Democracy seeds will grow and strengthen

By M. C. Ricklefs

MELBOURNE (JP): Will the Republic of Indonesia survive the crisis which it has been suffering for the last two or three years? The answer is obvious: yes and no.

Whatever the outcome of the crisis and the attempts to overcome it, the Republic of Indonesia in, say, 2005 will not be the same as it is now. So present structures, attitudes, expectations and styles will not all survive in their present form. But I believe that there will still be a Republic of Indonesia for many years to come.

The challenges facing the nation are truly immense. They are in large measure the fruit of the failure of successive generations of leadership and the political-social-economic systems which they introduced.

To gain a perspective on the present crisis, we can usefully turn to the 1950s in Indonesia.

After the Revolution of 1945-1949, Indonesia failed to establish a viable system of government which was responsive to the will of the people.

The Indonesian national leadership was at that time largely Dutch-educated, with very little experience in matters of government. This was hardly surprising, given the fact that they had grown up in a colonial environment which had, since the mid- 1920s, turned more conservative and opposed to the Indonesian independence movement.

The foremost civilian leaders, people like Sukarno, Hatta and Sjahrir, had been imprisoned by the Dutch. The Japanese had been prepared to employ some of these leaders to their own ends during World War II.

Towards the end of the war, as it became obvious to the Japanese that they were going to be defeated, they encouraged Indonesians to move towards independence as a way of frustrating any attempt by the European colonizers to reestablish themselves in Southeast Asia.

But nowhere in all of this experience did that first generation of civilian Indonesian leaders have an opportunity to develop practical measures for governing this vast archipelago. Nor were the military leaders who emerged during the Revolution any better equipped to create a modern state.

They were mostly at least ten years younger than the civilians and most of them had limited education, which had been severely disrupted by the Japanese occupation and the Revolution which followed.

Their training had been as military men: accustomed to giving and accepting orders, not to listening to and responding to the will of the people. To be sure, their experience as guerrilla fighters gave them valuable links to the masses, but the military mind is rarely gifted with the view of leadership which sees it as something which involves responsibility to the people. Among these military men, but not the most prominent among them, was Soeharto.

Nor were the Indonesian masses, in most areas, in a position to demand responsive government from their new leaders. Everywhere the only government people had experienced was an authoritarian one: colonial occupation or Japanese military government, with local employees and allies to enforce them.

There was no tradition of what we would recognize as a modern democratic style of government. Given low levels of literacy, limited communications and very uneven social, political and economic development, it is not surprising that there did not emerge any widespread popular movement for democratic and responsive government.

The governing elite of the new nation, both the national-level leaders and those at provincial, kabupaten and lower levels, were prone to regarding ordinary Indonesians with a degree of condescension and even contempt. The rakyat (people) were bodoh (stupid) in the eyes of many elite Indonesians.

So in the 1950s Jakarta politics became a game of elites and their clients. Winning government was only partly about policies: it was also, in fact perhaps more, about money and patronage.

Compared to what was to follow, corruption was still at a low level. Kami masih belajar (we were still learning) a good friend once said to me about corruption in that period. So there was less money around, and less going into the pockets of politicians and their mates. But it was enough to contribute to a failure by political leaders to recognize their responsibility to listen and respond to the wishes of the rakyat.

The ostensibly democratic system of the 1950s foundered on its failure to create democratic, responsive, responsible networks which reached from the capital city to the towns, villages and hamlets across the nation.

In most democratic systems, it is political parties which perform this role of two-way bridge between the leadership and the masses. But of all the Indonesian political parties of the period 1950-1957, only the PKI (Indonesian Communist Party) successfully built such bridges.

That was one of the reasons why it did unexpectedly well in the national election of 1955 and the regional elections of 1957. But this was not taken as a lesson by other political parties to try to outdo the Communists in this respect.

Rather, it contributed to the view of other political leaders that, if electoral politics was likely to deliver power to the Communists, then it would probably be better to abandon electoral politics.

Regional dissatisfaction with Jakarta meanwhile grew. There were lots of reasons for this: the overvalued Rupiah which discriminated against outer island exporters, religiously inspired dislike of the more cosmopolitan lifestyles of Jakarta politicos, inadequate attention to infrastructure in the islands outside of Java and others.

