In 1971, the
New Order regime of Indonesia held the
first legislative elections since
1955 in an effort to establish a system of government with President
Suharto and the
Indonesian military in control and to give this system legitimacy. Thanks to government manipulation of the nine contesting parties and intervention by the government and the military, the government-sponsored
Golkar organization won 63 percent of the vote, giving it 227 of the 251 directly elected seats in the
DPR as well as all nine indirectly elected seats in
Western New Guinea. Golkar was also awarded the remaining 100 seats according to the provisions of the 1969 Election Law, giving it 336, almost three quarters of the total. President Suharto had long wanted the political parties to be "simplified," and in 1972, he said that this simplification would be complete if there were only three ballot symbols in the next election, a sentiment echoed by Suharto's personal assistant and head of the Special Operations (Opsus) unit
Ali Murtopo, who said the 1976 election (as it was then scheduled) would only be contested by three "flags," namely those of the two parties and one functional group. In January 1973, this was realized in the forced fusion of the nine existing political parties into two: the four Islamic parties were combined into the
United Development Party (PPP) and the nationalist and Christian parties formed the
Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI). In its 1973 session, the
People's Consultative Assembly reelected Suharto president for a five-year term and passed a resolution stating that the election would be held at the latest by the end of 1977 and that there would be three participants, the two political parties and the 'functional group'
Golkar. The election was finally scheduled for 1977, the extra year being necessary for the New Order to have enough time to make the necessary changes to laws to ensure its victory. The government began preparing for the election in 1975 when it sent the necessary legislation for approval to the
DPR. There were two bills, one on the party system and one on the organization of the election. They were designed to make it easier for Golkar to defeat the two parties by banning civil servants from joining political parties (i.e. not including Golkar), obliging parties to adopt the state philosophy
Pancasila and the
1945 Constitution as their sole ideology and not allowing parties to organize below the level of the
district. There was strong opposition to these proposals from both the parties, and this resulted in a compromise on all three, in particular with the PPP being allowed to be based on
Islam. As in 1971, the government screened all election candidates and disqualified 19% from the PPP, 16% from the PDI and 5% from Golkar. ==Campaign==