Article

South East Asia Research

116
Understanding family SOAS 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0967828X16659571
sear.sagepub.com
failures of political
dynasties in regional
Indonesia
Edward Aspinall
Department of Political and Social Change, Australian National University, Australia

Muhammad Uhaib Asad

Islamic University of Kalimantan, Indonesia

Abstract
The rise to power of political dynasties in regional Indonesia has been the subject of much critical
analysis by scholars and journalists, with most seeing the phenomenon as a symptom of the wider
democratic shortcomings of the post-Suharto period. This article examines the successes and
travails of political dynasties in regional Indonesia by focusing on the province of Central Kali-
mantan. It begins by defining political dynasty, differentiating it from allied terms, outlining com-
peting scholarly explanations for dynastic formation, and noting the critical issue of inter-
generational succession. The article then examines subnational dynasty formation in Central
Kalimantan, where in seven out of eight districts in the relevant time period a sitting bupati (district
head) attempted to engineer dynastic succession, but succeeded in only two. The examination
shows that while political opportunity structure accounts emphasising state and party weakness
help explain the explosion of attempts to establish political dynasties in democratic Indonesia, the
failure of most such attempts to consolidate inter-generationally indicates that we must be cau-
tious in judging how stable these new political formations will become. Would-be subnational
dynasties in Indonesia continue to face formidable competing sources of political authority which
make it difficult for them to establish themselves over multiple generations.

Keywords
Central Kalimantan, local politics, political families

Corresponding author:
Edward Aspinall, Department of Political and Social Change, Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, College
of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University, Canberra ACT 2601 Australia.
Email: edward.aspinall@anu.edu.au
2 South East Asia Research

Siapa sih yg tidak akan mengorbitkan anaknya dalam dunia politik kalau bisa? [Who on earth wouldnt
launch their child into politics if they had the chance?] (Advisor to the bupati of East Kotwaringin
district, June 2013)

An emerging sub-theme in the burgeoning literature on local politics in Indonesia is the rise of
political dynasties in the countrys provinces and districts. Though we still do not know much
about the extent of, and variation within, this phenomenon, it is obvious that, all around the
country, local government leaders who were elected early in the period of post-Suharto dem-
ocratic decentralisation have endeavoured to install their relatives in government posts. In a
recent analysis focusing on the provinces of South Sulawesi, West Java and Banten, but also
drawing on wider examples, Buehler has found evidence for all but ubiquitous formation of
political dynasties at the district level, noting that many families have managed stay in power
across two executive election cycles with many trying to broaden their base to incorporate
legislative posts at different levels of government, to add to the executive government posts
they dominate (Buehler, 2013). Buehler concludes that The rapidly consolidating power of
political families is one sign of everything that is wrong with the system. As this quotation
indicates, the emergence of political dynasties is typically depicted as part of a wider set of
phenomena undermining the integrity of local democracy: the triumph of clientelistic over
programmatic politics, the victory of informal networks over political parties, the defeat of the
reform impulse by corruption and predatory behaviour. This conclusion has been strengthened
by the fact that dynastic-style local leaders have engaged in some of the most flagrantly
predatory and corrupt behaviour of the first decade and a half of democratic local politics in
Indonesia. Indeed, media, public and elite concern about the rise of political dynasties in
regional Indonesia became so intense that the electoral laws were amended in 2014 to prevent
local government leaders being succeeded by close family members (though the provision was
subsequently annulled by the Constitutional Court).
One place where dynasty formation has been prominent is the province of Central Kali-
mantan, the topic of this essay. The most important local family is the Narang clan, headed by
the chief of the provincial parliament, Atu Narang, and his brother, Teras Narang, the prov-
inces governor between 2005 and 2015. Our focus in this article, however, is the district level.
In most of the 14 districts in the province, signs of dynastic politics abound, with many district
heads (bupati) installing family members in legislative or other posts. In this article, we focus
on several such dynasties-in-formation, noting both their bases in politically connected business
sectors (notably timber, mining, palm oil and contracting) prior to moving into formal politics,
and their varied political strategies once in office. While our conclusions generally support the
overall tenor of the literature so far, with the emergence of political families clearly part of a
wider entrenchment of oligarchic politics, we also highlight challenges to dynastic
consolidation.
In particular, we focus on the critical issue of dynastic succession, selecting as our cases only
districts where incumbent bupati, having already served two terms in office, were unable to stand
for re-election in the round of pilkada (direct elections of local government heads) between 2010
and 2013.1 There were eight such districts in Central Kalimantan, and we identified attempts at
dynastic succession in seven of them (the one exception was a rather odd case, East Barito, where

1. The next round of pilkada began in 2015, but only one district in Central Kalimantan (East Kotawaringin)
has so far held an election as part of this round.
Aspinall and Asad 3

the bupati had served two terms but ran as a deputy bupati, and lost). That retiring bupati tried to
ensure their succession by sons, wives or other relatives in such a large proportion of our cases does
underline how widespread dynastic politics is becoming in regional Indonesia. Equally important,
however, was the fact that dynastic succession failed in five of these seven cases, a very low
success rate.2
In this article we focus on six of the seven districts where dynastic succession was attempted,
examining not only the facilitating conditions and sources of political strength that explain the
rise of political families, but also the many obstacles they encounter in entrenching their
positions.3 Our analysis of the reasons for the low success rate of dynastic succession suggests
that we need to avoid drawing hasty conclusions about how central dynastic politics might
become in Indonesian local politics. Rather than being a general phenomenon, it is possible that
the geographic spread of dynasties will be patchy, pointing to a need to move beyond purely
descriptive accounts and to think more analytically about patterns and sources of dynastic
authority. Accordingly, before we proceed with the analysis, it is important to clarify two main
analytical points. First, how do we define political dynasties and political families? And, sec-
ond, what theoretical explanations might we test in explaining their emergence in contemporary
Indonesia?

