia has made regulatory efforts to keep the number of parties manageable. In a political culture where leaders, and especially rich ones for that matter, are more important than ideologies or party programs, that is quite an achievement. The enormous flexibility of parties and politicians in this country helps to bridge differences and create sufficient support for the president, who, of course, has jobs and positions to offer in return.

Laos and Vietnam are the remaining Communist one-party-systems, but they are increasingly forced to accommodate dissent for economic reasons. Vietnam is more advanced than Laos, a more open system to observe as paradigm for slowly growing pluralism.

Malaysia has many parties but too many among them are mere component parties, 12 of them are subsidiaries of the dominant United Malays National Organization (UMNO), which is seen by a majority of Malaysians as abusing money politics to stay in power. The ongoing scandal about  vanished billions involving the Prime Minister underlines the suspicions.

Myanmar struggles with her ethnic division and cleavages and is in the beginning of her democratic self-finding process, but the towering popularity of Aung San Suu Kyi has solved the party problem in the parliament by giving her National League for Democracy an absolute  majority of nearly 60%.

The Philippines has a vibrant party scene which does not play a big role, though, because in the presidential system the elected president can count on more than enough party hopping MPs to join him.

Singapore is an interesting case insofar as founding a party is relatively easy, but winning a seat in parliament is rather difficult. Decades of a dominant People’s Action Party (PAP) rule with good results for most citizens have left little space for opposition parties which have no chance to prove that they have administrative skills. Since only the Worker’s Party has made it into the parliament, the PAP-government has introduced a pseudo or ersatz opposition in the form of “nominated MPs” to enrich the debates, and “Non-constituency MPs” as consolation prize for the best losers among opposition candidates.

Thailand has not yet found her balance between democratic aspirations, traditional money politics and military interventionism. Many doubt that the coming new constitution, supervised by the army, will bring at last political stability to the country.

Comparing the increasing fragmentation of the European party scenes with the situation in Southeast Asia yields rather ambivalent assessments:

1. Voter turnout higher in representative systems? The level of politicization and polarization, as well as parties or candidates seem to be more important.

2. Big parties more disciplined than coalitions? Depends probably more on leadership and availability of lucrative positions and funding.

3. Splintering can foster graft? No difference between one-party systems and coalitions, the Southeast Asian way of mixing politics and business is too conducive to corruption.

4. Coalition governments more expensive because they have more mouths to feed? In Malaysia certainly, but all governments have to stay in power and pay to satisfy their clientele.

5. Strange bedfellows in coalitions? Sure, but bigger parties are anything but close to homogeneous.

6. Party membership on the decline? That depends very much on what membership can offer. 3 1/2 million members in Malaysia’s UMNO alone show that members join if they can expect rewards.

7. New policies need new parties to champion them? Not really a successful model in Southeast Asia. New parties normally cannot promise much and deliver even less.

Conclusion: There is not much to learn from European party concepts in Southeast Asia where they were adopted only superficially. Level playing fields are rare and voters are realistically going for governments who can be expected to deliver more.

Ideologies and party programs have lost their appeal in Europe but were never important in Southeast Asia.