Matter Loading #4: Political Dynasty and COVID Vaccine Rollout
Pilkada, the democracy festival for whom?
In our latest regional elections (Pilkada), political dynasties show their neverending relevance in our politics. Atut’s family, which is the old dynasty in Banten, remains strong. They were able to win both Serang regency and South Tangerang election. In this Pilkada, we see Jokowi’s family becoming a new political dynasty, as his son and son-in-law won their regional elections in Surakarta and Medan.
Despite the opposition and critics of political dynasties, they keep winning. In addition, many of the political dynasties have been proven corrupt or/and incompetent. However, people still give their votes to political dynasties members anyway. What caused this?
First, we need to acknowledge that sometimes people choose the political dynasties simply because, well, they are the only choices. Pilkada in South Tangerang had all candidates with ties to three different political dynasties. In Kediri, Haninidhito, Cabinet Secretary Pramono Anung’s son, faced an uncontested election. He only needs to win against a blank box.
On the other hand, the political dynasty candidate might face a weaker opponent. The Surakarta election ended in an overwhelming victory for Gibran, the son of Jokowi, with more than 80% votes against an independent candidate with no political party backing.
Second, political dynasties have an exclusive advantage in their region. Once we transitioned to democracy in 1998, the regional elite holds a more substantial political capital than the political parties. They just lack the means to occupy the political seats. On the other hand, political parties need to start from scratch in many regions because of the political repressions in the New Order era.
For political parties, capitalizing on the dominant local elite seems much easier than working against it. On the other hand, working with a political party is the most convenient path to power for the regional elite. This collaboration is the driver of the political dynasty in Indonesia after 1998.
Afterward, the regional elite can expand their influence from the incumbent role. The elites build their political capital by building patronage and serving their clients’ interests as the incumbent. They then extend the power to their family, either to occupy a different governmental position or as a successor of their position,
Third, the political dynasty continues its relevance because the existing political institution cannot forestall it. It is not like there was no effort to curb down the political dynasty. Regional election law in 2015 sought to curb political dynasty by disallowing a family of incumbents to stand in a regional election. However, the supreme court ruled the law unconstitutional (for a good reason).
For political parties, an alliance with a political dynasty is not without its downsides. This alliance closed down the opportunity for party cadres to rise through meritocracy. Political dynasty might also have an interest that doesn’t align with the party’s strategy and national platform, creating inconsistency and conflict potential.
On the other hand, political parties cannot just divest away from the political dynasty. These influential families can opt-out from one party and join another, becoming a strong competitor in a regional election. Some like Prabowo’s family or Atut’s family might focus on one party. Still, it’s not rare to see dynasties changing their political alliance, like Itoc Toha family in Cimahi that changed from PPP to PKS.
To fight against the political dynasty’s influence, political parties need to strengthen their base without relying on the regional elite’s power. However, trying to take away the elite’s base could be risky. Your political rival might decide to work with the elites you abandoned, making them stronger.
On the other hand, the political party also needs to resist building its political dynasty. We can see the case of Jokowi’s family. Jokowi is an example of someone rising through the political ranks in a “natural” progression. His popularity is massive and organic, and he didn’t come from a politician’s family. However, the decision to put his son and son-in-law in regional election turns his family into a political dynasty.
Political dynasty will remain a fixture in our politics as long as the real alternatives don’t exist. Many people don’t like political dynasties, but they won’t vote you for merely being outside of a political dynasty. Building a political candidate with a programmatic vision and a path to victory is imperative to fight against the political dynasty.
Meanwhile, we cannot do a lot in the law department. Barring someone to participate in the election because of their bloodline is undemocratic and illegal. We can not stop a famous politician’s family from running in an election.
What we can do, however, is to encourage more competition in the election. Right now, you need to pass a 20% threshold of DPRD seats to run as a candidate. This threshold makes it harder for political outsiders or a new candidate to run in an election. When you need to work with others to run a candidate, you would most likely choose a safe candidate. The choice usually falls to a political dynasty member, which has political capital and is also easily known by the public.
