Being Local
Week three in Padang and I have learned enough of the local language to be polite and order food at any restaurant or café, which I have been exploiting. Padang food is famous even in other regions of Indonesia, and I have begun to figure out why. While everyone will tell you to try the beef rendang, which you should, you should also try the mie goreng. This fried noodle dish has become my favorite local food, and each café adds its own flavor. Having a motorbike and braving the lawless Indonesian traffic has allowed me to try many of them.
While I now know my way around town, know some of the language, and love the local food, I am still very much an outsider. For the most part, the only other foreigners in Padang are surfers who largely stay around their hotel awaiting a ferry to Mentawai Island. So, everywhere I go I tend to stand out based skin color and height alone. When I walk anywhere in town people will typically yell “mister” or “Bule”, a local term for foreigners. However, I have not had one bad experience and Indonesian people continue to prove to be some of the nicest people I have ever met. Kids and young women ask to take pictures with me, café owners bring me samples of different foods to try, and everyone works with me to communicate. The Indonesian people have really made this trip something special.
I had the opportunity to teach for the first time when students from the university and PUSaKO asked me to teach them about how the U.S. legal system works. The most difficult hurdle that I encountered in the comparative discussion was the idea of the U.S. state court system. While Indonesia has lower courts, the fact that a constitutional challenge could start at the state court level or the federal level required the most explanation. Another interesting note is that many students here have asked me to talk about Loving v. Virginia, which I thought was fascinating. Of all U.S. Supreme Court decisions, I would have never guessed that Loving would be the most common point of discussion in Indonesia. Apparently, the 2016 film “Loving” was very popular in Indonesia and it has lead to many interesting discussions.
Indonesia’s election process continues to be a fascinating case study. Since the reform era began in 1998, the election process has changed in some way every five years with the election of a new National Parliament (MPR). In my comparative research, I discovered that the U.S. was paying close attention to the Indonesian presidential election in 1999, when Suharto finally relinquished power. In House Resolution 32 in 1999, the House of Representatives discussed the importance of the election and concluded that it was vital to the resolution of conflict over East Timor, as well as Democracy as a principle. In debate on the Floor, Representative Nancy Pelosi stated, “nothing could create a better climate for tolerance in the diverse country that Indonesia is than the legitimacy of a free and fair election.” The Resolution to support Indonesia in its new elections eventually passed with a vote of 421 to 6, with 14 not voting.
However, the United States and much of the rest of the world have seemed to lose interest in elections in the Indonesia. While the election of a national leader is critical for global politics, local elections embody the sprit of democracy and are vital in the decentralization of any nation. At the local level, Indonesia is broken down into provinces with an elected governor, and then regencies or cities with elected regents or mayors. The elections of these local leaders are called Pemilukada, and are a clear example of how democracy is still developing in this island nation. Since 1999, Pemilukada have been turbulent and strongly influenced by money politics. Until 2005, representatives from the MPR chose the local leaders, employing a form of indirect democracy that the Constitutional Court upheld as constitutional under the reformed 1945 Constitution. These elections are guided by national statutes, unlike the United States with a different election code in every state. One, centralized national election code might have provided more stability, but Indonesia’s central code changed every five years. As a result, there was an influx of Pemilukada election challenges to Indonesia’s Constitutional Court after the MPR granted the Court jurisdiction over the disputes in 2008. How these challenges should be handled is still a question today, with the most recent 2015 and 2016 Regional Election Laws calling for the MPR to create a special judicial body specifically designed for the Pemilukada disputes. However, the MPR has yet to create such a special body, and the next round of local elections is set for June 27th. For now the Constitutional Court of Indonesia will continue to handle the disputes despite the fact that the Court ruled it did not have jurisdiction over the challenges in 2014.