Media-elite interactions in post-authoritarian Indonesia

employed scandal as a means to boost their power, or to do “politics by other
means” as suggested by Ginsberg and Shefter (1990) their book of the same name.
The case study selection follows the logic of literal replication (Yin 2009: 54).
They demonstrate the central argument twice in a slightly different way. The first
case study (examined in chapters two and three) focuses on two scandals allegedly
involving President Wahid (1999-2001). In summary, ‘Buloggate’ is about President
Wahid’s alleged involvement in the diversion of a Rp 35 billion (US $3.5 million)
fund belonging to the State Logistics Agency’s (Badan Urusan Logistik, Bulog)
Employee’s Welfare Foundation (Yayasan Bina Sejahtera Karyawan, Yanatera).
‘Aryantigate’ refers to an alleged extramarital affair between President Wahid and a
woman called Aryanti prior to his presidency. 1 Both scandals were “journalistically
appealing” (Waisbord 2004: 1087), since they featured President Wahid and
provided an opportunity to discredit the president. Yet they triggered different
media responses. This is because Buloggate was a public governance issue that dealt
with corruption allegations against a president who was widely known to be an
opponent of ‘corruption, collusion and nepotism’ (korupsi, kolusi, dan nepotisme,
KKN) and, it had been hoped, would eradicate KKN following the demise of
Suharto’s corrupt New Order regime. Aryantigate, in contrast, was a personal issue
about which the media had a choice to cover or ignore. Thus it was particularly
Buloggate that was employed by Wahid’s opponents. The parliamentary inquiry
1 As pointed out by Thompson (2000: 119-124; 282) sex scandals that occur in the political field are
sexual-political scandals and as such a form of political scandal (the definition of which shall be
explored in section 1.6 of this thesis. Given that Aryantigate was mainly politically motivated (this will
be discussed in detail in section 3.2 of this thesis) Aryantigate is not treated as a sex scandal but a form
of political scandal.
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