Returning to 'unity in diversity' after centralism legacy<\/p>\n
The new government had barely begun to tackle the current
\ncrisis when provinces crying out for self-determination started
\nto run out of patience. Political scholar Herbert Feith, an
\nAustralian and a visiting lecturer at Gadjah Mada University in
\nYogyakarta who has studied Indonesia since the 1950s, talked to
\nThe Jakarta Post about the issue.<\/p>\n
Question:How do you view the calls for separatism in more
\nareas in Indonesia, especially in Aceh?<\/p>\n
Answer: Maybe the best way to start is with the opportunities
\nthe Gus Dur (President Abdurrahman Wahid) government has in Aceh.
\nMany people seem to be overwhelmed by the difficulty of the task
\nit faces in relation to Aceh and indeed they are great. The
\ngovernment has a lot of cards to play. It can tell the Acehnese
\nthat it is impossible to promise a referendum without the
\napproval of the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR). And it can
\npoint to the importance the United Nations (UN) aspect has had in
\nrelation to East Timor. Aceh's position in the eyes of the UN is
\nvery different from that of East Timor.<\/p>\n
In the case of East Timor, the UN did not recognize what the
\nSoeharto government called its integration. In December 1975, its
\nSecurity Council condemned Indonesia's invasion of East Timor and
\ncalled on it to withdraw its troops from there immediately. That
\nresolution remains on the books.<\/p>\n
Aceh has never had that sort of international status. It is
\ntrue that there are non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in
\nseveral countries, which are sympathetic to the Aceh Merdeka
\nMovement (GAM), but their sympathy is not for the military
\nactivity of that movement or for the leadership of Abdullah
\nSyafei or Hasan Tiro. It is rather for the idea that the Acehnese
\ndeserve a new deal and they should not continue to be oppressed
\nand exploited in antidemocratic ways. Many people in the outside
\nworld express sympathy of that kind with Aceh, though few have
\nany sympathy for the military operations of GAM.<\/p>\n
Are you saying that the world sees Aceh more as an issue of
\nhuman rights?<\/p>\n
Yes, and as an issue of justice rather than one of
\nsovereignty. I don't see any significant group in the outside
\nworld that supports those Acehnese who want to establish a new
\nstate. So what can they do? They can proclaim an independent
\nstate, of course. They can raise their flag outside the
\ngovernor's office or outside the provincial parliament in Banda
\nAceh and the government of Libya may express sympathy with their
\nproclamation. But it is most unlikely that any government would
\nrecognize them as a state.<\/p>\n
They may get a bit of covert financial support from one or
\nother multinational companies that want to gain access to their
\nnatural gas. But the established gas companies operating in Arun
\nare more unlikely to side with them against Jakarta.<\/p>\n
Just look at what happened from February to March 1958. At
\nthat time the United States government sympathized with the
\nproclamation of \"the revolutionary government of the Republic of
\nIndonesia\" (PRRI) seeing it as more firmly anticommunist than the
\nSoekarno government in Jakarta.<\/p>\n
But, Caltex, the big American oil company operating in PRRI
\nterritory (in Sumatra) refused to give them significant support.
