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A New Theatre-State in Bali? Aristocracies, the Media and Cultural Revival in the 2005 Local Elections

2007; Routledge; Volume: 31; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/10357820701373317

1467-8403

Graeme MacRae, I Nyoman Darma Putra,

Island Studies and Pacific Affairs

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgments This article is based on observations of the 2005 Pilkada and discussions between the two authors in Bali in May and June 2005 and subsequent email communications. It also draws on Darma Putra's knowledge of the contemporary political and media scene in Bali and MacRae's previous reflections on aspects of Balinese politics (2003, 2005). We are grateful also for insights gained in conversations with Michel Picard and exchanges of manuscripts with Ngurah Suryawan, Michel Picard and Henk Schulte-Nordholt, as well as useful suggestions from two anonymous reviewers and the editor of ASR. MacRae's visit to Bali in 2005 was partly funded by Massey University. He is grateful also to Susi Johnson for generous hospitality and Diana Darling and AA Ardi of Ubud for news and views. Thanks also to Adrian Vickers for his assistance in enabling Darma Putra to attend and present a version of this paper at the ASAA Conference, Wollongong, June 2006. Notes 1. We use the term "traditional" advisedly, to refer in an unproblematised way to political formations, ideas and practices that predate both the New Order and the colonial period. But they are "traditional" also in the sense that they are seen in popular Balinese thinking to be both indigenous and surrounded by a certain aura of ritual sanctity. For a discussion of the decentralisation policies and their implementation see Seymour and Turner and Aspinall and Fealy . For more comprehensive discussion of the background to and details of the new electoral system, see Jacqueline Vel's excellent article (2005) and Choi (2004). 2. Golkar is new wine in an old bottle – the official organisation of government during the Suharto regime reinvented as a modern democratic political party; PDI (Partai Demokrasi Indonesia) is associated with the political legacy of the first president Sukarno, split into two factions, the more prominent one (PDI-P) headed by Megawati Sukarnoputri, daughter of Sukarno and herself the immediate past president. For a more comprehensive discussion of political parties in the new electoral climate see Choi (2004). 3. The Balinese term puri is conventionally translated as "palace", and in fact has a very similar range of referents: to the building, the family, the institution and occasionally the (aristocratic) class as a whole. 4. Only the northern kingdom of Buleleng was taken over by the Dutch in the mid-nineteenth century. 5. For accounts of nineteenth-century kingdoms, see Geertz , MacRae , Schulte-Nordholt (1996) and Wiener . For their loss of power in the early twentieth century see MacRae , Schulte-Nordholt (1996) and Vickers . For their turn to business in the 1950s, see Geertz (1963). On contemporary puri, see MacRae (, ), Parker , Pedersen (2005). On local politics in Bali during the late New Order period see Warren (1993). 6. Analyses of the politics of the immediate post-New Order period (e.g. Robison and Hadiz, ; Schwartz, ; Renton-Green, ; Hasibuan, ; Vel, ) stress the survival of New Order elites, as well as the roles of various other parties including the military, Islamic elements, and gangsters [preman] but make no mention of traditional aristocracies. However it is also notable that all of these studies refer to "Indonesia" in a very generalised sense (often in practice reducible to Java or even Jakarta); none mentions, let alone focuses, on Bali. 7. It is important however to note that this retreat from the formal political arena was not total. The leaders of PDI in Bali have long been from Puri Satria and Puri Kesiman, while members of their rival Puri Pemecutan were prominent in the Golkar of the New Order period. Golkar though was usually led by former military people such as I Dewa Gede Oka and I Ketut Sundria, and its previous chairman was I Gusti Ngurah Alit Yudha, son of the independence hero I Gusti Ngurah Rai. The current chairman however is Cokorda Budi Suryawan, from Puri Ubud, who has emerged as a career politician in the post-New Order period. 8. Robinson (, p. 197, p. 258) has argued convincingly against the reduction of the politics of the pre-New Order periods to such patterns of "traditional" affiliation and alliance. His point is well taken, but our point here is that it has been perhaps too well taken and that these almost-forgotten patterns have remained a significant part of the contemporary social realities of many Balinese to re-emerge into the formal political arena half a century later. 9. The titles Anak Agung (AA) and Ida Bagus (IB) indicate aristocratic [triwangsa] descent. Names without such prefixes indicate non-aristocratic [jaba] descent. In the Pilkada itself, and henceforth here, the pairs of candidates will be referred to by their combined and hyphenated last names, e.g. Sumer-Oka. 10. The backroom dimensions of Pilkada 2005 undoubtedly include the inevitable "money politics" and party affiliations emphasised in other accounts (e.g. Choi, 2004). This essay focuses on other dimensions of the political process, but part of our argument is that in this election these conventionally political-economic aspects appear to have been less important than elsewhere and than the factors we focus on here. 11. Although our reference here is to visits to persons of higher status, the terms are in fact used for all the visits of candidates to their various constituencies. 12. Our rather generalised reference to "the media" refers primarily to newspapers and television, but especially to the control over information represented by their combination in the Bali Post Media Group referred to below. 13. Only one pair of candidates (from Bangli) did not visit, for reasons unknown to us. 14. For accounts (in Indonesian) of Ketut Nadha's life and work see Dwikora Putra and Supartha (2001). 