Conceptualising and explaining political families and dynasties

On the first point, many writings on political dynasties proceed without definitions, perhaps
because the family is assumed to be such a natural unit of social analysis that it requires no
explication. In day-to-day political discourse in Indonesia, meanwhile, the phrase dinasti politik
has already become a widely applied term. But family groups that get involved in politics vary
greatly in terms of the depth and extent of their power, and the roles assigned to family members.
We thus begin with a definition of the most simple group: a political family consists of a family
where more than one family member gains elected political positions in a particular geographic
unit. For the purposes of this essay, we are especially interested in political families where a
leading member attains the apex executive or legislative post in a district or province. However, a
political family by this definition could also include a family where, for example, two sisters
occupy positions in a district parliament.
A political family becomes a political dynasty only when it is able to extend its power tem-
porally, so that once the dynastys founder loses office, he or she is succeeded by a family member.
This success can be intra-generational (e.g. when the founder is succeeded by a spouse or sibling)
or inter-generational (typically, a child, son or daughter-in-law). This process of succession is
accelerated in Indonesia because of term limits (provincial governors and district heads can serve
only two five-year terms), meaning also that there has been what is probably an unusually large
number of attempts to engineer intra-generational succession, notably wives trying to succeed their
husbands. Because political dynasties are a feature only of the post-1998 democratic era, many
political families have not yet been tested in their ability to engineer succession. We do not yet

2. One of the two cases we count as dynastic succession (East Kotawaringin) is unusual and arguably should
not be so classified: the son-in-law of the bupati from a neighbouring district won an election when the
incumbent exhausted his two terms.
3. The exception is Katingan where, though one (failed) candidate had family ties to a retiring incumbent, he
was not closely related and these ties did not feature strongly in the election campaign.
4 South East Asia Research

know how many political families will transform themselves into dynasties proper, and whether
Indonesia will eventually match the record of neighbouring countries (notably, the Philippines) in
producing resilient multi-generational political dynasties.
There is another important dimension of the power of political families. This concerns the
familys ability to extend itself horizontally, referring to its ability to spread through differing
government agencies and through adjacent geographic units. Typically, such horizontal spread
occurs when members of the political family come to occupy legislative posts representing part of
the district or province headed by the founder. They can also take on important bureaucratic
functions, especially as heads of government bureaus at the provincial or district level (though this
can be harder to engineer given the bureaucratic requirements needed to fill such posts), or they can
win political positions in neighbouring districts. Some of the best known political families in
Indonesia have broad horizontal spread, extending their political control through several districts
in a single province, and occupying positions in provincial and district executive governments, as
well as seats in district, provincial and national legislatures. The best-known such families in
Indonesia are those of Ratu Atut Chosiyah, former governor of Banten, and Syahrul Yasin Limpo,
governor of South Sulawesi, both of which have spread their tentacles widely, holding district head
positions in the provinces concerned, numerous legislative seats in district, provincial and national
parliaments, as well as operating family businesses. Many other political families, however, are
much narrower, holding only a few positions in a single district.
Finally, we should note that political families are typically embedded in wider familial net-
works, most of whose members are not political officeholders, but who can be mobilised to support
the leaders in elections and other political campaigns. We define such a wider grouping as a
political clan. Given that in Indonesia (as in the Philippines: McCoy, 1994: 9) kinship is defined
bilaterally (through both the mothers and fathers line), and given the high birth rate until recent
times, most individuals can trace massive interlocking networks of family relationships should
they need to do so. In some parts of the country, such as in much of Eastern Indonesia, these
kinship structures play an important role in structuring core aspects of social life (such as the
maintenance of adat or custom) and are thus relatively readily mobilised for political purposes. In
Java, family structures are more amorphous and relatively centred on the nuclear family and
immediate relatives and are thus less amenable for political use.
In Central Kalimantan, where family and clan networks are important socially, most politi-
cians view their kinship networks as a core political resource. Many political candidates inter-
viewed in the course of this research emphasised that they first turned to family members when
building their success teams (the campaign teams that organise their election campaigns) and
that close relatives are their most reliable political supporters. In rural districts of Central
Kalimantan, as in many parts of Indonesia, political candidates typically achieve their highest
votes in their home villages and surrounding regions where their family ties are strongest, and
they often map their political support in terms of clan geography. In Java, family or clan
mobilisation is rarely so prominent in political strategy. It is an open question, therefore, as to
whether the emergence of a particular political family or dynasty will be linked to the mobili-
sation of a wider political clan. Moreover, even where a family does rely on clan mobilisation,
this is typically only one part of their strategy. Most family politicians also rely upon resources
that are similar to those mobilised by other elite politicians: bureaucratic positions, informal
networks, patronage and the like.
With these definitions and preliminary observations in hand, what theoretical explanations
might we advance to explain the emergence of political dynasties in post-Suharto Indonesia or, for
Aspinall and Asad 5

