Indonesia Programme 2017 1. Political update 2017 

Political elites and vested interests continue to dominate Indonesia's political system. Political outsiders can only join one of the established political parties and legislative election is dominated by individuals with political or business nexus thus providing limited opportunities for substantive reforms. The extensive power of the parliament to scrutinise and influence the national policies are often under-utilized due to lack of capacity of the Members of Parliament (MPs). Political parties invest little in training and education of their cadres to become good legislators that resulted in low policy initiatives and legislative products.  
In recent times, the youth has been invited to participate in politics but they are lacking in capacity and political power due to tight control of party oligarchs and absence of internal party democracy. The potentials within the youth as agents of change have not been maximally utilized and even those who are members of the political parties and MPs are given few opportunities or strategic positions thus becoming an obstacle to the development of an inclusive representative politics.  
The main reason for non-responsive political parties is related to their focus on power-gaining and power-sharing rather than serving the constituents. Engagement with their constituents is rare, except during elections. Coalitions between parties are mostly based on obtaining a share in power, mostly in the form of political appointments, and not on a trade-off of ideas and policies. Thus, the coalitions of parties is broad and fluid with little programmatic coherence. Furthermore, the virtually indistinguishable party programmes and ideologies, except perhaps between the Islamic and nationalist parties, makes it difficult for voters to hold parties and politicians accountable for their actions and potentially obstructs idea-based constructive political dialogue.  
On political culture, there is a low level of substantive civil-political consultations. The citizens also have few avenues to directly voice their concerns and opinions except by voting in elections which has little impact when it is the same familiar faces running for office and ineffective reses visits. Geographical distance between the politicians in Jakarta and their constituents which are dispersed across the archipelago and a lack of understanding among MPs as "people's representatives" added to the challenge. Additionally, there is an utter lack of public trust in the political parties that deepened the disconnect between the two that could further hinder the responsiveness and accountability of parties.
2. Programme & Theory of Change Update
The programme outlook for 2017 is very much in line with the original INSPIRE programme proposal. The programme will remain to be focussed on setting up and facilitating multiparty dialogue amongst young MP’s on issues of shared concern. Capacity strengthening will be added to the programme to strengthen the capacity of the target group in their dialogue skills but also building capacity and providing (innovative) means to contribute to informed debates. Furthermore we will start with activities supporting the parties towards becoming more programmatic.
In 2017 we will start actively linking the participating MPs with relevant civil society representatives, making use of Kemitraan’s wide network but also linking the politicians with a representative group of alumni of the former ‘democracy schools’ programme.     

The Theory of Change will remain unchanged in the light of the political update. 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.