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Indonesia’s agreement to share its democracy-building experience with Egypt should take into account the former’s failures as much as its successes, experts said on Tuesday.

Andrinof Chaniago, a political analyst from the University of Indonesia, lauded Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa’s planned visit to Cairo next month but cautioned against applying all the policies implemented in Indonesia in Egypt.

“First we should look at the differences and similarities between the two countries, such as demographics, social and political conditions,” he said.

Indonesia should highlight its failures in trying to implement democracy during the transition period following the 1998 downfall of former President Suharto, he said. “Indonesia has failed to institutionalize the changes that were made after the transition.And we haven’t been able to anticipate all changes and our responses to them.”

Andrinof said one of the key democracy-building failures was decentralization, whereby power was devolved from Jakarta to provinces and districts.

“Decentralization’s failure to foster democratization and its subsequent impact should be thought through and studied further,” he said.

Burhanuddin Muhtadi, a political analyst and senior researcher at the Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI), said Marty should explain to his Egyptian counterparts the shortcomings of the multiparty system.

“A strong presidency requires a simpler political party system, but what we have is an extreme amount of political parties,” he said. “This means the country spends too much money on election campaigns and the various political voices have become too fragmented.”

He said the onset of democracy had failed to eradicate corruption here. “We have to be transparent about the issue of corruption,” he said.

Speaking at a meeting on Monday with the House of Representatives’ Commission I, overseeing foreign relations, Marty said he had been invited by Egyptian officials to provide Indonesia’s insights on what it has achieved so far and what Egypt might learn from it.

“They have requested our assistance with regard to organizing an election and [setting up] regulations on political parties,” the foreign minister said. “We have to do it wisely so that it doesn’t seem as though we’re preaching.”