that matter, in other post-authoritarian states? Reviewing existing literature on Indonesia, and
drawing on research in South East Asia and beyond, we can distinguish two broad approaches.
The first approach focuses on political opportunity structure. This approach directs our
attention towards features of the political system that facilitate dynasty building or, more com-
monly, towards the absence of features that might forestall it. Obviously, in the Indonesian case,
the shift from authoritarian to democratic rule is critical, given that this shift created possibilities
for influential local actors to contest via elections for political positions that were previously
appointed, and thus reserved for individuals with appropriate bureaucratic credentials and, criti-
cally, who were favoured by Jakarta. Many provincial governors, district heads and mayors were
not even indigenous to the areas they governed; in the post-Suharto era, local networks and cre-
dentials are critically important (Buehler, 2009).
More broadly, the prominence of families, clans and cognate informal groupings in official
politics is generally seen as a function of state weakness and the mutual inter-penetration of state
and social forces that occurs when the state lacks institutional integrity. This understanding has
been highly influential in studies of developing-world states since works of Migdal (1988, 2001;
see also McCoy, 1994: 1019). One variant of this explanation is historical and, as explained by
McCoy, concerns the sequencing of class and state formation: in countries where the development
of strong landed aristocracies precedes the establishment of strong states, local states institutions
are likely to be captured by powerful landed families as they come into being (McCoy, 1994: 56).
Though this version of the approach cannot explain the emergence of new political families in
regional Indonesia many decades after state building commenced, their rise might be viewed as a
symptom of the states weakness, or at least of its penetration by informal shadow state networks
that organise power outside formal rules (Aspinall and van Klinken, 2011; Hidayat, 2007).
As well as highlighting state weakness generally, many analyses of Indonesia point to the
absence, or at least weakness, of other political institutions that could counter the influence of
political families. In particular, the weaknesses of political parties as a means of recruiting local
leaders and running their elections is generally seen as one reason why locally powerful and
wealthy elites, including those from political families, have been able to dominate local politics
(Buehler and Johnson Tan, 2007; Mietzner, 2010, 2011). Writers like Hadiz (2010) and Winters
(2013) see the emergence of political dynasties as a symptom of a political system marked by the
absence of movements based in the subordinate classes, with predation by dynasties and clans
merely one part of a broader complex of phenomena stemming from the resulting hegemonic
power of oligarchs.
All such variants of the political opportunity structure approach thus explain the dominance of
political families as being a consequence of the absence of countervailing political institutions or
forces, whether the key absence is strong state institutions, effective political parties, counter-
hegemonic movements or, conceivably, other institutions. While this emphasis appropriately
directs our attention towards the broader political context in which political families are embedded
and emerge, it also leaves many questions unanswered and rests on some potentially problematic
assumptions. Such an approach, much like the local politician in Central Kalimantan whose
comment begins this article, assumes that all politicians will naturally endeavour to entrench their
relatives in political power if given the opportunity, especially in a political system founded on
rent-seeking and patronage, when office-holders are empowered to build up their personal for-
tunes. Put most simply, the political opportunity structure approach argues that political families
and dynasties dominate because they can. Rather than asking why politicians seek to build family
power, it naturalises the family as the basic unit of political contestation, in much the same way that
6 South East Asia Research

primordialist understandings of ethnicity naturalise ethnic groups, without asking how, why and
under what conditions such groups are themselves constructed and mobilised by political actors.
It is thus appropriate to supplement political opportunity approaches with a second broad class
of explanations that emphasise dynasty building as strategy. Rather than assuming that individual
politicians will seek to aggrandise their families if given the opportunity, this approach directs us to
ask why relying upon family networks and building dynasties might be an effective political
strategy among the universe of alternative strategies available to local political actors. A number of
possible approaches suggest themselves here. Let us mention three.
The first is that dynasty building might be a defensive strategy. Given that the key to political
success in regional Indonesia frequently lies in the attainment and distribution of patronage
resources in ways that are formally illegal, it is not surprising that political officeholders will seek
ways of building power that also protect themselves from legal investigations or prosecutions (in
mid-2012, the national government revealed that just under half of all local government heads had
been or were being investigated in corruption cases: Kompas, 2012). Installing family members in
power may be one way to do that. Thus, Buehler (2013) writes that establishing a dynasty is often
also a protection strategy: incumbents want to be succeeded by their family members in order to
shield themselves and their nearest and dearest from being jailed for corruption. New power-
holders who are relatives can be expected to reliably cover up the evidence of their predecessors
wrongdoing.
Protection from legal sanction, however, points to a wider issue: the critical importance of
building trust in the context of clientelist politics (e.g. Bjarnegard, 2010: 184). It is not simply that
political actors who rely on the informal distribution of patronage must fear law enforcement; they
also know that the informal deals they make cannot be enforced legally and are thus constantly at
risk of being dishonoured by their own allies and collaborators. In the organisation of election
campaigns, for example, political candidates in local elections in Indonesia face constant problems
of embezzlement and defection by the brokers who are recruited to their campaign teams (Aspinall,
2014b). Similar acts of betrayal can occur in all the deals to pass legislation, arrange promotions,
make back-channel payments, reward supporters, manipulate tendering processes, lobby national
politicians and do the thousands of other things that are the daily stuff of shadow-state politics in
regional Indonesia. Where trust is a rare but valuable political commodity, building an inner circle
that consists partly of family members, or placing family members in strategic political positions,
might be one way to minimise the risks of defection, embezzlement and other forms of betrayal
that politicians see as a major challenge.
A second approach might view the family as a network resource. As noted above, the political
family whose members occupy key government posts in a particular locale might be embedded in a
wider clan structure, which can be used as a network of political mobilisation, either during
election campaigning or at other moments. In this regard, family and clan structures might be just
one of several potential networks that politicians can rely upon to mobilise support (parties,
business networks, the bureaucracy etc.). In some places, however, clans might be particularly
important in organising social affiliations, and it can be expected that in such places political
families will be more prominent.
A third and related approach views the family as an identity resource. It is possible to treat the
family or clan as an identity category just like any other (ethnicity, region, religion, etc.) and to ask
how the category is constructed and how individuals are encouraged to view themselves as
affiliated to that identity and owing it their loyalty. This approach has been used productively in the
study of clan politics in Central Asia (e.g. Schatz, 2004) and is most useful in places where clans
Aspinall and Asad 7

