Government wants to keep state powerful: Analyst

Government wants to keep state powerful: Analyst

JAKARTA (JP): The government of President B.J. Habibie has
moved to consolidate the power of the state even as it forges
ahead with democratization programs, an American scholar has
said.

William Liddle, a long-time Indonesia observer from Ohio State
University in America, said the government under Habibie, the
Armed Forces (ABRI) under Gen. Wiranto and the ruling political
group Golkar under Akbar Tandjung all have a stake in keeping the
state powerful.

"I'm more and more impressed with the power of the state," he
told The Jakarta Post yesterday.

To illustrate his point, Liddle said he had been told of an
American non-governmental organization which had the phones in
its Jakarta office tapped. This surveillance came to an end on
May 21 when president Soeharto resigned, but resumed two weeks
ago, he said, declining to disclose the name of the organization.

Pijar, a vocal human rights organization, also told him it has
learned that the government has stepped up surveillance of its
activities in recent weeks.

Although freedom of the press is flourishing, Liddle said the
state in Indonesia is still very powerful, and the government,
Golkar and ABRI all have an interest in maintaining the status
quo.

"Wiranto is becoming a better and better politician now," he
added.

He believed that in gearing up for next year's general
election, Golkar was concerned not so much about whether Habibie
would stand for election as "producing a president."

"It could be Akbar, Wiranto or Bambang," he said.

The last name refers to Lt. Gen. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono,
ABRI's Chief of Sociopolitical Affairs, who struck Liddle as
someone who could convince the people that the Armed Forces
understood the need to uphold democracy.

Liddle warned however that if reformists failed to get the
upper hand in the current critical times, the state would
dominate the people again as it did during the Soeharto era.

"They (government and military bureaucrats) support reforms
but they don't have an ideology in the way that Amien, Mega or
Gus Dur do," he said, referring to the prominent pro-reform
figures Amien Rais, Megawati Soekarnoputri and Abdurrahman Wahid.

While the military is scaling down its sociopolitical role
in keeping with public demand, it will become dominant again if
the civilian government turns out to be too weak to hold the
nation together, he said.

However, Liddle said that the threat of ABRI resuming its
dominant position in politics should not be exaggerated.

The Armed Forces has been cornered by recent revelations of
atrocities, he said, adding that more such cases would emerge in
the coming weeks.

The military, which has always prided itself on being the
guardian of the country and the people, does not have the
initiative in the drive for reform this time around, he said.

"ABRI did not save Indonesia from Soeharto. It cannot claim
that it saved the country," he said, adding that the honor
belonged to Amien Rais, university students who led the
demonstrations against Soeharto, and other leaders of the reform
movement.

Liddle said the reformists appeared to have been pushed aside
by Habibie, who in spite of being seen as a weak President, has
succeeded in "buying political legitimacy" and moving to the
center ground of national politics.

The reformists, who occupied center stage during the fall of
Soeharto "are still there, screaming, but they have been
marginalized," he said, adding that they could still wrestle back
the initiative.

Liddle noted that the unprecedented freedom following
Soeharto's downfall has allowed the return of 1950s sectarian
politics.

The trend is obvious from the growth of new parties bearing
sectarian labels that revive long buried political rivalries
along religious or racial lines, he said.

Falling into this category are parties like Abdurrahman
Wahid's People's Awakening Party (PKB) which groups
traditionalist Moslems, and Yusril Ihza Mahendra's Moon and Star
Party (PBB) which is supported by Islamic propagators, he said.

Some of the major new parties resembled organizations that
dominated the political scene in the 1950s, he noted.

PBB captures the spirit of the 1950s Masjumi; the People's
Awakening Party is underpinned by Nahdlatul Ulama (NU); and the
Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) under Megawati Soekarnoputri
represents the interests of the abangan (nominally Moslem
Javanese) in addition to non-Moslems.

These three groups, he said, were now battling for influence.

He likened Amien Rais' People's Mandate Party (PAN) to the old
Indonesian Socialist Party (PSI), which had the support of
Jakarta intellectuals. "They will be engaged in the political
education of the masses, but the masses won't listen and will
vote for the Moon and Star Party," he said.

Liddle said that from the many new parties, five in particular
were "worth watching" in next year's election -- the PKB, PDI,
Moon and Star Party, Golkar and PAN.

"Any one of them could get 20 percent of the votes... I'm
most confident that PKB will do very well. I'm less confident
about PAN and PBB," he said. (pan)