\nTheir priority was to maintain cooperation with the central
\ngovernment. I think it would be similar to the foreign companies
\nthat are operating in Aceh today.<\/p>\n
Does that mean that the central government is in a stronger
\nposition than GAM?<\/p>\n
I think so. It has a lot of cards to play. GAM has a lot of
\ncards too of course, mainly that they have very wide public
\nsupport for their demands for a referendum. But support for a
\nreferendum is not the same as support for separatism for
\nestablishing a new state.<\/p>\n
The Acehnese have long been proud of having made major
\ncontributions to the struggle against the Dutch, in the late 19th
\ncentury, early 20th century and especially during the revolution
\nbetween 1945 and 1949. They often tell you that Aceh was the one
\nand only part of Indonesia that the Dutch did not manage to
\nconquer in those years. Most people who are proudly Acehnese are
\nalso proudly Indonesian.<\/p>\n
So, there is room for creative approaches. And Gus Dur has
\nalways been an innovative leader. So he and his colleagues will
\nprobably find a formula which gives both sides a measure of
\nsatisfaction. The Acehnese will not get their independent state
\nbut they may well get something that meets the most important of
\ntheir grievances, something that is compatible with the survival
\nof Indonesia in its present boundaries.<\/p>\n
So what kind of settlement do you think it could be?<\/p>\n
One aspect could be double flagging, letting the Acehnese fly
\na flag of their own as long as they also allow the Red and White
\nto be flown. Having two flags has become increasingly widespread
\nin other parts of the world in the last decade. In Australia, for
\nexample, the Aboriginal community has its own flag that flies in
\nprominent places in the national capital. Nobody seems to see
\nthat as an insult to the national flag of Australia. If the
\ngovernment says \"yes, you may fly your Aceh flag as long as you
\nalso fly the Indonesian national flag\", that could be part of a
\ncompromise settlement.<\/p>\n
What else do you see as elements of feasible settlement?<\/p>\n
Providing justice to the victims of human rights violations
\nwill, I think, need to be an important component. Fortunately the
\nIndonesian Military leadership has already expressed willingness
\nto be more serious than before in bringing its officers charged
\nwith human rights violations before the courts. That would do a
\ngreat deal to heal the wounds that the Acehnese have sustained in
\nthe last 10 years.<\/p>\n
Gus Dur's interest in the South African model of the Truth and
\nReconciliation Commission is encouraging too. I see that a
\ncreative formula whereby horrible truths are allowed to be aired
\nand victims express their cries for justice, in a search for
\nreconciliation rather than revenge.<\/p>\n
I also think it would be valuable if the Gus Dur government
\nestablished a high level commission in cooperation with the MPR
\nleadership to examine the whole question of how Indonesia might
\nbe made into a state with a greater degree of federalism in its
\nstructure. Such a commission should be given something like three
\nto six months to complete its task with the government committing
\nitself to considering its recommendations by the time of the
\nOctober 2000 meeting of the MPR. Moreover, it would be valuable
\nfor the government to announce that the regulation to implement
\nthe new (fiscal balance law) would be finalized within three to
\nsix months.<\/p>\n
Back to the idea of two flags, how do you explain such an idea
\nespecially since Indonesia is not a federal state?<\/p>\n
As I see it, one can have the substance of federalism without
\nthe form. Indonesia had a bad experience with federalism back in
\n1946 and 1949. The Dutch established a highly artificial set of
\nfederal states as part of a strategy to contain and defeat the
\nSoekarno-Hatta Republic. So, federalism got a very bad name.
\nBut Mohammad Hatta, who played the central role in dissolving
\nthat federal structure, was actually a federalist. He thought
\nIndonesia should have a federal basis but not the artificial
\nfederal arrangements that the Dutch had hurriedly built up in the
\nareas of their military control before 1949.<\/p>\n
I myself do not have any clear convictions on whether
\nfederalism as such is a good idea for Indonesia. But I'm
\nconvinced that the Gus Dur government will need to be far more
\nflexible than its predecessors in dealing with various regions
\noutside Java, especially with ethnic and fairly homogeneous
\nregions like Aceh and Irian.<\/p>\n
It was useful, I think, to see the New Order's great hostility
\nto far-reaching provincial autonomy as the product of a
\nparticular experience in 1958 that left a strong mark on Soeharto
\nand his generation of military leaders. They were furious about
