People have yet to adjust after a regime change<\/p>\n
The following is the first part of an interview with Greg
\nBarton Ph.D, senior lecturer at Deakin University, Australia, who
\nis also the authorized biographer of Indonesian President
\nAbdurrahman \"Gus Dur\" Wahid.<\/p>\n
An expert on liberal Islam in Indonesia, Barton started
\nwriting the biography a long time before Gus Dur became President
\nlast October. He expects to finish the book toward the end of
\nthis year. Barton, who is a regular visitor to Indonesia, talked
\nto The Jakarta Post's Harry Bhaskara on Monday.<\/p>\n
Question: What is your reading of the performance of Gus Dur's
\nadministration in recent months?<\/p>\n
Answer: Following the news from Australia and based on my
\nimpressions meeting Gus Dur again here these last few days, I
\nremember that he has predicted earlier in the year that April and
\nMay would indeed very difficult times.<\/p>\n
Has he?<\/p>\n
He has been saying for a long time that April and May may be
\nparticularly a hard time.<\/p>\n
Why?<\/p>\n
Well, it is hard to say with Gus Dur because facts have merged
\ntogether. There are some people who gave spiritual advice that
\nthose months would be a difficult time but Gus Dur is also a very
\nrational person. He could predict that at a certain point there
\nwill be a crisis of confident and he would face a backlash of
\ncriticism.<\/p>\n
Both because of a natural response and because party political
\nelements linked with the former regime who would deliberately
\nwant to campaign against him. So there are two things flowing to
\neach other.<\/p>\n
But the point is he was expecting that April, May would be
\ndifficult. And what is interesting and important for us to
\nunderstand is he had the conviction that if he comes through May
\nokay, he will be okay in the longer term. And indeed he has come
\nthrough okay.<\/p>\n
What do you perceive as his difficulties during April and May?<\/p>\n
Obviously you could argue that most of his difficulties is his
\nown making. For example, his sacking of Laksamana Sukardi (former
\nState Minister of Investment and State Enterprises Development)
\nwas extremely unpopular and the involvement of Hasyim (Gus Dur's
\nbrother Hasyim Wahid) in IBRA (Indonesian Bank Restructuring
\nAgency) did give a bad impression.<\/p>\n
And there is a lot of unkind and unfounded accusation made
\nagainst people very close to him. But these things are just
\nfabrications but as they say if you throw mud around, some tend
\nto stick.<\/p>\n
One of the facts operating here is that he was facing pressure
\nfrom elements aligned to the former regime who were concerned
\nthat he was going to push too hard on chasing out to Soeharto and
\nhis family.<\/p>\n
Some of these elements may also deal with Wiranto (a general,
\nformer Minister of Defense) and disaffected members of the
\nmilitary and they wanted to let him know if he kept on pushing
\nhard they would be merciless in their response and they have a
\nlot of power to act against him.<\/p>\n
If you think about it, their financial liquidity is far
\ngreater than the government. If Bulogate proved one thing, it
\nshowed us how difficult it is for Gus Dur to operate, how much
\nhis hands are tied.<\/p>\n
He wants to send money to Aceh, he knows that solving Aceh is
\na very important problem, but Bulogate illustrates how difficult
\nit is even if he has a small amount of money to channel through
\nthe rein of priority concerns.<\/p>\n
Whereas the forces against him really has unlimited funds and
\nmaking use of these funds for filling envelops to give to
\njournalists which is an established cultural practice.<\/p>\n
It is one of those things which at one level is entirely
\nunderstandable because the way Soeharto quite deliberately
\nstructure the society was that it is a low wage society.<\/p>\n
There are cases where newspapers which might ordinarily be put
\nto be objective were influenced in their reporting by bribing
\njournalists through envelops but there are other ways like
\nintimidating or cajoling.<\/p>\n
Obviously we need to be very cautious about buying into this
\nsort of conspiracy theory because it is unhelpful to get consumed
\ninto conspiracy theory. It is a very dangerous tendency.<\/p>\n
But on the other hand it seems reasonable to accept the
\nanecdotal evidence and also the hard evidence we have of what is
\nhappening in Maluku for example is very unusual.<\/p>\n
Certainly there are organic reasons as to why the violence
\ncontinues and certainly in many ways it is like Northern Island
\nthat there is a cycle of violence. Once started it is hard to
\nclose. On the other hand people have used military firearms and
\nin some cases people acted with impunity.<\/p>\n
You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to speculate that
