For Indonesians, the waiting game continues

By Yenni Djahidin

WASHINGTON (JP): It's hot and humid in Washington, and this is especially felt sitting outside a Starbuck's coffee shop on a busy downtown street. The author of A Nation in Waiting, a best- selling book on Indonesian politics sits sipping his coffee.

Adam Schwarz says he is now more of a business consultant than a journalist. He also teaches at two prestigious universities, John Hopkins and Georgetown.

During the interview with The Jakarta Post, Schwarz is wary, perhaps afraid the interviewer would misquote his remarks. He talked slowly so he could be heard clearly over the noise from the street.

Now living in Washington with his wife, Schwarz visited Indonesia last month to observe the general election.

He talks about the impressions he has and his current work:

Question: What are you doing now?

Answer: I am doing a couple of things. I am teaching at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at John Hopkins and at Georgetown University. I'm also a consultant to businesses active in southeast Asia, primarily in Indonesia, looking to expand or find new joint venture partners or having to deal with environmental issues or labor issues or governmental issues.

Q: Are you still writing?

A: I am just in the process of completing an update to my 1994 book, A Nation in Waiting, and I have just published a book, which I co-edited, called The Politics of Post-Soeharto Indonesia, published by the Council on Foreign Relations.

Q: Can you tell me about the book?

A: That book came out of a series of seminars that I organized at the Council on Foreign Relations, looking at different aspects of Indonesian policy. The meetings took place in just a few months just prior to Soeharto's resignation. And the papers were then updated after Soeharto resigned to try to take a relatively quick look at the some of the important issues that were going to crop up in politics, in the economy, with regard to Islam just after Soeharto resigned.

Q: Tell me about your impressions of the elections during your recent visit to Indonesia...

A: Like a lot of the events and developments since Soeharto resigned, there is both good news and bad news in the election.

The good news first. Let's start with the basics: The elections happened. Almost exactly a year after Soeharto resigned, genuine, relatively free and fair elections took place, which is a major undertaking in a country the size of Indonesia and a country that hasn't had much practice in organizing elections. The election campaign was enthusiastic and relatively violence-free. The turnout in most provinces and most places was quite high. So in all those respects, it's a step forward.

There are obviously concerns about the slow vote counts, and there are obviously concerns about the reported irregularities and accusations of vote fraud, and there are concerns about the political process more generally in terms of whether the election results as seen in the parliamentary elections will be fairly reflected in the MPR in November. A question many people asked is whether the popular will, as reflected in the parliamentary elections, will be upheld in the presidential election in a few months time.

Q: With regards to the title of your book A Nation in Waiting, what exactly is Indonesia waiting for now?

A: I suppose we have to say it's waiting for different things. When I published the book originally, what I was referring to with the title was basically two-fold. It was in one sense, waiting for Soeharto to leave power, and the second meaning was waiting to see what sort of country Indonesia would become once Soeharto had left power and once Soeharto's strict rules on public discussion, on public debate and strict rules on political activity were removed. So, in that sense, obviously that waiting is now over. Soeharto is gone.

In the second sense, the waiting goes on. It's still not very clear how Indonesian politics will evolve. We still don't have clear answers to some of the basic questions about Indonesia and Indonesian politics. We are still waiting to see what sort of relationship will develop between Jakarta and the outside provinces. We're still waiting to see what role Islam will play in Indonesian politics and how that would affect other religions. We're still waiting to see how strong a factor ethnic politics will become. We're still waiting to see what's going to happen with East Timor, for example. So, in that sense, in the second sense for which I had intended the title originally, I think the title still holds up. I think the title is still relevant.

Q: When you wrote the book, could you have foreseen these changes?

A: It was published five years ago. Nobody can predict the future, but what I tried to lay out in my book was where the pressures were likely to rise. The aspects of politics and of policy that were unlikely to be sustainable. For example, it was already quite evident in the early '90s that corruption was going to become an increasingly problematic issue for Soeharto because it was clear that his children were only going to become more active in business. And it was pretty clear that Soeharto was not going to act to put a limit on that. It was pretty clear that there was going to be an increasing conflict between Soeharto's style of politics and the demands of economic liberalization. And we could see that conflict emerge in disputes over things like the national car project. In the Busang gold mine fraud there was a contradiction in the way policy was being run domestically and the commitments Indonesia had made internationally.

Nobody could have predicted precisely how that conflict was going to erupt into a crisis, but it was clear that the overall approach that Soeharto was taking was not sustainable.

I'll give you one other example: It was clear by the early '90s that given the shift between the public and the private sector, in terms of economic output and the financing of economic output, that it was unsustainable. That the poor degree of financial supervision was a recipe for disaster. That the inability of state bankers, of state banks, for example, to impose strict lending criteria, which was inevitably going to result in large non-performing loans simply because the people who weren't paying the loans back had political protection.

Q: Why did the changes take as long as they did?