\nthe willingness of the PRRI and Permesta leaders to collude with
\nforeign countries, particularly America and Britain, in ways that
\nrisked the unity of the country.<\/p>\n
From that experience they concluded Sumatrans and Sulawesians
\ncould not be trusted to have a serious commitment to Indonesian
\nunity. Christian Bataks and Christian Dayaks are likely to remain
\nloyal to Jakarta because they come from areas where Christians
\nare surrounded by Muslims. But with Outer Island Muslims, you can
\nnever be sure that they won't be tempted to be subversive.<\/p>\n
That bitter experience led Soeharto and his associates to
\nforget the idea of Bhinneka Tunggal Ika (national motto of Unity
\nin Diversity). They saw diversity as dangerous because it
\nthreatened the unity of the nation. But you could say they over-
\nlearned the lesson of 1958.<\/p>\n
They thought one needed to remain suspicious of groups
\ndemanding more regional autonomy. What they lost sight of was
\nthat over-centralization could become an even greater threat to
\nthe maintenance of a united Indonesia.<\/p>\n
What is important here is the unity of Indonesia, the lack of
\nterritorial breakup, not the question of a unitary or federal
\nstate. India, Malaysia and Australia are all federal states but
\nthat doesn't mean that they're broken up. None of them have
\ndisintegrated and none of them looks as if they are moving in
\nthat direction.<\/p>\n
Do you think the solution you are offering for Aceh would
\naggravate pressures of separatism in other regions?<\/p>\n
It very well might if the government does make major
\nconcessions that will stimulate regionalist demands in other
\nregions, especially those which earn large quantities of foreign
\nexchange for the central government; areas like Riau, Irian and
\nEast Kalimantan. But in the case of East Kalimantan and Riau, the
\nconcessions Jakarta would have to make wouldn't need to be so
\ngreat because those two are ethnically heterogeneous areas.<\/p>\n
In Riau, the pressure is coming mainly from a group of people
\nwho are putra daerah (natives) and speakers of Malay. And those
\nMalays are no more than 20 percent of the Riau population. That's
\nvery different from Aceh and Irian where the leaders of the
\nregional movements speak for a large majority.<\/p>\n
Could you describe the experiences of the Indonesian political
\nelite that led to the federal state being dissolved in favor of a
\nunitary one?<\/p>\n
It is worth remembering that Indonesia was a unitary and a
\nhighly centralized state before 1942. Federalism was not an idea
\nthe Dutch colonial authorities liked. They adopted it in 1946 for
\na short-term argument because of essentially opportunistic
\nreasons, as part of a strategy of containing and isolating the
\nrepublic. Having occupied certain areas like Jakarta, Bandung,
\nSurabaya and Makassar, they built up little \"states\" around those
\ncities.<\/p>\n
The State of East Indonesia was the one major exception to
\nthat pattern of artificiality. It was not an artificial state.
\nPasundan (in West Java) was a bit real too, at least less
\nartificial than most of the others. Indonesia has experienced a
\nunitary system of government ever since it emerged with a modern
\nstate structure in the middle of the 19th century.<\/p>\n
So one legacy of the colonial period is a highly centralized
\ngovernment. And one legacy of the late 1950's transition from
\nparliamentary democracy is that many political leaders,
\nespecially army leaders, see the ethnic Javanese as natural
\nleaders of a united Indonesia. The view is still widely held in
\nofficer circles that people from the other main ethnic
\ncommunities are liable to the temptations of subversion, are
\nlikely to be tempted by accession to Malaysia or the Philippines
\nor by a foreign backed scheme which promised them a new state
\noutside the Republic.<\/p>\n
As I see it, that is a good example of an idea whose time has
\ngone. Fortunately, we are now returning to something like
\nBhinneka Tunggal Ika, to the idea that Indonesia's unity is based
\non balance and a complimentary condition between Java and the
\nOuter Islands.<\/p>\n
During the Revolution, Dutch spokespeople often described the
\nRepublic as a Soekarno enterprise with little or no appeal to the
\nnon-Javanese. The Republic's response was that the Javanese
\nSoekarno and the Minangkabau Hatta (from Sumatra) were a
\nDwitunggal, a unity of two. In fact the Republic had only
\nSumatrans as Prime Ministers in its first five years: Syahrir,
\nAmir Syarifuddin, Hatta and Mohamad Natsir.<\/p>\n
So you see the unity we had under Soeharto's rule as
\nartificial?<\/p>\n
Yes. The centralization Soeharto imposed and maintained was
\nbrittle because it was rigid. And its emphasis on standardization
\nand homogenization was in the end counterproductive. By the
\nmiddle 1990s it was generating more resistance than compliance.