\nthere is a great collusion with some elements of the military and
\nsome elements of the government and it is more than likely that
\nin some cases at least this is linked to the former regime.<\/p>\n
So, in a sum what has happened to Gus Dur?<\/p>\n
If you think about it there is a kind of pincer movement
\nagainst Gus Dur: attacking him through the media, The attacks are
\nnot necessarily entirely without bases in the sense that Gus Dur
\nmakes mistakes because you can pick on the mistakes. But the way
\nthe mistakes are blown up is often out of proportion.<\/p>\n
There are also things that are simply not true. There are
\nthings said about people who were close to him. In the past about
\nRatih (Ratih Hardjono, former presidential secretary) now about
\nhis daughters which are without foundations but which is said
\nanyway because it is easy with envelop, good money to buy press
\ncoverage and shape opinion.<\/p>\n
So that was one arm of the pincer attack. The other arm is the
\nattack against this government to force such a level of
\ninstability so that the people will say that the government lacks
\nthe capacity to bring about change.<\/p>\n
This was obviously calculated to unsettle Gus Dur and those
\nclose to him. I am not saying that the whole of the problem in
\nMaluku was engineered but there were certainly elements who
\nseized on the opportunity to make things worse, clearly to
\nintimidate Gus Dur.<\/p>\n
I think that was largely behind what happened in April and
\nMay, the intense pressure on these two fronts.<\/p>\n
And now you seem the think that the difficult times is partly
\nover?<\/p>\n
The psychological factor that Gus Dur expected this to happen
\nand expected that if he came through it he would be alright for
\nthe longer term, is a very important factor. It is in his
\nconfident and confident is critical. All of these have to be
\nunderstood in the context of regime change. In this context
\nyou need to do two things.<\/p>\n
One, you need to be willing to make compromises. Isolation
\ndoesn't appear reasonable but in the context of regime change you
\nhave no realistic alternative. And for Gus Dur it means that
\nthere are limits just to how hard he can push corruption and
\nparticularly cases against the former first family.<\/p>\n
But secondly you have to have the courage of your conviction
\nto press ahead. So for example, Marzuki Darusman (Attorney
\nGeneral), could not keep on doing his job if he does not have the
\ncourage of conviction. Gus Dur could not keep on doing his job
\nunless he believes on what he is doing.<\/p>\n
And the psychological factor is very important. So the fact
\nthat Gus Dur now has gone through a very difficult period and
\nbelieves that things will get better is really critical to the
\nsuccess of his government.<\/p>\n
You seem to believe that things are getting better?<\/p>\n
I think objectively there are reasons for believing that
\nthings are now getting better. Not only as personally he is now
\nmore relaxed and in good spirit but the talks a few days ago
\nabout impeaching him have now evaporated.<\/p>\n
And certain ill-informed or immature responses to him such as
\nAmien's comment that he should have an independent medical
\nexaminations have collapsed on their own accord.<\/p>\n
Afterall Gus Dur has the best medical doctors in the country
\nlooking at him and suggestion that these people lack professional
\nintegrity of course is insulting.<\/p>\n
He has also recently been at the John Hopkins hospital and you
\ncan be quite sure they are not going to create a false report of
\ngood health just for some local political purposes.<\/p>\n
So that was a foolish blunder on Amien's part and it collapsed
\nso we can reasonably expect there will be no move to impeach him
\nin August MPR (People's Consultative Assembly) session and he
\nwill come through it strengthened.<\/p>\n
Do you think he will reshuffle the cabinet?<\/p>\n
Certainly, he is now in a position where he has the green
\nlight to go ahead and restructure his cabinet. Obviously it is up
\nto him to some extent. He still faces limitations in terms of
\nhuman resources but the limitations are much less than they were
\nin last October, November when he was in a very difficult
\nsituation in terms of the constitution of the cabinet.<\/p>\n
Do you think he will create a real solid cabinet in term of
\nprofessionalism unlike the compromised one before?<\/p>\n
Politics is the art of the possible and everything in politics
\nis compromised. He can not afford to completely disregard party
\npolitical concerns. There has to be a factor.<\/p>\n
Another factor is that the most professional and experienced
\npeople often have been involved in the former regime. People who
\ndon't have links with the former regime are often inexperienced.
