Academic sees government weaken

Academic sees government weaken

JAKARTA (JP): The growth of Indonesia's middle class reflects the government's weakening political clout, a political observer says.

"There's an incredible change taking place. The government is getting weaker," Ariel Heryanto of the Salatiga-based Satya Wacana Christian University told The Jakarta Post on Thursday. "The middle class, on the other hand, is getting stronger."

Ariel was explaining how, in his observation, the government has spent the past decade or so courting various groups like the middle class and the Moslem community.

The increasingly good relationship that Moslems enjoy with the government is just one example of the latter's effort to expand its power base, he pointed out.

Ariel identified a number of areas where the government's declining strength, including its 1994 decree allowing foreign companies to enter sectors, previously considered sacred.

The PP20/1994 decree allows foreigners into the strategic sectors of ports, power generation, telecommunications, sea transportation, education, aviation, water supply, railways, nuclear power and the mass media.

Ariel cited another example in its handling of the minority Indonesian Democratic Party. He said that despite the government's campaign to place someone else at the party's helm, chairwoman Megawati Soekarnoputri remains firmly in her seat.

The abolition of the controversial state-lottery SDSB in 1993, when students and Moslem groups launched massive protests, was another example cited by Ariel.

He said the government has also been forced to stall the construction of a nuclear power plant in Central Java because of strong opposition from local environmental groups.

The National Commission on Human Rights, another example cited, was established in 1993 following heavy pressure from both overseas and domestic critics of Indonesia's human rights record.

Despite a pessimistic reception, he said the commission has turned out to be independent and unafraid to issue reports critical of the government and its officials.

"The government used to be authoritarian," Ariel said, adding that in the past the government approached no one.

Ariel said the government was not co-opting certain groups, but embracing them for support.

"The very fact that the government needs their support is proof of declining power," he pointed out. "In the past, it didn't need to embrace any group at all."

Ariel also spoke about the middle class, and how its members should be ready to face the time of reduced government control.

For instance, Ariel asked, "Will the press be able to write good stories" without having their publishing permits revoked?

Most Indonesian scholars agree that the middle class here is becoming a political force that the country's rulers have to take into account.

He pointed to other newly industrialized countries like South Korea, where the middle class has been the driving force for democracy.

He defined the middle class as comprised mostly of businesspeople, intellectuals, students, professionals and journalists.

Discussion of the middle class here reflects various viewpoints. Some believe the middle class has the potential to articulate the interests of the lower class, while others say its members will not likely feel obliged to push for democracy.

Still others believe that there is no middle class in Indonesia, thus making it pointless to assign it a role in Indonesian politics.

Ariel said the Indonesian middle class does indeed exist and that it is a highly diversified group with many interests. One thing middle-class Indonesians have in common is their tendency to be critical. They could turn radical, he said, but they might also become opportunistic.

Ariel said that most discussions on the middle-class Indonesians tended to be "cynical" and "negative". The sentiment, he said, might have been fostered by the overly high expectation that the public have of them.

"The public consider the middle-class group as savior of democracy, but when they fail to find such people, they become angry and dismiss the entire notion of middle-class," he said. (swe)