ABRI's accountability

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.