If we drop the threshold, PKS could at least propose a more credible opponent to Gibran. We might also see an anti-political dynasty candidate in an election dominated by political dynasties like in South Tangerang. In short, making candidacy more viable for political outsiders make it more likely to challenge the political dynasties.
The downside of this policy is it would make running an election more expensive. Threshold simplifies the ballot a lot since they can run five candidates at most. If we lower or abolish the threshold, we would see more candidates, which would create a logistical challenge. The election would need larger, more expensive ballots and more sophisticated political communication to inform all of the candidates to the voters.
Furthermore, most of the candidates might not be viable to win. In UK, for example, people are relatively free to run in an election. Each constituency can have a dozen candidates every election. Yet, the winner of the election is always the big parties almost all the time.
The political threshold problem is not exclusive to the regional election; it also applies the presidential election. PKS is proposing to drop the presidential threshold from 25% to 15%, saying that more candidates would give more chances for people to run in an election and reduce polarization (Ahok would like to have a chat with you, PKS). The Democratic party went further by proposing to put the presidential threshold to 0%.
Another critique to lowering or abolishing the presidential threshold is it could potentially elect someone without sufficient legislative support. Without sufficient support from the legislative body, the president would face a big challenge in passing a law.
This is honestly a weird argument for two things. First, only having 20% support in the parliament would create the same problem. Second, we have never got this problem even after we elect a president with low support from the political parties. After the presidential election, the parties usually would create a new coalition to get behind the new Government. This is why SBY can rule despite only having around 13% of DPR seats in his original coalition. The same thing also happened in Jokowi’s era, where we can see him going from forming a minority government at the beginning to dominating the parliament.
The problem with political dynasty is ultimately a problem of a democratic country trying and failing to shed off its feudalistic past. Putting up barriers to compete in the election serves the interest of the powers that be. Lowering barriers to run in the election would mean more random parties or candidates popping up like in 1999. But looking back, was that even worse than the election we see now? Is it that bad to see people making new political parties and failing that we should prevent them from doing so? Why are a strong government and weak opposition a requirement in our political system?
Pilkada and COVID
What’s done is done, but should Pilkada be delayed? One of the concerns of holding the regional election is increased COVID-19 transmission. The concern was proven even before the regional election, as the preparation itself has been a superspreader event. Election commissioners are tested positive and even died from covid-19. Looking at the positive cases 7–14 days after Pilkada, we also see a spike in positive cases of COVID.
Holding an election in the middle of a pandemic is a dilemma. On the one hand, you don’t want to risk worsening the pandemic, but indefinitely delaying an election would create a crisis of political legitimacy.
In Bolivia, for example, the interim government was accused of delaying the election to hold power by the people. The interim government, formerly the opposition to the MAS party, held into power after the last presidential election was annulled due to the election fraud allegation by former president Evo Morales. The Interim government has promised to do the election as soon as possible. However, they have delayed the election three times due to the pandemic.
The accusation holds its weight when we can see the political prosecution of political opponents, violence to the activists from the MAS party by the army, and intimidation to the MAS as a whole by the interim government. Amidst the low number in the polls for the interim government and Luis Acre from MAS being the favorite to win the election, many think that the interim government is holding its position unjustly. Massive protests and roadblocks precede the election until finally, Luis Acre from MAS won the election in a landslide.
Delaying the election could create a crisis of political legitimacy. This is especially true when you are in the middle of a pandemic, and the government branches need to implement an unpopular policy. An interim governor or a governor that has passed its term might not have the mandate to do said policy, creating instability when they force their way.
In this case, holding the regional election as scheduled was right in hindsight. Months after the election, the pandemic turns out for the worse. We have seen an all-time high for daily positive cases months after the election, and we still don’t know when the pandemic would end or get better. At the very least, holding the election as scheduled doesn’t add a political crisis to Indonesia’s problems.
Holding it as scheduled might be the right decision, but it obviously can be done better. Other countries have shown that holding an election without worsening the pandemic is possible and there is no reason we can’t do the same.