Even before the Dutch conceded independence to Indonesia in 1949, the Darul Islam rebellion had broken out in West Java. The Republik Maluku Selatan (South Moluccan Republic) rebellion followed shortly after the end of the revolution.

The most serious challenge came from the resistance to Jakarta in both Sulawesi and Sumatra which culminated in the Permesta and PRRI rebellions of the late 1950s.

These were about how the whole nation should be governed. They represented opposition to the authoritarian military-Sukarno alliance which was by then emerging as the new shape of Jakarta government, replacing the failed structures of liberal democracy. These rebellions had covert outside support from several sources, including some of Indonesia's close neighbors and the United States of America.

It is worth recalling, thus, that in the 1950s Indonesia was facing circumstances which were similar to those of today: an attempt to create electoral democracy, economic difficulties, regional dissent, failing political leadership, and outside interference.

The differences, however, are also very important. Remember that in the late 1950s communications were still limited, newspapers and radio reached only a minority of Indonesians, literacy was still low and there was no popular expectation that government would act in the popular interest or knowledge of how it might be required to do so.

And the idea of 'Indonesia' as a nation-state was still quite a new one: the first generation to be born in the independent state of Indonesia was just reaching voting age as electoral democracy was collapsing in the late 1950s.

In fact, Indonesia was in greater danger of falling apart territorially in the 1950s than it is today. And there were those both within the country and outside it who would have welcomed such a disintegration, for it would have undermined the increasingly radical thrust of the Sukarno government.

In contemporary terminology, the structures of 'civil society' were still very weak in the 1950s. And the international environment was relatively hostile to a radicalizing Indonesia under the leadership of Sukarno and the army.

But Indonesia did not fall apart. Instead, under Sukarno's Guided Democracy (1959-1965) and then under Soeharto's New Order (1966-1988) the nation entered a period when its infant democracy was overthrown for totalitarian government -- moderated principally by administrative incompetence and inefficiency which preserved space for individual freedom to a greater degree than might otherwise have been expected.

So where does Indonesia stand today? Regional dissatisfaction is rampant. Accepting that East Timor was a special case doesn't really help all that much to reassure many observers. After all, Papua and Aceh are special, too, but in different ways. Papua was not a part of Indonesia at the point of independence and only came under Indonesian rule in the early 1960s. Historical and cultural experiences there differ from those of the mainstream in Indonesia.

And what of Aceh? There we see a bulwark of the Republic during the Revolution. For forty years after the 1870s, Acehnese had resisted colonial conquest -- the longest war of resistance in colonial history anywhere in the world. Before the Japanese could get there at the start of World War II, the Acehnese had thrown the Dutch out themselves. Aceh was so committed to the struggle for independence and had a history of resistance so fierce that, once the Dutch had evacuated surrendered Japanese troops from there at the end of the war, they did not even try to reenter Aceh for the rest of the Revolution.

So is Acehnese secession from Indonesia really conceivable? It is well to remember that when the Acehnese resisted outside rulers (i.e. the colonial state) a hundred years ago, the soldiers whom they fought were mostly other Indonesians: Javanese, Ambonese, Bugis and so on.

Only a minority of the colonial forces were actually Europeans. When the Acehnese resisted Jakarta in the 1950s, they showed that their commitment was not unconditional; it was to a particular vision of Indonesia, one which did not include the style of government they perceived in Jakarta at that time. And clearly the DOM (military operations area) policy of the New Order for a decade from the late 1980s has deeply embittered Acehnese.

By unleashing such military repression, Soeharto probably succeeded in persuading many Acehnese that a deal with Jakarta, such as that encapsulated in the Daerah Istimewa (Special District) settlement of 1959, cannot be relied upon if there is a change of government policy in Jakarta.

So the answer is: yes, Acehnese secession is conceivable, and because of the history of Aceh it would have incalculable impacts across the country. Unlike East Timor, and perhaps unlike Papua, the loss of Aceh would call into question the very concept of Indonesia. For that reason alone, it is unlikely that Jakarta would accept such an outcome.

