Did opposition groups pass 'verification'?

Max Lane, Visiting Fellow, Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University Murdoch WA, Australia

Most of the 24 parties which gained registration for the 2004 general elections trace their origins back to groups or parties that were participants in the New Order political system rather than its opponents. There are just a few partial exceptions.

One of these partial exceptions is Abdurrahman Wahid's National Awakening Party (PKB) and the Nahdlatul Ulama. Wahid withdrew the NU from Soeharto's political system in the 1980s and became involved in the moderate opposition group Forum Demokrasi. This opposition was aimed specifically at dictatorship and gave little priority to a broader program. More significantly, it shared an elitist opposition to mass politics, an attitude that allowed Abdurrahman to be later easily deposed as president by more conservative forces.

There is the New Indonesia Alliance Party (PPIB), headed by the economist Syahrir. Syahrir has a long history of outspoken opposition to dictatorship and corruption. He was imprisoned for several years from 1974. The PPIB now combines an opposition to corruption and racial discrimination with strong support for the free market neo-liberal policies also accepted by the rest of the elite.

A more complicated exception is that of Eros Jarot and the Freedom Bull National Party (PNBK). Jarot, and many of the activists of the PNBK, were members of the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) when it was an officially sanctioned party of the dictatorship. However, he became active in the PDI during the period when it was becoming the subject of intensifying harassment by Soeharto who was opposed to the party's elevation of Megawati to the party chairpersonship. Unlike Megawati herself, Jarot did not join the PDI when it was still purely a subordinate creature of the dictatorship,

The PNBK has not come out of the central stream of opposition to the New Order, the reformasi stream, based on the development of a range of policy critiques and programs advocating the interests of differents social sectors. The origins of the full reformasi agenda must be traced to the 1990s student movement, the NGOs, the worker and peasant groups, women's groups and the political radicals. The PNBK elements' opposition to the New Order during the 1990s was more associated with the struggle against the dictatorship's maneuvers against Megawati.

However in 2002 the PNBK joined the briefly lived National Coalition (KN), which brought together the biggest coalition ever of reformasi NGOs, political groups and student, worker and peasant organizations. The KN's political platform called for an end to the military hierarchy's interference in politics and demanded a complete purging of the state apparatus of individuals involved in repression or corruption during the New Order era.

It also demanded the full political rehabilitation of the victims of political repression during and since the New Order. The KN also called for the cancellation of all debts flowing from agreements between the New Order regime with the World Bank, IMF and Asian Development Bank.

It also called for an immediate 100 percent increase in wages as well as the salaries of all officers, non-commissioned officers and the ranks of the armed forces and police. It also calls for the reinstitution of subsidies for agriculture, as well as a rejection of trade liberalization in the food sector.

However, the PNBK appeared to draw away from the Coalition when it appeared to be unable to mobilize mass activity in the immediate term. To date, the PNBK has not been able to build a national profile based around any of the policy positions in the Coalition manifesto, but has instead relied rather on a combination of appeal to the cultural (rather than political) symbols of Sukarnoism, political maneuver and Jarot's own charisma.

Rachmawati Soekarnoputri and her Pioneers' Party (Partai Pelopor) has a different history. Rachmawati stayed outside the New Order political system as a protest against the suppression and slandering of her father's ideas and writings. During the last few years, she has been a prominent critic of the Megawati government attacking it for surrendering to U.S. interests and for collaborating with New Order force. Rachmawati and Pelopor use the more radical ideas from former president Sukarno. Her writings have been featured in the mass circulation popular press.

Another sister, Sukmawati, who heads the Marhaenism Indonesian National Party (PNI Marhaenisme), also is appealing to a more radical Sukarnoism although she is yet to make a clear mark. Rachmawati also initially indicated support for the Koalisi Nasional manifesto.

This broader activist reformasi movement, reflecting its own fragmentation, is not directly represented by any of the political parties that are registered for the elections. The Social Democratic Labor Party (PBSD), headed by Mochtar Pakpahan, has a name that connects with reformasi but has only tenuous organic contacts.

The Party of United Peoples Opposition (Popor), headed by Dita Sari, is the most important party to come out of the reformasi movement, armed with a comprehensive program and cadre team, Based among the most radical, and still relatively small, section of poor students, workers and peasants meant that it could not rally the material resources to pass the verification test.

The most important question of the coming election campaign will be whether parties such as PNBK and Pelopor (and perhaps PNI Marhaenisme and PBSD), decide to campaign on the basis of promoting the alternative policies of the Coalition, which they once supported. Or will they rely on symbols, personal charisma, the promotion of individual figures popular with some slice of the public or other, and deals with parties who have been supporting quite different policies, such as the PPIB?

Campaigning to win support for alternative policies has the potential to draw into political activity the whole of the reformasi spectrum -- all the NGOs, democratic intellectuals and artists, women's, worker and peasant organizations and groups like POPOR. The other approach will destine these newer parties to simply slicing off three to 10 percent of the votes of parties they originally came from or whose symbols or vocabulary they share (more-or-less).

In any case, to what extent a clearer oppositional pole, based on alternative policies, develops during the next year of political campaigning will be a key factor in determining whether the frustration at social and economic stagnation after the elections will have a clear focus (leadership) or tend towards amok.