The biggest problem with the last Pilkada is mostly in the policy’s execution. Last election has seen more than 2000 violations of health protocols. Most of them were done in the campaign since many candidates insist on doing face-to-face campaigns. Most health protocol violations happened in this face-to-face campaign, either in crowds that did not wear a mask or do physical distancing.
Testings for witnesses and commissioners also rely on rapid blood test, which has low accuracy and sensitivity. It should not be surprising to see election commissioners getting infected with such flawed procedure.
Another complicating thing is our rising positive cases. Other countries did their election once they have passed the infection wave, but we are still in the middle of the rising number of transmissions. Stopping or mitigating the pandemic should be done before the election.
Another possible alternative is allowing mail-in vote or early voting. This would reduce our risk of virus transmission even further. However, we have no experience in this, which could become a logistical mess. Mail-in vote also has inherent problems in its verification. For example, mail in ballots usually needs verification on the signature to prove its authenticity. This creates a problem of privacy, because technically someone else could know your vote.
Mail-in ballot also could be much more time consuming as it would require people verifying ballots, scanning them, and training to discern the ballot’s signature. Once again, we are facing a problem with the cost of election that we cannot just shrug off as a developing country. L:ast election, however, we clearly did not have time to prepare all of these even if we have the money.
But seeing how valuable mail-in vote in this pandemic, probably it is time we at least give this voting method a shot.
Vaccine roll-out and its peculiarities
With Pfizer/BioNtech vaccine being cleared for an emergency use vaccine by WHO, we finally see the beginning of COVID-19 vaccine roll-out all over the world. Other vaccines, like Coronavac from Sinovac, have also got their emergency use authorization in different countries like Indonesia and India. This marks a possibility to curb down this pandemic in a more permanent manner way. So far, the states that can curb down the virus infection eventually get a resurgence of infection wave from time to time, even after they suppress the number of infections to zero. With the vaccine, many hope that this pandemic would finally be ended for good.
It needs to be noted that vaccines’ availability would not necessarily be an instant change to how we live. It would take months to vaccinate enough people to reach herd immunity. Without herd immunity, you can still get infected even after being vaccinated because the vaccine’s efficacy is not 100%. Even if the vaccine is effective, we still don’t know if the vaccine would stop us from transmitting the virus. Therefore, the health protocol would still be there, months after the vaccine has been rolled out.
Prioritization is now one of the most important issues in vaccinations. We know that it takes time to vaccinate the whole population. We know that some individuals will receive the vaccination sooner than others. The question would be, who will receive the vaccine sooner?
All countries agree that the first group who shall receive the vaccine should be healthcare workers and governments. Healthcare workers face the most risk for infections, and their presence is essential to keep healthcare running amidst the pandemic. Next, vaccinating government members is as important as healthcare workers their deaths could create political instability and crisis in the decision-making process. Almost everyone agrees on this.
Disagreements among countries can be seen once they need to decide which group would receive the vaccine next. One side believes that older people (over 75 years old) should receive the vaccine, as they have the highest mortality rate. On the other side, some believe it should be essential workers as they are the most likely to be infected due to their work nature. They also argue that vaccination for workers would make a faster economic recovery.
Indonesia is one of the few countries to prioritize essential workers over older people. The argument is it is better to stop the infections first. Therefore we should give the vaccine to those who are more likely to get infected. Immunity for them also means preventing them from infecting even more people. It is also believed that this would also make economic recovery faster since vaccinated people would resume their activities earlier.
Experts predict that prioritizing essential workers would not impact the mortality rate. On the other hand, prioritizing older people could reduce the group’s mortality rate with the highest risks, reducing the total deaths. This is why UK and the US prioritize older people, starting with older people living in nursing houses and long-term facilities. An outbreak in nursing houses has been proven to be very deadly; some nursing houses in the US saw almost all of the residents dying from COVID, which is why the plan prioritze nursing house residents.