are mobilised as a network resource in the way described in the preceding paragraph. Likewise, in
parts of eastern Indonesia, in particular, it has already been convincingly shown that family and
clan structures can be used for the purposes of electoral mobilisation (Rohi, 2016; Sumampouw,
2016). Extending this approach, even if the family is seen as being a relatively narrow group, it
might nevertheless be widely identified as holding desirable attributes that could be useful
politically. Writing on the Philippines, McCoy notes that elite families . . . are often thought to
transmit their character and characteristics to younger generations (McCoy, 1994: 8). There may
be many political attributes of the family which are seen as being inherited and which can be
beneficial politically; likewise, family membership might itself be seen as a signalling device, for
example as a sign that the individual concerned has the political backing and financial support of
the district head.

Central Kalimantan: Attempts at dynastic succession at the district

level
Central Kalimantan province has hosted among the most widespread dynastic politics of post-
Suharto Indonesia. As with many local government leaders in the first decade of democratisation,
most of the political families who emerged here can trace the roots of their influence and wealth to
the New Order years, when key family members were senior bureaucrats and/or involved in
extractive industries. During the New Order, natural resources especially timber were a
massive source of rents throughout Kalimantan. The massive deforestation of those years has now
largely run its course, having exhausted most virgin forest with devastating environmental effects.
The central place once occupied by timber in the provinces political economy has now been
assumed by successor industries, notably mining and palm oil. Involvement in rent-seeking in post-
Suharto natural resource industries is not surprisingly therefore a theme that weaves itself through
most of the following family stories. Another important part of the background is demography:
around 47 percent of the provinces population consists of a complex array of indigenous Dayak
subethnic groups, for whom clan structures are an important part of social organisation and
therefore, potentially, a significant political resource for would-be politicians. Despite this, most
attempts to engineer dynastic succession have failed.

Pulang Pisau: The Amur family

Pulang Pisau is a district that was created in the early post-Suharto years, being split off from the
larger Kapuas district in 1999. Like many of Central Kalimantans districts, it was heavily logged
in the past, and now hosts a variety of industries, prominent among them palm oil and mining. It
was ruled between 2003 and 2013 by bupati Achmad Amur, a former bureaucrat who harboured
high ambitions for himself and his family. He came to power benefiting from local roots, outside
experience and family wealth. Of mixed Dayak, Banjar and Bakumpai heritage he was the son of a
wealthy local timber exporter, with the family also owning large land holdings, notably coconut
plantations, in the Bahaur region of the district. Achmad Amur, like several in his family, received
tertiary education in his youth (still rare in this part of Kalimantan at that time) and worked outside
the region in bureaucracy, preparing him for his successful pitch for office in 2003.
Over the next 10 years, Achmad Amur succeeded in installing family members in political
positions and significantly increasing their wealth. By the end of his second term, his family had
experienced considerable horizontal spread, but mostly confined to political institutions within
8 South East Asia Research

