Back to the future?

The government's denial that it did not intend to reinstate loyalty screening tests for all civil servants must, no doubt, have elicited a deep sigh of relief from millions of Indonesians. Loyalty tests, or litsus (penelitian khusus, or special tests), bear a rather ominous connotation in this country.

The trauma that was inflicted by the communist witch-hunt under the New Order regime from the late 1960s right up to the fall of President Soeharto in 1998, is still too fresh in the minds of Indonesians for them to be at all comfortable with the idea of having officialdom poke their fingers, once again, in the private lives of citizens and assign guilt to innocent people -- simply because of their association with leftists or suspected leftists.

So, the nation welcomes the government's public denial as conveyed by State Minister of Administrative Reforms Feisal Tamin earlier this week, albeit with reservations.

The problem with the state minister's denial is that his statement has left important questions about the issue unanswered, even as it was meant to clarify them. To obtain a clearer understanding of the issue at hand, though, it may be well to begin, as they say, from the start.

In the beginning, as one may recall, was the government's fear that disloyalty among civil servants in the province of Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam might disrupt the province's public services and endanger the integrity of the Unitary Republic of Indonesia.

What seemed to have triggered the government's suspicions was the sudden and resignation en bloc early last month of no less than 76 village heads in Bireun district. The decision of so many village heads to resign, and all at the same time, could not have been made independently and could not be explained easily, unless the move was made at the orders of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), Bireun regent Mustafa A. Galanggang reasoned.

Immediately after the incident, Acehnese Governor Abdullah Puteh issued an instruction ordering all civil servants working in the province to undergo loyalty tests.

As a consequence, about 67,000 civil servants throughout the restive province began yesterday to take the loyalty tests that will determine whether or not they will be allowed to keep their jobs. "This will enable us to filter out those (civil servants) who are truly loyal to the Unitary Republic. Firm action will be taken against those who waver, support or are involved with GAM," Governor Puteh told reporters in Banda Aceh.

It is easy to see how, for a government beset with problems, the temptation to extend the approach to include other regions besides Aceh -- once a first step has been made -- is difficult to resist. Hence, the public's concern, whether justified or otherwise, that all civil servants might, in the future, be required to take tests similar to those that were mandatory under the New Order.

To reassure the public that the government had no such intentions, Minister Tamin asked the public not to confuse the "re-registration" of civil servants initiated by the government in Jakarta yesterday with the "loyalty tests" the Aceh provincial administration had begun conducting on the same day.

"This re-registration is being done solely for obtaining accurate and comprehensive data for decision-making purposes," he told reporters this week.

When asked whether the re-registration of civil servants had anything to do with the situation in Aceh, the minister said the two were totally unrelated. However, "... not only in Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam, but anywhere in Indonesia, regions are entitled to add their own questions to the tests, depending on their specific interests."

It is this latter statement that can throw some doubts as to the government's true intentions. However, we see no reason at this point to doubt State Minister Feisal's good intentions.

If, as the minister asserts, putting order into the chaos that still prevails after decades of bureaucratic restructuring efforts is the true aim of the re-registration process, then by all means -- let us lend our wholehearted support to his efforts.

On the other hand, Indonesians should firmly reject any effort to regress this nation and this country to the dark era of witch- hunting and the apportioning of guilt by association.