The prioritization started to get more tricky once we put race and ethnicity into play. Blacks and Latinos have more than three times the mortality rate of White and Asians. This implies a need to at least prioritize Blacks and Latino in the same age group. However, a controversy ensued when a document in the ACIP meeting put 7 million essential workers above people over 65 years old. One of the reasons cited is how blacks and ethnicities are overrepresented in critical industry, making vaccinating essential workers more ethnically equitable than vaccinating them over 65.
Ultimately, US decided to prioritize frontline essential workers instead. Frontline essential workers are first responders (police and firefighters), teachers, food and agriculture workers, manufacturing, postal service workers, public transit workers, and grocery store workers. This doesn’t include all essential workers and the total is about 30 million. After this, the next groups would be those over 65 years old and people with comorbidities.
Prioritization however cannot become the whole strategy for vaccine distribution. If there is one thing we can learn from the vaccination in the US, it is how vaccine availability is not enough to make people take the vaccine. The vaccine rollout has been slower than expected. Many reasons, including a lack of federal involvement and decentralized distribution, concerns from individuals getting the vaccine, and a flawed policy on distribution, come into play.
With hospitals and states overburdened with new cases of COVID, administrating vaccine rollout becomes much harder. Coupled with decentralized distribution with a lack of federal aid, many states in US suffer a logistical problem that delays the distribution.
The rollout also doesn’t reach more people because some reject to get vaccinated. One of the reasons for their rejection is the concern about the safety of the vaccine they are getting. This concern was shared with both health workers and laypeople alike. With countries using emergency use authorization, many still worry that the safety of the vaccine is compromised for the sake of ending the pandemic faster.
There is also a concern from the marginalized communities with a history of unethical experimentation. Blacks, for example, have a horrible history with the Tuskegee experiment, where researchers knowingly let their participants’ syphilis untreated to observe how untreated syphilis would affect black people. Until now, Blacks in the US are among the population with the least trust and willingness to receive the vaccine treatment.
This safety concern can be mitigated with the prioritization strategy. For example, vaccinating health workers could make Blacks more confident. By showing that those (mostly) doctors are willing to get vaccinated, then the vaccine should not be dangerous. Transparent communication and dissemination of the justification for emergency use authorization should also help.
Indonesia is taking this strategy to the “next level” by vaccinating influencers like Raffi Ahmad, Dr. Tirta, and religious leaders in their first batch of vaccination. While ethically it can be argued that young people like them should be in the lower priority, their vaccination could bring confidence for the public with the vaccine. I’ll leave the delta calculation to the readers when you actually got a motion about this.
Another tricky problem is the implementation of prioritization itself. Some cases, notably in New York, have shown that strict implementation of the advisory guideline from CDC could backfire. Strict criteria for vaccination could bring an administrative burden that delays the vaccination itself. In New York, they have hundreds of thousands of vaccines in freezers. Some of them even need to be thrown out.
The strict and complex criteria mean the vaccine rollout cannot be given to people outside health workers and residents of nursing houses. This creates a problem when the healthcare facilities have remaining vials, either because the targeted recipient refuses to take the vaccine or because they have more than needed. The vials of doses are also given to the hospitals and health clinics instead of local health departments, making transferring the unused vial a harder task since the hospital/clinics don’t know which clinic has not gotten the vaccine yet or whether they are willing to get one.
To solve this problem, New York State finally expands the eligibility criteria, which now includes people aged over 75. The vaccines, which are originally limited to the clinic’s own employees only, are now offered and administered to other health centers. New York also sets up pop-up sites where eligible recipients could get the vaccine regardless of employment.
This lesson shows a clear trade-off between strict targeting and speed. Vaccines are limited and prioritization is important. However, if you want to distribute a vaccine as soon as possible, strict prioritization could get in the way. Biden’s administration is aiming to vaccinate 100 million people on his first 100 days at the office. Achieving this would need a lot of new policies or even a new distribution strategy altogether.
It was quite a big task for Biden’s administration. According to sources within the Biden administration, there is barely any strategy to built on from during Trump’s presidency.