Pulang Pisau district itself. In a 25-member DPRD elected in 2009, eight legislators were close
family members of the bupati, including two brothers, a sister, his wife, as well as more distant
relatives. They included the speaker and deputy speaker, and were spread across four parties:
Golkar, PKB (National Awakening Party), PAN (National Mandate Party) and PPP (Development
Unity Party). Thus, the family spread itself through several different parties in an attempt to
dominate a legislature where (like many in regional Indonesia) party representation was highly
fragmented. This spread made this political family distinctive from those that concentrate on a
single party (the Narang family, for example, is entirely focused on PDI-P).
It became an open secret in the district that the Amur family was using its political dominance to
enrich itself. Locals regale visitors with stories about how the family acquired large landholdings
during Achmads tenure. One senior district official claimed DPRD decisions totalling 52 billion
rupiah in value directed infrastructure projects towards the family. Such rumours, plus a host of
other issues, such as disputes that arose as a result of expropriation of private land for government
projects, and the frequent failure of the DPRD to reach quorum given that many members of the
family lived in Banjarmasin, the capital of neighbouring South Kalimantan province, contributed
to growing local disillusionment with the family.
In fact, Amurs story is also one of failure, with him failing both to win the governorship of the
province in 2010 and to engineer dynastic succession in 2013. In 2010, befitting an ambitious
bupati, he tried to run for the governorship. Not only did he believe he was supported by his Golkar
party, he was also backed by all seven Muslim bupati in the province who agreed that they would
not run against each other, in order to unify the Muslim vote against incumbent Teras Narang who
was, unusually, a Christian governor in a majority-Muslim province. This agreement broke down
when Yuliansyah, the bupati of North Barito, decided he also wanted to stand for election, and did
so with the endorsement of the Golkar party. Predictably, the Muslim vote split and Teras Narang
was victorious.
When Amurs second term expired in early 2013, he put forward his brother Idham, the DPRD
deputy speaker, as his successor. This decision was made over the objections of Abdurrahman, the
older brother and DPRD speaker who also wanted the nomination. Idham was favoured partly
because Amur believed him to have better political skills, but partly because he was more cashed
up, being very successful in business, notably as a construction contractor and barge operator
(barges being an important means of transportation for coal and other products along Kali-
miantans rivers). Idham was nominated by an array of mostly Islamic parties. Since the dispute
around the gubernatorial election, meanwhile, the leadership of Golkar in the district had passed
from the Amur family to Amurs deputy bupati, Edy Pratowo, who then, in a pattern that is
common in Indonesia, emerged as the successful challenger. Edy, a former journalist, was rela-
tively young and charismatic, and was able to use his Javanese ethnicity to appeal to the many
Javanese migrants in the district. He also benefited from the support of the Narang family and,
therefore, of PDI-P. Continuing the inter-family rivalry from the gubernatorial election of 2010,
the sister of Teras and Atu Narang, Rustaty Narang, was Idhams running mate as deputy bupati.
Edy and Rustaty won the election convincingly, in what one local bureaucrat characterised as a
victory of charisma over money (confidential interview, 20 June 2013). Many other informants
pointed to a widespread weariness or boredom (kejenuhan) with the Amur family and their
dominance, and celebrated the outcome as the defeat of a powerful dynasty. Idham won only in a
few places, including Bahaur, where his family was based and where community leaders benefited
from the familys munificence in the awarding of projects. Despite this defeat, the family retains
strong roots in district business and politics, and Achmad Amur won a seat in the provincial
Aspinall and Asad 9

legislature in 2014. Though he failed to compete for the governorship the following year, it is
widely expected another family member will try to retake the bupati position in the next local
election.

Seruyan and East Kotawaringin: Darwan Ali and son

Unlike most dynasts discussed in this article, Darwan Ali came from relatively modest
beginnings. Born in Sembuluh in present day Seruyan district (until the formation of that
district in 2002, Sembuluh was part of East Kotawiringin), he was, according to one of his
business partners from his early years, the son of an ordinary farmer who tried to make it in
the world of contracting in the early 1990s, but struggled to succeed (confidential interview, 24
June 2013). He tried his luck for a while in Banjarmasin (the major commercial centre in
southern Kalimantan), where he made valuable business connections, especially in the palm oil
industry that was then beginning its long boom. Until the end of the Suharto years, however, he
was still struggling to establish himself in official life (for instance, failing to become the
leader of the local branch of the contractors association, when the regional secretary vetoed his
appointment). His big breakthroughs came in the early 2000s, through two avenues: politics
and palm oil.
Politically, like most contractors and other businesspeople who tried to live off construction
projects, land deals and similar rent-intensive parts of the economy, he was aligned with Golkar
during the New Order. After democratisation, he switched to the PDI-P and sought the
endorsement of Atu Narang, then ascendant in Central Kalimantan. A man who, in the words of
one relative, liked organisational life, Darwan secured the chair of the PDI-P branch first in
East Kotawaringin and then Seruyan, where he had been one of the leading figures promoting
the formation of this new district. He secured the backing of a wealthy ethnic Chinese busi-
nessman and contractor who, according to some of Darwans former associates, provided him
with the funds needed to buy enough votes in the Seruyan DPRD to be elected as bupati by that
body in 2003.
Meanwhile, by the late 1990s, Darwan had already begun to prosper in business, as, in the words
of a relative, the first person to bring the science of oil palm from South Kalimantan to East
Kotawaringin (confidential interview, 24 June 2013). The same relative observed:

He was the first person to bring big palm oil investors, like Agro Indo Mas and Mestika Sembuluh, to
Sampit . . . his role was to free up the land and bring in the investors; he was really a kind of land agent.

At the same time, he also established his own companies active in oil palm, contracting and
other sectors. Informants disagree as to how rich he was before he became bupati, but he became
indisputably wealthy (and now ranks as one of the richest men in the two districts) after doing so,
both as a result of his continuing closeness to the plantation companies and his own expanding
business interests. Flushed with funds, he was easily able to ensure his re-election as bupati of
Seruyan in 2008, in a direct election that, according to his opponents, was marked by very high
levels of vote-buying, and with many of the palm oil companies directing their workers to support
the bupati en bloc. As one sign of his local prestige and self-image he engineered the takeover
of the major private university in Sampit, renaming it the Universitas Darwan Ali and requiring
Seruyan public servants to take their training courses exclusively there.
10 South East Asia Research