\nWe have seen the results of that in East Timor and now we are
\nseeing it in Aceh and to some extent in Irian.<\/p>\n
And how do you see the interethnic violence in West Kalimantan
\nand the interreligious violence in Ambon?<\/p>\n
I see those against another development for which the
\ndesigners of the Soeharto policies can be held responsible. The
\nanti-Madurese violence in West Kalimantan and the Christian-
\nMuslim violence in Ambon is similar in that a lot of it is based
\non the grievances of local people against hard working immigrants
\nwho have come to live among them in recent times.<\/p>\n
What has happened in those two provinces raises the question
\nof whether governors should have real power to stand up to the
\ncentral government on issues which their people feel strongly,
\nespecially whether they should have power to restrict migration
\ninto their areas.<\/p>\n
In Malaysia today, the chief ministers of Serawak and Sabah
\nhave a lot of control over migration into their states. If West
\nKalimantan and Maluku had elected governors in the last 30 years
\n(people whose election could not be vetoed by the central
\ngovernment) they might well have insisted that the migration of
\nMaduranese into West Kalimantan and of South Sulawesians into
\nMaluku should be much slower than it had been.<\/p>\n
How do you see the new Law on Regional Autonomy? Do you expect
\nthat it will help lessen the pressure for referenda?<\/p>\n
I'm not sure. That law's whole emphasis is on autonomy for
\nkabupaten (regions) and kotamadya (townships) whereas the
\npolitical challenge comes mainly from the provinces. What is
\nneeded is a very high level of autonomy for provinces. The
\ncentral government can no longer afford to insist that every
\nprovince be treated in the same way as every other one.<\/p>\n
It needs to concede that resource-rich provinces like Aceh and
\nIrian have much greater bargaining power than resource-poor ones
\nlike East Nusa Tenggara. That doesn't mean it has to give in on
\neverything that Aceh or Irian asks for. But it needs to recognize
\nthat no governor can run a province effectively unless he is in
\ntune with the local public mood.<\/p>\n
As I see it, the central government should abjure all rights
\nto veto a province's choice of governor. And it should allow
\nprovincial parliaments to have much greater power.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, Law 22 of 1999 -- the Law on Regional Autonomy
\n-- does not provide for that. That legislation has a lot of the
\nspirit of the New Order about it. New Order governments kept
\ninsisting that they would increase the level of autonomy for
\nkabupaten and kotamadya. They were frightened of allowing
\nprovincial level autonomy, because they had overlearned the
\nlesson of 1958.<\/p>\n
One reason why I'm optimistic about the Gus Dur government's
\nability to deconstruct the over centralized state machinery it
\nhas inherited from its predecessors is that the outside world is
\nnot interested in splitting Indonesia. In 1958 there were people
\nin high places in Western governments who were willing to see
\nIndonesia break up. John Foster Dulles, the U.S. Secretary of
\nState, at the time toyed with that because he saw Soekarno's
\nIndonesia as veering to the left. If Java was about to go
\ncommunist, the U.S. should not hesitate, he thought, to use its
\nSeventh Fleet to contain and isolate it in the interest of the
\nIndonesians who wanted to form an anticommunist state outside of
\nJava.<\/p>\n
There had been big arguments in America earlier in the 1950s
\nabout what America did badly which had helped the Communists to
\ncome to power in China in 1949. As Dulles and his friends had
\nargued, \"We were stupid to allow China to become communist as a
\nwhole country. We could have prevented that if we had had the
\nguts to back anticommunists in the parts of China where the
\ncommunists were weak.\"<\/p>\n
As George and Audrey Kahin showed in their Subversion as
\nForeign Policy, published (in 1995), the reconstruction of the
\nmight-have-beens of China was an important part of the thinking
\nof the Eisenhower administration about Indonesia in the middle
\n1950s. In the present period the international context is
\ncompletely different.<\/p>\n
It is true that some Western governments have expressed
\nsupport for the idea of a referendum on independence in East
\nTimor. Most of the overseas pressure has come from NGOs and
\nparliaments. But, by 1997, there was also support from
\ngovernments. But East Timor's position in international law was
\nvery different from that of Aceh or Irian.<\/p>\n
The rich countries that dominate global society today are
\nbasically conservative about territorial boundaries. They support
\nstatus quos because they are afraid that disturbing them will
\nlead to wars. The logic is straightforward: wars are seen as
\ndangerous because they generate flows of refugees. In the eyes of
\nleaders in the U.S., Japan, Europe and Australia, uncontrollable
\nflows of poor refugees from Third World war zones is a threat to
\nstability in their own countries.<\/p>\n
So the principal response of the rich country governments to
\nseparatist pressures in poor countries is a dual one. On the one
