Government initiates only half-hearted change

Government initiates only half-hearted change

By Adrianus Meliala

JAKARTA (JP): A foreign friend asked me once what does reform
actually mean to most Indonesians. Since it was then only about a
week after Soeharto was toppled on May 21, 1998, I still had the
courage to say that it was a mini revolution.

Change would be the sole word which has any meaning. We could
only say that change has occurred if not only Soeharto and his
government, but also the whole structure of understanding on
almost everything which the New Order government monopolized is
transformed. The mini revolution would be on two levels: ideas
and actual change.

Five months into this reform era, I am unable to be as
energetic as I used to be in responding to the same question. And
it is probably true that more and more people feel the same way.
Is what we are experiencing the reform we dreamed about? Are we
going in the right direction to get out of the economic crisis
and political turbulence?

Change has undoubtedly taken place in the last five months.
However, the remaining number of social, political and economic
issues which are regarded as unfair or even illegal, still
outweighs the number of changes that have been implemented. To
examine why that is the case we should refer first to why there
were changes in some areas. It would easy to be suspicious that
those changes were not induced by people's demands for reform,
but merely government-initiated efforts to attract public
support.

How far reform has progressed at the empirical level can be
calculated and it is still taking place. Of more concern is that
with regard to ideas we have failed to really progress.

Yasraf Amir Piliang wrote in the Kompas daily (Sept. 10, 1998)
that the campaign to root out the old structures plagued with
corruption, collusion and nepotism, never stopped and seems to
have good prospects of continuing. The similarity of demands
raised by almost all elements of society, according to Yasraf,
can be regarded as a model of thinking called deconstruction.

With this, we revitalize the old structure by rethinking the
formal, conventional and traditional meaning of all structures
which occupied our minds for more than 30 years. And because of
that, Yasraf concluded, there are a lot of aspects of our nation
and state which ought to be deconstructed.

He quoted Jacques Derrida's concept of "deconstruction" from
his book Of Grammatology (1993). Derrida meant this as an
intellectual strategy to destroy and ruin any kind of established
structures either in language, ideology, the economy, politics,
law or culture. Those structures, in this country, were built on
such categorical foundations regarding their function and
limitations that there was no space for more than one
interpretation.

"Construction" would be the next logical step following
deconstruction, in order to create new structures which would
gain the people's support, be more democratic and more open-
minded. That is the essence of structural reform.

However, what has happened in Indonesia so far is clearly at
odds with Derrida's expectations. In some ways, we seem to be on
the deconstruction track, as can be seen by the end of things
like the Pancasila orientation course due to its indoctrinating
character.

But in many more ways, people's concept of deconstruction
tends to be more of just an attack on the symbols they perceive
to be unfair, dishonest or induce suffering. That is what
happened when people damaged and burned luxury cars and houses
during the May riots in Jakarta and in other towns around
Indonesia.

Unfortunately, deconstruction is not synonymous with
attacking. At the least, deconstruction does not require physical
destruction. People can regard as successful deconstruction the
government's attempt to create a new jargon by dispensing with
the old one. The broadening of political power by allowing new
parties is clearly another indication of the new construction of
the people-government relationship.

Back to my pessimism regarding the deconstruction that has
happened so far; how can we construct a new meaning of "society"
as a political or economic power after cars were burned, shops
destroyed and Chinese-Indonesians hounded out of the country?
Nothing has changed. The situation is in fact getting much worse.
As universities have rejected the Pancasila courses, the press
has rejected such jargon as "a free but responsible press" and
the East Timorese have rejected the idea of "full autonomy" for
their territory, what does the future hold?

The danger is that the more the government procrastinates over
the handling of issues on which most people have already decided
what they want, the greater is the possibility we will end up
with blurred solutions. The other danger is we will forget that
there are many other "old" issues still unresolved.

Observers across the country, as we can read in foreign media
reports, have expressed deep concern about Indonesia's current
situation. On an empirical level they see that we are still
struggling with the economic crisis. We are also suffering from
political turmoil mostly because of the government's
unresponsiveness to people's aspirations. Assuming that all these
problems are basically caused by the persistence of the old
government system, promises of reform are hard to take seriously.

The same situation is also found at the ideas level, as
discussed above. So what's wrong with us?

This situation was predicted by many because there are still a
large number of Soeharto's ministers in power. The new government
seems to reject the idea of deconstructing the foundations of the
structures created by the previous regime.

It is unfortunate that we have this half-hearted government.
In many ways it controls the speed of deconstruction. Outdated
theories regarding state control based on the introduction of the
decree on freedom of expression and also the controversial way
the government is handling the PDI conflict are two examples of
its lackadaisical attitude toward change.

On the other hand, the public is also to blame for being half-
hearted about its commitment to seeing through reform. It is
clear now that not all people are committed to change. An obvious
example is the low-ranking public officials who were arrested for
corruption linked to the distribution of basic foodstuffs.

We have also witnessed disputes among high-ranking officials,
both in the military and civilian circles, leaving a big question
over what is actually happening.

The greedy businessmen and bankers awaiting trial are also
another indication that we are not as homogeneous as we think we
are. Finally, have we really rejected the idea of improving our
lot by looting others' property or by inciting riots? Do we have
to end up like this?

The writer is a criminologist at the University of Indonesia,
who is researching his doctorate in Queensland, Australia.