15. Since then BPMG has moved into partnerships with other local TV stations in Jogjakarta, Semarang, Bandung and Palembang. For a comprehensive history of the media in Bali see Darma Putra's PhD thesis (2003). 16. The media climate during the New Order was obviously more complex and ambiguous than this, as Sen and Hill's definitive and nuanced study shows. Our comments rely heavily on their work but our purpose is a more generalised picture that no doubt sacrifices subtlety in the interests of comparison. But more importantly, Sen and Hill's analysis is, like most of the political analysis referred to above, fairly Java-centric and in fact makes no specific reference to Bali, which is significantly different in several ways. For this we rely on our own experience and Darma Putra's own local study (2003). 17. Unless otherwise noted, all the publications referred to here are in Bahasa Indonesia and translations are by the authors. Bahasa Indonesia derives from Malay, the precolonial language of trade throughout (pen)insular Southeast Asia. It became the language of colonial administration and is now the official national language of bureaucracy, education and communication between people from different parts of the country. It is spoken with varying degrees of fluency by most people, especially the younger and the better-educated ones, but is a second language for most people, including Balinese. 18. In the mid-1960s, the military, as part of its statutory function in civil society, established newspapers in most provinces of Indonesia, including one in Bali called Angkatan Bersendjata, as the voice of military and government. It was renamed Nusa Tenggara in 1978 and Nusa in 1998. Since the mid-1980s, the Surabaya daily Jawa Pos expanded its distribution and coverage to Bali, presumably because of the large population of East Javanese immigrants there. In the late 1990s, it added a supplement Radar Bali providing local news. 19. The other locally based TV channel, TVRI Bali, has lost most of its viewers because it is seen as the voice of a largely discredited government, or even as a remnant of the New Order. Ironically, since the fall of Suharto it has also suffered from management and financial problems. 20. Although unusual nowadays, this practice is not unknown in Indonesia. It was in fact practised in the past by the state broadcaster TVRI. 21. We understand that candidates paid a flat fee of Rp.700,000 for general coverage of their campaigns, but also that Bali Post newspaper charged more, Rp 1 million, which they described as "dana punia"[donation]. However, it is not clear exactly what this covered, as some aspects of their campaigns would have been covered as news anyway. Nor do we know whether any candidates declined to pay for coverage. But they did also pay for advertising in addition to this flat fee. 22. Satria named his new headquarters after his father, the founder of the Bali Post, "The K. Nadha Bali Press Building". 23. Local party leaders played an important role in mediating between candidates and the chief of Bali TV in order to make the visit well organised and politically meaningful propaganda. 24. "…misi dan visi Bali TV yang sangat mulia yaitu mengembangkan dan mengajegkan adat dan budaya Bali ditambah dengan pariwisata Bali…" Mengajegkan is the verb form of ajeg. 25. These titles translate loosely as "Ajeg Bali: an ideal" and "Bali approaches prosperity: various perspectives". 26. "ajeg Bali" bukanlah konsep stagnan, tetapi cita-cita dan strategi yang terus harus diperjuangkan untuk membuat Bali sejahtera". 27. As well as its Ajeg Bali content, Bali TV programming does include some programs of wider interest and more global origins such as a popular serialisation of the Indian epic Mahabharata and some programs from Voice of America. 28. Rp. = Rupiah, the currency of Indonesia, which at the time of writing is worth about Rp. 7000 per $A. 29. The names Agung-Sudikerta and Sumer-Oka refer to the names of the pairs of candidates. 30. It has been noted by several observers, including one of the reviewers of this article, that much of the style and flavour (even some of the terminology) of the electoral process promoted by BPMG is eerily and ironically reminiscent of that of New Order elections and indeed the regime's overarching ideology of Pancasila (as described by Morfit, ). It has also been suggested that other contemporary practices under the umbrella of Ajeg Bali, especially those relating to local security, are reminiscent of the New Order. We tend to agree and this is certainly a subject for further research. 31. The argument of this section implies some assumptions as to how these visual images are read by "ordinary Balinese", and as Mark Hobart has reminded us, Balinese are by no means uncritical believers of all they see/hear on television. While we have little evidence of how Balinese read these messages in such a direct form as interviews, our primary evidence, indeed the primary stimulus for this whole argument, lies in Darma Putra's own reactions as a Balinese, reinforced by his wider perceptions, as a journalist, of Balinese public opinion, supported again by MacRae's impressions over the period under consideration. 32. The final revisions to this paper were made on the day we heard of Clifford Geertz's passing, signalling the end of an era in Balinese studies. We would like to take this opportunity to salute his influence on this, possibly the first work in which his legacy will live on posthumously. 33. The aim of this paper is not a critique of political science; what we refer to here is a tendency to focus on the formal structures of political process, including parties, policies, leaders and the machinations of power relations between them. Our point here is that focus on these tends to ignore more subtle dimensions of the "political" embedded in ostensibly different social realms. 34. For an account of this last king and his loss of power, see Wiener .