Habibie vs. the People

Habibie vs. the People

Just one day after President B.J. Habibie delivered his
impassioned speech before the country's supreme policy-making
body, the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR), to justify the
policies he has taken over the past 16 months that he has been in
power, it is crystal clear that a serious gap exists between the
chief executive's thinking and that of the Indonesian public at
large. Perhaps even more worrying, there are indications that
some members of the newly elected Assembly may be just as out of
tune as the President with the general mood that prevails among
the public outside the Assembly halls.

Yesterday, even as legislators inside the Assembly were
weighing the strong and the weak points in the President's
"accountability" speech, thousands of people, including
university students, high school students and residents, battled
police and riot troops guarding the approaches to the MPR
building in Jakarta.

A small number of students were on Thursday allowed inside the
Assembly's grand conference hall to personally listen to the
President's address. MPR leaders had promised at least 100
student representatives would be allowed to attend the session,
and possibly more sessions, in the run-up to next week's
presidential elections.

Well meant as such a move may be, it is certain to be viewed
by the students as an empty gesture that will do nothing to get
them closer to seeing their demands fulfilled. Those demands are,
among other things, total political reform, a guarantee that
civil rights and the law in general will be respected, clean
governance and an end to military interference in politics.
Already, to press those demands, student leaders have vowed that
they will continue putting pressure on the legislature through
street demonstrations, at least until after a satisfactory
presidential election by the Assembly on Wednesday, Oct. 20.

While there are many events of the past 16 months that throw
serious doubt on the President's capability to carry out the
program of total reform that the Indonesian public demands -- the
large number of unresolved cases of human rights abuses, the
government's slow and selective handling of cases of corruption,
the continued partiality of the state's judicial institutions
toward the executive, the continuing veiled but unmistakable
dominance of the military in public life and politics are some of
the manifestations that immediately come to mind -- one case in
particular may serve to illustrate the situation in this respect.

Such a case is the Bank Bali scandal, which the President for
obvious reasons chose to sidestep in his address. A major public
scandal of the moment, this particular case has all the elements
that are indicative of a corrupt system. The few arrests that
have been made in this case have failed to satisfy the public's
sense of justice. The point is that while it may be true that
those arrested are guilty of banking malpractices, people who
have been widely mentioned as the instigators of the whole affair
-- all close associates and allies of the President -- have
remained untouched.

All the elements that are characteristic of bad governance --
malfeasance, corruption, disregard of the law and cover-up at all
cost to protect people in high places -- are present in this
single case. The government's stubborn refusal to disclose the
full findings of an independent audit of the case conducted by
the PricewaterhouseCoopers international auditing firm only
serves to strengthen suspicions of serious wrongdoing on the part
of the Habibie administration.

To many Indonesians, though, all this is to be expected since
the incumbent Habibie administration is in every respect a mere
extension of Soeharto's New Order regime. Having been Soeharto's
privileged protege, it is natural that Habibie tries to cling to
power. After all, since Soeharto's fall it is Habibie who has
taken the old autocrat's place on the proverbial tiger's back.

It is true that there have been improvements since Habibie
took over from Soeharto. Most notably, the rights of free
expression, free assembly and association and press freedom have
been restored. It is wrong, however, to assert that those
improvements were made possible because of Habibie. It only takes
one to recall the circumstances that forced Soeharto to
relinquish power and caused his vice president, B.J. Habibie, to
ascend to power. If anyone deserves credit for having forced the
current democratic changes to be made it is the students and the
masses of Indonesians who laid siege to the legislature to press
their demands.

Considering all this, one piece of good advice that we can
give to our legislators presently convened in the MPR is one that
has been expressed by many of our leading political observers and
analysts already: Listen to the voice of the people. Only by
staying in tune with the people and taking heed of their wishes
will it be possible for those people's representatives to achieve
what is best for the nation.