\nThey are often sincere but not necessarily mature in terms of
\nknowing how politics works.<\/p>\n
So that in itself is a basis of a compromise. He doesn't have
\nan unlimited pool of talent from which to choose. By the way that
\nis true in Germany, Great Britain or France, America or
\nAustralia. Any democracy , what you get is not the absolute best
\nbut the best under the circumstances.<\/p>\n
Gus Dur's cabinet will be a compromised one but it will be
\nmuch less compromised than that he had up until now and it will
\nalso undoubtedly affect his own judgment of what is the best for
\nhim.<\/p>\n
It may not sit well with the judgment of other people. The
\ncabinet that works best for Gus Dur is not necessarily the most
\nprofessional cabinet in every objective sense because they need a
\nlevel of cohesion, it needs to be a team that work together.<\/p>\n
In retrospect what has been Gus Dur's priority in his nine-
\nmonth old government?<\/p>\n
It is clear that Gus Dur has two top priorities. First is
\nconnected to the current process of control of the military. If
\nthat fails, everything fails. So the reform of the military and
\nthe consolidation of that reformists is the first priority.<\/p>\n
Secondly, there is a question of economic recovery. An
\neconomic recovery requires starting with you are having the best
\nof it and it also requires some sense of confident from the
\ninvestors. So it is important to get some sense of surety and
\nstability.<\/p>\n
I think these things probably mean that the pursuit of justice
\nwill have to wait a little longer, particularly the pursuit of
\ncorrupters and so on.<\/p>\n
It is already clear that the Attorney General office is doing
\nhis best but it is probably trying to do too much at once.
\nMarzuki (Attorney General) is in charge of a large staff but only
\na tiny fraction of that staff are really useful to him. And they
\nare stretched to their limit.<\/p>\n
Apart from these two things, obviously a third really
\nimportant area is trying to maintain social harmony. Presumably
\nin the case of Maluku there is underlying social economic
\ndivisions and factors that were unresolved during the Soeharto
\nperiod.<\/p>\n
Also there is a cycle of violence that will take some time to
\nbreak because once people have experienced the bitter tragedy of
\nloved ones being killed they feel a natural desire to fight back.<\/p>\n
But another factor that has been sustaining that violence is
\noutside (the region) interference. And while we can only
\nspeculate, presumably all of these have links to the former
\nregime.<\/p>\n
So if Gus Dur can negotiate the situation, those elements will
\npull back their forces. It would be much better in the short and
\nmedium term. In the long term, of course, it needs to be pursued
\nwith justice.<\/p>\n
Do you think this list of priorities would stay after August?<\/p>\n
I think this list of priorities is for the whole five-year
\nterm of Gus Dur government. There are priorities which is set
\nthere for the longer term because that is an actual regime change
\nand there are also priority that happens to sit well with Gus
\nDur's strength and weaknesses.<\/p>\n
He is good at negotiating with disparate groups. He proved
\nthat in 1999 when he was able to negotiate with a disparate
\ncollection of forces. He was able to bring about some reproach
\nbetween Muhammadiyah and NU (Nahdlatul Ulama), between modernist
\nand traditional Muslims and even between himself and Amien (Amien
\nRais, former leader of Muhammadiyah, now MPR Speaker) and made
\nthat work. More recently he has shown part of his long standing
\npattern with Gus Dur.<\/p>\n
But it certainly became clear in recent months how he can
\nnegotiate with the military because it is a nature of a regime
\nchange, it is a nature of the military reform.<\/p>\n
But it is not enough just to be brave, it is not enough to
\nhave integrity. You need to find some way of winning over, a sort
\nof floating mass of people who are not quite sure which way to
\ngo.<\/p>\n
It is one thing to oppose those who were clearly bent on