Consolidating his personal power, Darwan Ali endeavoured to broaden his familys political
control, both horizontally into legislative institutions and to the neighbouring district, with it being
widely believed that he was also aiming at a future gubernatorial nomination. Taking a leaf out of
the Narang book, he focused exclusively on the PDI-P as the family vehicle. A daughter, Iswanti,
was elected to the provincial parliament and Iswantis husband, H Supian Hadi, was elected to the
East Kotawaringin parliament in 2009, heading the party which, having the largest representation,
secured his appointment as DPRD speaker. Then, in 2010, with major financial support from his
father-in-law, Supian Hadi was elected as bupati of East Kotawaringin. We count this as one of our
two cases of dynastic succession, though it might also be viewed as an example of horizontal
spread of a dynasty from one district to another.
Eventually, in 2013, Darwan Ali tried to engineer a dynastic succession in Seruyan itself, in
what must count as one of Indonesias more unusual direct elections of local government heads.
Such elections are usually multi-candidate affairs, but in Seruyan all 12 parties represented in the
district legislature nominated Darwans son, Achmad Riswandi H Darwan Ali (usually known as
Haji Iwan) in what was a transparent attempt to block the emergence of viable challengers. It was
an open secret that this outcome was obtained by the payment of large sums to party leaders in
Palangkaraya (DPRD members we interviewed detailed the sums paid). Such payments are the
norm in local elections in Indonesia, but there was a widespread sense that Darwan had over-
reached. As one of his own relatives explained, He overdid it, taking all of the parties to nominate
his son. He could have just bought seven parties, and given the rest of the money to the voters
(confidential interview, 17 April 2013). This move also inadvertently reinforced growing local
perceptions that Darwan Ali had become arrogant (a sin of the first order in local politics in
Indonesia), with growing discontent about his expanding family riches, land and other disputes
surrounding the oil palm industry he had so assiduously promoted, and about the alleged slow pace
of infrastructure development especially road building in outlying parts of the district. Even the
laudatory local media coverage began to backfire: The reporting of the incumbent bupati and his
son really made you want to vomit, it was so over the top and so beautiful (confidential interview,
local journalist, 16 April 2013).
With all the parties locked up behind Haji Iwan, the only option for would-be opponents was to
stand as an independent candidate and Sudarsono, a PKS (Prosperous Justice Party) member of the
provincial parliament, did just this. In what was described by his supporters as an ant-versus-
elephant contest (interview, H Wahudyi, 18 April 2013), Sudarsono campaigned strongly on the
theme of change and was able to rely on the active support of both disenchanted members of the
local elite (including some party members who had been cut out of the deals to support Haji Iwan)
and a formidable grassroots machinery. One member of the local political elite estimated that while
Darwan spent around 50 billion rupiah (around US$5million) in trying to secure his sons election,
Sudarsono and his supporters expended only 3 billion (US$300,000). Nevertheless, Sudarsono won
a remarkable victory.
The defeat in Seruyan was a significant blow to Darwan Hadi, who it was widely believed
harboured future political ambitions, wishing either to one day become governor of Central
Kalimantan or of a possible future province of Kotawaringin. All has not been plain sailing in East
Kotawaringin either, with major problems within the family after it emerged that Supian Hadi had
secretly married the winner of a television dangdut singing contest, without the knowledge of his
first wife, Iswanti, and making a dowry payment of 5 billion rupiah (US$500,000) in the process
(Tribunnews, 2013). Such sexual scandals are themselves a familiar feature of local politics in
contemporary Indonesia (Aspinall, 2014a).
Aspinall and Asad 11

North and South Barito: Achmad Yuliansyah and Baharuddin Lisa

We now turn to two districts where two-term bupati tried, but failed, to engineer succession by
their wives. In North Barito, as with many district heads in Central Kalimantan, Achmad
Yuliansyah had previously been a career civil servant, working his way up through the local
bureaucracy, notably in the forestry department, where he built useful political and business
connections, including with the wealthy South Kalimantan timber baron-cum-politician, Haji
Leman (Morishita, 2011). With Haji Lemans sponsorship, Yuliansyah was elected bupati of North
Barito in 2003 and developed a formidable reputation as a patronage politician in subsequent years.
During his two terms, North Barito experienced a mining boom, especially in coal, with the bupati
issuing 300 mining licenses, a massive source of patronage funds. He was accused of a typical
range of corrupt activities by local NGOs and rivals, including involvement in illegal logging
(some of the accusations related to his previous career as a civil servant). There were also land
conflicts around mining sites and plantations. Close family members came to occupy senior
bureaucratic positions in the district, including as heads of the some of the government bureaus that
were most wet with patronage: education, public works, agriculture and health. This was a family
that was developing considerable horizontal spread.
After his failed bid for the governorship in 2010 (see above), and with his second term expiring
in 2013, Yuliansyah tried to secure the bupati position for his wife, Relawati. She stood as the
candidate of Golkar, the largest party in the local legislature, but was defeated by a local busi-
nessman, Nadalsyah, who had a reputation for charitable works. Relawatis running mate ascribed
Relawatis loss to complacency on her and her husbands part:

All the competitors played money politics by handing out money to voters, while Relawati waited and
waited for the right time to give out cash. Her sympathisers became disappointed and turned to support
the other candidates. . . . Pak Yuliansyah had promised there would be a money boom but that boom
just never exploded right up to voting day. (Interview with Purman Jaya, 16 July 2013)