A: What I tried to describe in my book were the areas of vulnerability for Indonesian politics, the contradictions in economic policy, the prevalence of corruption, the tensions between the Islamic community, the tensions over the distribution of wealth, particularly as it concerned the ethnic Chinese minority. Those are all in the category of preconditions. What was required to turn those preconditions into a crisis situation for Soeharto was some sort of trigger that would weaken his political standing. That trigger came in the Asian financial crisis. The one area where Soeharto had not been vulnerable previously was in macroeconomic growth, with the performance of the overall economy. Once that began to falter, once the macro- economy began to perform poorly, then Soeharto had lost his main area of legitimacy as president. And then because of all these other preconditions, he found himself with very little to fall back on.

Q: Let's talk a little bit about your update of the book...

A: The book will be re-issued in a second edition in August. The title is A Nation in Waiting: Indonesia's Search for Stability. It contains two new chapters. The first basically completes the story of the New Order. It picks up the story about where the first edition left off, which is to say in early 1994. It carries through, looking at politics, economic developments, foreign policy, military politics, religious politics, right up into the beginning of the financial crisis. It continues with a lengthy discussion of Soeharto's response to the financial crisis. And then a long account of Soeharto's last few weeks in power.

The second is a discussion of the first ten months of post- Soeharto Indonesia. Again it goes back to the second idea of what Indonesia waiting for and it asks the question: What possible ways could Indonesia change now that Soeharto has left power?

How is the military role going to change? Will there be an emergence of Islamic politics? What are likely to be the new economic debates? To what extent are the forces of reform going to be able to push through an agenda for reform, given that they are up against powerful forces that want to maintain the old status quo?

Q: Where do you think Indonesia goes from here?

A: I am cautiously optimistic about Indonesia's future. Every time we discuss predictions for the future, we always have to keep in mind what are our expectations. And my expectations are that Indonesia is going to have a very difficult time over the medium-term. Indonesia is up against two enormous challenges: rebuilding its economy and rebuilding its political institutions, which have been badly eroded over the last three or four decades. To have to tackle both of those challenges at the same time is an enormous, daunting task. Mistakes are going to be made, there are going to be setbacks, there are going to be disappointments, there are going to be unfulfilled expectations. I think you would be unrealistic to expect that simply having a democratic election is going to solve the problems. It is the start to solving the problems. It is a necessary prerequisite to solving the problems. But it is no more than that. There's a long period of problem- solving still to go.

And I think maybe there is a historical analogy to be made. In the early '50s, just after independence was secured, there was a sense that many Indonesians felt that, now independence was secured, the problems were over. There would be freedom, there would be prosperity, there would be end to exploitation. But that was not the case and those expectations were not met.

Independence was the beginning of a new way of life. It was an opportunity to enjoy freedom and to enjoy prosperity, to return the sovereignty to the people. Much like the elections of last month provide an opportunity for a new way of life, for a different sort of government, a more representative government, a more accountable government, a more just government. But it's only that, an opportunity. And it's now up to Indonesians to seize that opportunity and to use this to bring about those results. But there is a great deal of hard work to be done.

Q: You also talk about the role of the military in your book...

A: It basically discusses the various dilemmas facing the military. The military has been accustomed to a certain political role, a certain political influence, a preeminent role and influence, and now finds itself in a situation where not only is it losing many areas of influence, it's finding its past performance coming under a great deal of criticism. And so, one of the dilemma's facing the military is, "How do we come to grips with or come clean with problems of the past without so discrediting the military that it forfeits any claim to having a political role in the future?".

Another dilemma for the military is more on the personnel or human resources level. How do you sharply contract the number of military personal seconded to civilian jobs without adding to legal and order problems? When the military doesn't have the jobs for them, they can't afford these people, and the private sector doesn't have the jobs to absorb these people, what's going to happen to them?

Q: Do you have any prediction of who's going to be the next president?

A: No. I think if Indonesia needs anything right now the most, it is political stability. Indonesia has had political uncertainty not only for the last year but really since the beginning of the financial crisis. Some people would say that since mid-1996 when Ibu Tien died and when Megawati (Soekarnoputri) was thrown out of PDI (Indonesian Democratic Party). The question of political uncertainty has come back to the fore in the issue of succession and how the process would work. The good news is that the process has started in the sense that Soeharto has stepped down and Indonesians are now beginning to answer these questions. But the answers are not yet in. We still don't have a new president and therefore it's difficult to peer into the future without any sort of confidence about what sort of policy Indonesia will have, about what sort of relationship is going to exist with the outer islands and all of the other issues. Until we have answers to those questions, the economy is not really going to recover in a robust way because people don't yet have the confidence to put in long-term capital.

So, the important thing is that we now get a government that can claim a popular and legitimate mandate from the people. Now, the DPR (House of Representatives) elections of early June was a start in that process. The rules of Indonesian politics are there's going to be this five months' gap and second electoral body to chose the president, that is the MPR (People's Consultative assembly). And that presents a number of risks. And the main risk is that Indonesia ends up with a government that cannot claim that popular and legitimate mandate to rule. Without that, we almost certainly will see continued political instability. That would be a very unfortunate outcome for Indonesia because it means that really no progress can be made on a number of other areas which need immediate attention.