So the future for Aceh seems to be either (1) a political settlement which allows Aceh the degree of autonomy which Acehnese feel is necessary to allow them to preserve the values they are prepared to fight and die for, or (2) chronic, draining, long-term, bloody conflict.

Much depends upon leadership, but where is that to come from in today's Indonesia?

Since the late 1950s Indonesians have been accustomed to a presidency which determines the shape, style and even details of national policy. No one can reasonably expect that today.

Although Abdurrahman's presidency has achieved some things, in the light of Indonesia's vast problems, it has to be regarded on balance as unsuccessful. Abdurrahman has, however, preserved one particularly precious gift of reformasi: he has preserved openness.

Under Sukarno or Soeharto one could be denounced, arrested or worse for insulting the head of state. Now, Gus Dur makes it clear that anyone can say what they like, even if he doesn't like what they say. This is a precious right, not to be undervalued or abused.

It is clear that Indonesia now lacks most of the structures of authority which the nation has been accustomed to. It has a failing presidency at its center. Its military and police are unable to defend law and order; it is as well that an outside attack on the nation is inconceivable, for it is equally inconceivable that the military could even defend the nation.

Wiping out corruption from the judiciary has a very long way to go. The bureaucracy functions only in part. And the nation is about to enter the age of regional autonomy, with authority devolving to levels of government which are only partly equipped to manage it.

This means that what is called 'civil society' needs to respond to the challenges facing the nation. This is both promising and threatening. Civil society -- resting on institutions and networks which mediate between government and the people -- consists of dedicated people committed to the NGOs and other voluntary groupings which are addressing many of the nation's social issues. Here we see some wonderfully devoted, principled people.

The development of literacy since the 1950s and the spread of modern means of communication support the functioning of voluntary networks and organizations. Horizontal communication is greatly facilitated by the internet and handphone. It is now virtually impossible for any government to control fully the information received by its citizens, or their ability to communicate with others.

Indonesia has been particularly fortunate to have an inspired, educated student movement to lead the way at crucial junctures by making effective use of these horizontal means of communication. So what if they foul up the traffic on Jakarta's streets now and then?

But there are other kinds of institutions and networks which also mediate between government and the people, and which are encouraged by present circumstances in Indonesia. These include politically organized thugs, thieves, terrorists, extremists, murderers, corruptors, frauds, drug-dealers, people-smugglers and all the odious characters associated with organized crime.

We may be confident that, just as has proved true in the former Soviet Union, so in Indonesia criminals, terrorists and extremists will make good use of the opportunities offered by the breakdown of law and order and the greater ease of horizontal communications.

Soeharto's New Order kept criminals under control basically by two policies. One was to employ, franchise and license them, using them to the benefit of the regime. The other was to use extrajudicial violence to eliminate them when they got out of hand. Political or other extremists were jailed or murdered. With the fall of the New Order fell also the centralized control of violence which underlay such approaches.

Today's international environment is much more supportive of Indonesia than it was in the 1950s. Despite suspicions of the United States, Australia and the United Nations, in fact no nation stands to benefit from a territorial break-up of Indonesia.

And no nation would benefit from a failure of democracy in Indonesia. The only conceivable source of support for disintegration would be criminal networks, who will always profit from loosening structures of authority.

The nation's greatest strength remains its nationalism. At least three generations have grown up believing that Indonesia is a nation which has the right to exist, and which has a rightful claim upon their loyalty.

Soeharto's manipulation of nationalism to serve his, his family's and his cronies' interests undoubtedly created cynicism about Indonesian nationalism in many minds. Yet the concept still claims the loyalty of many and inspires them to act in the interest of the nation and its people.

When the nation comes through this time of troubles -- which will be neither easy nor soon -- I believe it will be because of the resilience of its society and the strength of its nationalism.

In my view, there is a very strong prospect that the seeds of democracy which have been planted so recently in Indonesia will grow and strengthen. Widespread popular disappointment and despair at the Abdurrahman presidency is not without its benefits.

In a democratic country it is possible for dedicated citizens to get on with the task of creating a better future without presidential leadership. That is a valuable lesson, one which it seems the President has been anxious for Indonesians to learn.

Professor M. C. Ricklefs is director of the Melbourne Institute of Asian Languages and Societies, at the University of Melbourne.