These observations were confirmed in our conversations with ordinary citizens who, though
signed on as members of Relawatis success team, were not paid in cash as promised and
consequently defected to Nadalsyah. Another critical weakness was at the elite level. Yuliansyah
had been involved in conflicts with rival district powerbrokers, notably with Apriannoor, the
Golkar chief and DPRD speaker, who had also wanted to be nominated by Golkar as bupati, had
secured the approval of the provincial leadership for this, but then was trumped by Yuliansyahs
superior lobbying power (and, it was assumed, his larger payments) in Jakarta. Yuliansyah also had
poor relations with his regional secretary, the districts chief civil servant, who undermined him in
the bureaucracy, typically a critical campaign tool for incumbents. Facing internal conflict within
the elite, and with accusations of corruption circulating, the key themes of change and a mood of
kejenuhan familiar from other locales were also widely expressed by our informants in the region.
The combination ensured a humiliating defeat for Relawati in the 2013 poll.
The situation in South Barito was so similar that we can summarise it very briefly. Here, the
two-term bupati (20012011) was Baharuddin Lisa, another former bureaucrat (his highest post
before being elected as bupati was as regional secretary of East Kotawaringin). With the district
another centre of coal mining, there was also extensive rent-seeking under his leadership, with
Baharuddin becoming very wealthy and securing the provincial chairmanship of the Partai
Demokrat (President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyonos party) and competing as deputy governor
12 South East Asia Research

candidate alongside Achmad Amur in the 2010 gubernatorial election. When he exhausted his two
terms in office, Baharuddin engineered the nomination of his wife, Wartiah Thalib, as his suc-
cessor. However, there was considerable elite and popular resistance to a continuation of the
familys power motivated by similar concerns as in North Barito: frustrations with alleged
nepotism within the bureaucracy (Baharuddin was accused of providing many members of his big
family with civil service positions) and lack of progress in infrastructure and other development
policies. There was even also a similar conflict with the regional secretary, who also stood as
bupati. These factors caused a coalescence of a large part of the local elite around a rival candidate,
Farid Yusran, the candidate of the PDI-P (who also received considerable financial backing from
other PDI-P notables in the province, including Willy Yoseph, bupati of neighbouring Murung
Raya district). Accordingly, Farid roundly defeated Wartiah in the 2011 district election, but once
in power, according to our informants, he began to replicate the pattern of patronage politics
practiced by his predecessor.

Murung Raya: The Yoseph brothers

Our only pure case of successful (intragenerational) dynastic succession in Central Kalimantan is
in the district of Murung Raya, a relatively remote, interior district that was created out of North
Barito in 2002. Between 2003 and 2013 the district was led by bupati Willy Yoseph, one of 11
children of Midel Yoseph, a prominent local public servant and several times during the New
Order a DPRD member representing Golkar. The family was already one of the most prominent,
wealthiest and best educated in the area when the district was formed. Willy, a forestry graduate,
was involved in the timber industry towards the end of its boom years and, like many ambitious
politicians in Central Kalimantan, he aligned himself with PDI-P early in reformasi. After the new
district was formed he was elected by the DPRD as bupati, and ruled it for a decade during which
the rapid expansion of mining, especially coal, in the district became a major new source of
revenue and patronage. By the end of his second term, family members were significant players
in the legislature and bureaucracy: one brother, Hendy, was DPRD speaker, another (Likon)
headed the Education Bureau. However, Willys children were too young to succeed him as bupati
when he reached his term limit. Instead, it was his brother Perdie, a public servant who had twice
served as a subdistrict head in distant Lamandau district, who did so.
Perdie won convincingly in the first round in a direct election in 2013, running as a PDI-P
candidate and campaigning on party policies promoting health insurance and social welfare.
However, local informants were unanimous in ascribing Perdies victory to the successful record
of his older brother. In other districts we visited, local informants often spoke of kejenuhan
(weariness) with overreach by ruling families and incumbents poor policy performance. While
nobody in Murung Raya claimed that patronage and personal enrichment were absent, and while
the extent of the Yoseph familys horizontal penetration of state institutions resembled that of the
Amur family in Pulang Pisau or Achmad Yuliansyah in North Barito, Willy Yoseph had not
neglected infrastructure and other development policy during his tenure. Most informants were
impressed by the rapid improvement of facilities in the district capital, including the construction
of grand government buildings and places of worship (often a point of local pride in rural districts).
Accordingly, as one of our informants put it, many hoped that Perdie would be a photocopy of his
older brother. At the same time, Willy was a strong candidate in the gubernatorial elections, which
he lost narrowly in January 2016.
Aspinall and Asad 13