\nhand they urge the poor country governments concerned to be
\nflexible rather than relying too much on repression. On the other
\nhand they refuse to support demands which are likely to upset
\nexisting boundaries.<\/p>\n
Do you agree that the government needs to take the Aceh crisis
\nvery seriously?<\/p>\n
Certainly. A movement that can bring over half a million
\npeople onto the streets of Banda Aceh is no small thing. And now
\nthe governor himself has signed a petition calling for a
\nreferendum. Jakarta needs to respect the fact that there is vast
\npopular support in Aceh for some of the demands which the GAM has
\nspearheaded.<\/p>\n
But the Gus Dur government is also aware that GAM is not a
\nparticularly democratic organization. It speaks for a powerful
\npopular mood but it does not have a good name as regards
\npluralism or tolerance. In that respect it is more like the
\nBougainville Revolutionary Army in Papua New Guinea and Tamil
\nTigers in Srilanka than the (proindependence organization) CNRT
\nin East Timor. The Bougainville Revolutionary Army used to be
\nhighly popular too and the Tamil Tigers are said to still have a
\nlot of Tamil popular support.<\/p>\n
They have managed for years to attract idealistic teenagers
\nfor suicide missions for their cause but both are also
\ndictatorial, militaristic and intimidatory organizations. They
\nspend little effort on telling the outside world about the
\ndemocratic state that they would build if they won. Their
\nleaderships are like the leadership of the Shining Path
\nGuerrillas in Peru and the Kurdistan People's Party in Turkey
\nused to be before the recent increase in the power of its
\nmoderates.<\/p>\n
One needs to distinguish between popular movements and
\nmilitary organizations, even where the popular movement owes much
\nof its origins to the bold example of the military organization
\nconcerned.<\/p>\n
Does that mean that the government need not worry about giving
\nthe Acehnese the referendum they are demanding?<\/p>\n
It certainly has to take that demand seriously and to
\nnegotiate with the groups that are pushing for it. The referendum
\nproposal is one of a number of things the two sides will need to
\nnegotiate and bargain about. They will no doubt bargain about
\nmany other things as well.<\/p>\n
But Jakarta does not need to concede that the Acehnese have
\njust as much right to a referendum on independence as the East
\nTimorese. The East Timorese started by demanding self-
\ndetermination. Later they changed that to demand a UN-supervised
\nreferendum. Bishop (Carlos Felipe Ximenes) Belo wrote to the
\nSecretary General of the UN in 1989 calling for that. Later again
\nthey said they wanted independence. And a lot of Acehnese see
\nthemselves as walking a similar path. But East Timorese
\nnationalism has long been an impressively mature movement. There
\nhas long been cooperation among its principal figures, not only
\nbetween Bishop Belo on the one hand and (Jose Alexandre) \"Xanana\"
\nGusmao and (Jose Ramos) Horta on the other, but also between
\nthose three and former governor Mario Carrascalao.<\/p>\n
The Acehnese don't seem to me to have that sort of leadership
\nyet, though I may be out of date on that. I don't see any central
\nfigure in their movement who unifies its radical and moderate
\nelements in the way Xanana has done in East Timor since about
\n1991.<\/p>\n
But I guess a leader like that could emerge quite quickly. If
\nand when such a person emerges, I expect she or he will be
\nwilling to negotiate with Jakarta about a lot things other than a
\nreferendum on independence.<\/p>\n
But Gus Dur has said he is in favor of a referendum.<\/p>\n
Gus Dur said he favored one in principle. That is a good
\nstarting point. But it is not the same as agreeing to hold a
\nreferendum at a particular time, or agreeing to recommend that to
\nthe next session of the MPR. And it is certainly not the same as
\nsaying that a Special Session of the MPR needs to be called to
\nconsider the case for a referendum in Aceh.<\/p>\n
How do you see the initiative that Amien Rais took in going to
\nAceh, in a trip he described as being in a personal capacity
\nrather than as Speaker of the MPR.<\/p>\n
I think it is excellent that he went there. Granted his
\ncentral role in the formation of the Cabinet, it was a sign that
\nthe government as such is taking the Aceh challenge seriously, as
\nwas the sending of the ministerial delegation led by (State
\nMinister of Human Rights Affairs) Hasballah M. Saad. (Sri
\nWahyuni)<\/p>\n
Window: The Acehnese will not get their independent state but they may
\nwell get something that meets the most important of their
\ngrievances, something that is compatible with the survival of
\nIndonesia in its present boundaries.<\/p>\n
...one legacy of the late 1950's transition from parliamentary
\ndemocracy is that many political leaders, especially army
\nleaders, see the ethnic Javanese as natural leaders of a united
\nIndonesia.<\/p>\n
That law's whole emphasis is on autonomy for kabupaten
\n(regions) and kotamadya (townships) whereas the political
\nchallenge comes mainly from the provinces. What is needed is a
\nvery high level of autonomy for provinces.<\/p>",
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