\nsubverting democracy and preventing reform. But the majority of
\npeople in the military are not like that. Nor are they
\nautomatically prescribed to democracy. They need somebody who can
\nnegotiate with them in the sense of persuading them that it is
\nworth going this road. That the possible gains outweigh the short
\nterm pain of it. And Gus Dur has been brilliant at doing this.<\/p>\n
I think for the same reason he is one of the few individuals
\nwho can negotiate with elements linked to the former regime with
\na degree of authority, and a degree of real dexterity and
\nability.<\/p>\n
Do you think a comparison with other countries which have
\nundergone a regime change help?<\/p>\n
I think the situation in Indonesia will be very much clearer
\nfor us if we made a comparative studies with other countries
\nwhich have experienced a regime change.<\/p>\n
I am not an expert in this field but it just seems to me this
\nis an obvious thing we have to look at. The approach taken by Gus
\nDur while was imperfect is appropriate.<\/p>\n
In other words, not too high expectation, preparedness to
\ncompromise, a sense of priority of what is important and what is
\nless important.<\/p>\n
For that reason I think the context of regime change is not
\ngoing to change at the macro level over the next four years. It
\nwill be a feature of Gus Dur's government or his whole term of
\ngovernment.<\/p>\n
In that sense you couldn't say that Gus Dur is running a
\ntransitional government. It is not that it is not legitimate in
\nthe democratically elected government although the circumstances
\nof that formation is probably unique and probably won't be
\nrepeated.<\/p>\n
But its whole task and its whole orientation and its modus
\noperandi is that of transitional government. This is not peace
\ntime, this is war time. So even one sense Gus Dur is like Winston
\nChurchill, a strange eccentric maverick leader, there may be that
\nwas what we need at the time as it were war time rather than
\npeace time.<\/p>\n
Later on, when hopefully we get to the other side and
\nhopefully there is a degree of stability and a degree of
\nconsolidation and successfulness of regime change process we can
\nhave a more conventional government, a more conventional
\npresident.<\/p>\n
What kind of things commonly happen in a country undergoing a
\nregime change?<\/p>\n
Before answering this question, it is interesting to reflect
\nupon the nature of nation building in Indonesia. I think despite
\nall the problems, nation building project in some ways has been
\nquite successful.<\/p>\n
The mythical or the guiding vision of the nation has been the
\nrevolution of 1945 to 1949. It is the nature of a revolution that
\nyou have a clear purpose, you fight, you struggle for what you
\ndeserve, for your rights, in the end justice is done and you have
\nyour independence. That is what people experienced of a regime
\nchange. The other experience of regime change was 1965-1966 which
\nwas just awful.<\/p>\n
So, Indonesians do have some experience of regime change but
\nif not it does not prepare them for this current regime change
\nbecause on the one hand revolution is overly romantic.<\/p>\n
The hallmarks of countries undergoing regime change, we can
\nexpect the outbreak of inter-communal violence that often has
\nsectarian or ethno-nationalist element, often involving religion.
\nNot necessarily religion is the cause but because it is invoked.<\/p>\n
This is a common pattern of countries that have released
\nthemselves from military-backed authoritarianism. The most
\nfrightening example was Yugoslavia. For years there was peace
\nbetween ethnic and religious groups. When the authoritarian
\nregime was toppled, a nightmare unfolded.<\/p>\n
I don't feel Yugoslavia would be repeated here and I certainly
\ndo not subscribe to the theory of balkanization of Indonesia. But
\nthat reminds us that what happened in Yugoslavia is common to
\nwhat happen in many countries that experienced a sudden lost by
\nauthoritarian military-backed government.<\/p>",
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