Conclusion
These cases from Central Kalimantan confirm that political opportunity structure explanations of
the type summarised at the start of this article must remain important in our attempts to understand
political families in Indonesia, as elsewhere. At a basic level, the family stories summarised above
present compelling evidence for McCoys contention that dynastic politics are likely to emerge
when rents coexist with weak states. In each case, these families not only tried to entrench
themselves in office, they also used their political power to access resource rents (notably in
timber, mining and palm oil) and expand family wealth. They did so in conditions in which
political institutions that might rival family power were relatively weak. Though most chose the
PDI-P (the strongest party in Central Kalimantan) as their party vehicle, party affiliation had little
effect on their wider political behaviour. Both Darwan Alis family and the Amur clan, for
example, melded business and political power in similar ways, though the former was exclusively
focused on the PDI-P and the latter spread itself through multiple parties.
As well as looking at state and party institutions, however, our analysis suggests it is also
important to determine how political families fit into wider informal political alignments. In a
recent analysis of why corrupt local officials fall from power in some districts of Indonesia, but
elsewhere sustain themselves in office, Djani (2012; see also Tans, 2012) has argued that variations
in local political configurations are what count. Where local elites are factionalised and inter-elite
rivalry is high, and where local civil societies are relatively independent, possibilities emerge for
broad anti-incumbent alliances that can force corrupt powerholders from office. This was what
happened in North and South Barito and Pulang Pisau, where dynastic succession plans were
scuppered by opposition among local bureaucrats and legislators. More broadly, these cases also
suggest that in an era of direct elections of local government heads, mass preferences also matter.
As Mietzner (2006) observed early in this era, there is plenty of evidence that Indonesian voters
will use direct local elections to punish very poor performance, including excessive corruption,
even if such elections do not significantly broaden the pool from which winning candidates are
recruited. This is most clearly illustrated in the case of Seruyan where Darwan Ali was able to bully
or buy support from local elites, including all the parties in the district legislature, to support the
ascension of his son. Even so, popular disenchantment with him was such that a relatively under-
resourced and marginal elite player defeated his son in the key succession election.
What about family and dynasty as a strategy of power in the terms introduced earlier in this essay?
Our fieldwork findings do not allow us to canvas all the possibilities: for instance, though many
informants suggested that political leaders were engineering dynastic succession as a defensive
strategy to hobble future corruption prosecutions, we lacked the resources to investigate such
charges. One intriguing implication of our research, however, concerns the relationship between
political families the relatively narrow group who dominate political positions in a particular locale
and the wider clans they are part of. To what extent might we say that family politics are an
extension of clan politics? As noted, clans are central to social structure in Central Kalimantan, and
political candidates typically mobilise these kinship networks when competing in elections. How-
ever, virtually all candidates do this, not only those who are part of successful political families.
Indeed, candidates we interviewed in Central Kalimantan who most emphasised their clans as a basis
of mobilisation tended to be outsiders trying to challenge incumbents, perhaps because they lacked
access to the bureaucracy and other resources that incumbents had at their disposal. Given that
political families in Central Kalimantan have mostly been unsuccessful in extending themselves in
office beyond the tenure of the familys founder, an intriguing counter-intuitive possibility suggests
14 South East Asia Research

itself, contrary to our speculations at the start of this article: perhaps dynastic politics are especially
vulnerable in areas where clans are central to wider political mobilisation. Political elites who feel
excluded by a dominant family will be able to engage in counter-mobilisation of their own clans to
bring that family down. Indeed, if patronage rewards are distributed partly along clan lines (we have
the strongest suggestion of this in Pulang Pisau), this could fuel widespread resentment in rival clans,
contributing to the commonplace disenchantment with incumbent families we encountered. Clans
could thus be a counterweight to family dominance.
Overall, and perhaps surprisingly, the most striking impression left by this summary of family
politics in Central Kalimantan concerns its instability. The general tone of writing on political
dynasties in Indonesia is negative and pessimistic. Major national news outlets frequently feature
stories enumerating the corruption and deal making of dynastic politicians, and civil society
campaigns have been organised to unseat them. Some of the most important dynastic politicians
have been prosecuted in cases brought by the Komisi Pemberantasan Korupsi (KPK, Corruption
Eradication Commission), exposing massive accumulation of family wealth in the process
particularly noteworthy cases were the prosecutions of Ratu Atut Chosiyah, the governor of
Banten, and of Fuad Amin Imron, the former bupati of Bangkalan in Madura. Such public
exposure and the widespread condemnation it has elicited is the backdrop to the legislative change
in 2014 that tried to prevent dynastic succession in local elections. Given that such a harsh light is
typically shone on dynastic politics in regional Indonesia, it is significant that most of the families
surveyed in this article encountered difficulties in making the transition from political families to
political dynasties, by failing to secure dynastic succession. Dynastic politics is not as invulnerable
as much of the national commentary suggests.
It is also significant that many of these family politicians were also relative newcomers to
political leadership, rather than having deep family histories at the apex of local societies. To be
sure, as has already been documented exhaustively in the literature on post-Suharto local politics,
most elected government leaders have elite backgrounds, and most of the Central Kalimantan
bupati surveyed here are no exception. With the exception of Darwan Ali, all came from families
with significant bureaucratic and/or business experience; moreover, each family was already
embedded in networks connecting political and economic power before the end of the New Order.
Every family had timber or other natural resource industry connections. Even so, none was related
to individuals who had held local government head positions either as governor or bupati in the
Suharto years. Instead, they all came from a rung or two down the social and political hierarchy.
They rose to the top of local politics at a time of great flux, and were the most adroit of their
contemporaries in seizing the opportunities afforded by regime change. They are, in other words,
parvenus. We thus cannot yet be confident that the brief period of spectacular predatory raids on
the state and its resources by these families will give way to long-term and multi-generational
dynasty building by them.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or
publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publi-
cation of this article: The authors thank the Australian Research Council for funding the research (grants DP
120103181, and FT120100742).
Aspinall and Asad 15

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