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)