Bintang's challenges are also ours

Bintang's challenges are also ours

Sacked legislator Sri Bintang Pamungkas who faces a four-year
jail term for slandering President Soeharto shook the political
landscape recently when he set up a new political party.
Political scientist Mochtar Pabottingi examines the event.

JAKARTA (JP): Only a handful of Indonesians could emulate the
courage, energy and vision of Sri Bintang Pamungkas in
contemporary Indonesian politics.

Since five or six years ago, he has not only expressed his
ideas with rare frankness and clarity, but followed them up with
concrete actions.

Undeterred by personal harassment, dismissal from the House of
Representatives and recent trial and conviction for defaming
President Soeharto, over a week ago he established the Indonesian
Democratic Union Party (PUDI).

What undergird his political struggle? Some people explain
Bintang's phenomenon as symptomatic of psychological problems,
induced by an unhappy childhood. Some explain his outspokenness
as a sign of political immaturity, which borders on insanity.

These explanations rule out politics as virtuous, direct,
principled and essential. They stem from a conflicting
understanding of politics, that as something shallow, trick-or-
treat like, unprincipled and inessential. Or they constitute a
way of hiding one's own debility within or complicity with the
reigning politics.

Bintang would not do all that he has done so far without a
virtuous, direct, principled and essential way of understanding
politics. In that sense, he belongs to the company of Mochtar
Lubis, Deliar Noer, Ali Sadikin, Adnan Buyung Nasution,
Abdurrahman Wahid, Rahman Tolleng and others. Like these figures,
he has captured the undemocratic essence of the New Order's
politics and come up with a virtuous, direct, principled and
essential response to it.

The government has accused Bintang's latest action of founding
PUDI as unconstitutional. However, there is actually no law that
explicitly prohibits people from establishing new political
parties. All 18 articles of the 1985 law are carefully worded and
do not specifically forbid such an action, for to do so would be
in direct violation of the 1945 Constitution.

The government's accusation could therefore backfire. The more
the authorities pursue this accusation, the more they pose an
even more serious question as to the constitutionality of many of
the New Order's own rules and practices in politics.

As a matter of fact, the most significant consequence of
Bintang's move is not so much the creation of his new party as
the diffusion among average Indonesians of a strong consciousness
about the state of the constitutionality of the New Order's
political format.

As with the Independent Election Monitoring Committee (KIPP),
the more the bureaucracy suppresses the new party, the more it
will disclose things it actually wants concealed. In other words,
as soon as the bureaucracy raises questions about PUDI's
constitutionality, it invites serious reverse questioning about
the constitutionality of its own political edifice.

On this count, Bintang has nothing to lose. Based as it is on
an emergency situation, which has long been overdue, a fair
debate on the constitutionality of the New Order's political
format is the last thing the government wants.

Another significant issue of PUDI would be the road it tries
to pave towards a new political consensus and agreements, not
between society and the state but between societal political
groups themselves.

Here, again, Bintang strikes at the right core. Indonesia's
devious road to democracy is equally a function of the lack of
enlightenment within the corpus of the ruling elite and the
inability of the country's forces of democracy to come to
constructive terms among each other.

But, for three reasons, Bintang's chance for success is rather
dismal on the latter count.

First, the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) would find PUDI a
duplication of its reason for being. Second, the New Order -- in
spite of its claim to have simplified and unified formerly
disparate political parties -- continues to effectively play a
kind of divide-and-rule game. Third, some vital minority-majority
divide worsened during the first 25 years of the New Order's
rule, and it takes time for both parties to learn from the grave
disadvantages of dishonesty and distrust in politics.

At the moment what Bintang needs is a concerted action and an
ability to overcome his image as a lone, somewhat proud fighter.

To be sure, Bintang's struggle and challenges are also ours.

The writer is head of the Center of Research and Development
of Politics and Area Studies at the Indonesian Institute of
Sciences.