A picture of panic
A picture of panic
Many political observers say that the social change Indonesia
is going through is happening very slowly because there are so
many elements of the old Soeharto regime still playing a role.
There are others who are afraid of drastic change, while some are
panic-stricken at the mere thought of change. With all this to
contend with, it is little wonder that the effort for social
change is only halfhearted.
Included in the second group are some senior military officers
who claim that certain parties are trying to push the Indonesian
Military (TNI) into a corner. An overreaction or a case of the
jitters? It could be both. But the accusation is nothing new, it
is a tune that has been played before. Except this time the tune
is being played at a deafening volume after the Commission of
Inquiry into Human Rights Violations in East Timor announced that
there were indications that some former commanding officers were
involved in the campaign of destruction in the former Indonesian
province after a self-determination poll there last year. The
name of Coordinating Minister for Security and Political Affairs
Gen. Wiranto is said to be on the top of the list. President
Abdurrahman Wahid's recent request that Wiranto resign from his
position in the Cabinet has made the political situation more
laughable.
On the other side of the picture, people with a good memory
will recall that until last year, Wiranto, then Armed Forces
commander, used to assume the role of the injured party whenever
someone demanded the truth behind the many disappearances of
local people every time the military crushed a riot. Among the
many instances in which people disappeared are the bloody tragedy
at Jakarta's Tanjung Priok Port in 1984 and during a clash
between security officers and unarmed demonstrators in 1991 at a
public cemetery in East Timor. At both places local people said
hundreds of people were killed or mysteriously disappeared.
Wiranto lashed out at the demands, saying people just wanted
to tarnish the military's image. The reasoning behind people's
demands was crystal clear, and it was their basic right to know
what happened to their loved ones.
Today, with some former commanding officers allegedly involved
or at least knowledgeable about the plundering of the former
Portuguese colony, many of them have resorted to claiming that
they are synonymous with TNI as a whole. Their team of lawyers is
called a TNI team and it implies that it is the military as a
force that will be brought to trial, not the officers, who should
accept responsibility for their acts.
For the people the tack is nothing but an attempt to mislead
them, for they are fully aware that in every civilized country
there must be equal justice under the law. Indonesians, even
those with the most basic education, know that TNI, which was
established in 1945 just weeks after the proclamation Indonesian
independence, is not synonymous with any officers, whatever their
rank.
The way of thinking of some officers is a legacy of the
Soeharto military regime, which corrupted them with unlimited
power as long they defended the state ideology Pancasila and the
1945 Constitution as well as securing Soeharto's reelection every
five years. Military top brass then gave their soldiers the
freedom to brutalize innocent people just because they had
different opinions from Soeharto, to strong-arm them into voting
for the Golkar Party in every general election, to interfere in
labor disputes -- one woman labor leader was murdered in East
Java during one such incident -- and kidnap political activists.
It appears that what made a good general back then was the number
of innocent people killed or intimidated.
Due to the recent change in the military doctrine, the
propaganda is not selling well to the public or even to the TNI,
whose leaders have declared that they respect the supremacy of
law and in Wiranto's case, "Any decision by the President."