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.