Indonesia Programme 2016 INDONESIA’S POLITICAL BACKGROUND In 1999, Indonesia held its first democratic elections since 1955. Elections are popular in Indonesia. They are well managed by the Elections Commission (KPU) and have high levels of voter turnout. Indonesia has the second-largest one-day election in the world (after the USA) and since 1999 there has been a huge growth in the number of political parties contesting the elections, although the number of parties that actually meet the threshold for a seat in parliament is much lower. However, most political parties are based around the personality of their leader rather than having a programme of policies and there is widespread corruption. Governments are usually a coalition of many political parties and the politicians involved are usually more focused on gaining power than representing the people. Indonesia has a relatively young population. 43.3% of the population are younger than 24 and 85.6% are younger than 54. However, the political scene is populated by the same familiar faces which have dominated Indonesian politics for the past decades. They tend to still be representing powerful vested interests. There is a glimmer of hope, however. In 2014 a new president was elected who is a complete political outsider, a former governor of Jakarta who is known for his pragmatic reform-minded style. THE APPROACH OF NIMD IN INDONESIA Until 2015, the core of NIMD’s programme in Indonesia was democracy education. By the end of 2014, the Democracy Schools had produced 1738 alumni in 8 regions. In the 2014 general elections, 179 Democracy School alumni ran for office and 16 were elected. 77 alumni were involved in the elections as officials. The alumni are organized in alumni organizations which engage in lobby & advocacy to address local issues like education, healthcare and pollution. In 2016, NIMD will be starting a new programme working with young politicians at the national level. Our aim is to equip young politicians with better political skills to fulfil their democratic role as elected representatives, as well as stimulating inclusive inter-party dialogue on democratic renewal. This programme will be implemented by Kemitraan – Partnership for Governance Reform.    Programme deviations/ToC Update: The Indonesia programme started in April 2016 with signing a contract with our new partner in Indonesia, Kemitraan. Firstly, the baseline measurement of the outcome level indicators was done, followed by an induction workshop at NIMD HQ in The Hague.
The results of the programme in 2016:
1.Secured commitment of the leaderships of 10 political factions in the House of Representative/Parliament (Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat – DPR) on the proposal to establish a theme based inter-party dialogue forum for young Members of Parliament;
2.Availability of short videos on issues related to tolerance, diversity and counter extremism to be used as triggering materials/themes/issues for inter-party dialogue;
3.Established network of video makers in 15 cities who can produce video messages on local or national issues to be shared in inter-party dialogue;
4.Established engagement between Kemitraan with the alumni of Sekolah Demokrasi through Forum Demokrasi Nusantara; and
5.Trained selected civil society activists on web-scrapping skill for data collection and analysis from social media (Twitter)

Unfortunately, the programme progress does not exactly match with the initial thought laid out in the annual plan 2016. This was because the contract was signed only in Q 2 of 2016 but also because engaging with politicians in Indonesia proved to be more difficult than initially thought. An important lesson learnt during 2016 is that engagement with political parties and politicians is not as easy as it was thought during the design of the program. Kemitraan’s experience in conducting advocacy in the parliament is different from the need to get the parliamentarians engaged in activities being prepared under INSPIRE program. There is a need for Kemitraan’s INSPIRE program team to really get itself familiarized and engaged with the “routine” of the MPs to get the program noticed and being prioritized. Establishing getting the buy-in of political leadership therefore took more time as anticipated (due to full parliamentary schedules). 

Because of this the originally planned IPD training has logistically also been postponed to 2017. However, one round-table was organised for young MPs and their staff to discuss priorities and expectations for the interparty dialogue platform. Due to conflicting agenda's and party priorities however, there were not so many MPS present, mostly their technical staff took part. Political actors are defined as the combined main target group of the Strategic Partnership: - (representatives of) political parties - politicians - (Members of) Parliament and its Committees - Other elected representatives at local levels. NIMD will primarily focus on political parties.