ABRI's accountability

The current political discourse on the military's sociopolitical role has rarely touched on the question of accountability. Who is the Armed Forces (ABRI) responsible to when it carries out its political role? To whom is it accountable for its actions? Accountability has never been spelled out, let alone discussed, since ABRI assumed its sociopolitical role decades ago. The fact that these questions have remained unanswered to date may well be at the root of the current problems associated with ABRI's involvement in politics.

Here is a mighty political institution -- some would argue the most powerful and certainly best organized in the nation -- yet it faces no checks and balances. There is no mechanism to make ABRI publicly accountable to anyone outside its own ranks for its behavior or misbehavior, unlike other political institutions.

Our Constitution requires the head of state to account for his or her leadership at the end of each five-year term. Elected politicians must also face the polls periodically to renew their mandate from constituents. Granted, this mechanism of checks and balances was widely abused by the Soeharto regime for over three decades, but at least a system exists that theoretically gives the people the option to either reelect or replace their leaders.

The same cannot be said about ABRI, to which the nation has entrusted the power -- as well as the weapons -- needed not only to look after its defense and security interests but to take an active part in politics through what is known as the dual function concept.

Accountability would not be such a major issue if ABRI had stuck to its traditional defense and security role. Given the hierarchy of command, the military's top commander is responsible for the actions of all subordinates; he in turn is accountable to the head of state, who is the commander-in-chief of the military and answerable to the people.

But give ABRI an institutionalized political role and the question of accountability becomes blurred. Under the dual function system, ABRI is given seats in both the lower and upper houses of the nation's representative bodies. On top of this, many active ABRI officers are seconded to civilian posts -- from Cabinet ministers and provincial governors, down to regency chiefs and city mayors. Given such comprehensive political involvement, ABRI is not accountable to anyone but itself for its behavior.

We have seen time and again instances in which ABRI has managed to duck from responsibility because of its lack of accountability. A notable example is the case in which the military's leadership discharged Lt. Gen. Prabowo Subianto for ordering the kidnapping of political activists to supposedly safeguard the People's Consultative Assembly last March. Once it had taken that step, ABRI halted its investigation into the case as if it did not feel obligated to find out about the fate of the 14 activists still missing.

ABRI has also quickly closed the books on incidents that should have seen greater public accountability, such as the shooting of student protesters at Trisakti University last May and the reports of gross human rights violations committed during military operations in Aceh, East Timor and Irian Jaya. The military may have conducted internal investigations and taken remedial or punitive actions against wrongdoers, but this is not the same as public accountability.

Public accountability is a vital element in any democracy. In fact, democracy cannot function without it. Our Constitution already tasks the country's highest public institutions, such as the presidency and the people's representative bodies, with this burden. But ABRI, which has perhaps become even more powerful than the president at this point, has escaped this requirement. But then again, the dual function concept is not written in the Constitution.

The current discourse on whether ABRI's political role should be retained, scaled down or eliminated must take the question of accountability into consideration. The government's proposal to automatically grant 55 of the House of Representatives' 500 seats to ABRI is inconsistent with such a requirement. For the same reason, ABRI's proposal to scale down its sociopolitical role while at the same time retaining enough power to influence the nation's political course is also highly contentious.

We have learned the hard way through Soeharto's long repressive regime the adage "power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely". No person or institution should be given a free reign on political power without any effective checks and balances. Given this, the question of ABRI's political role is clear. Either we should get rid of it entirely, or create a system that ensures ABRI is held accountable for all its actions -- just like other political institutions have to do. ABRI's political role in the form as we know it today is nothing less than incompatible with democracy.