Habibie's warning of disintegration

President B.J. Habibie has threatened Golkar leaders that their failure to nominate him as presidential candidate for the next term would encourage separatism in the country. Mochtar Pabottingi of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) translates the warning within the political context.

Question: How do you read Habibie's threat concerning separatism and the possibility of Golkar breaking into pieces if he is not nominated for the presidency by the ruling party?

Pabottingi: Such an improper threat is contradictory to nationalism and shows the real quality and the colors of Habibie. It confirms that Habibie is an extension of Soeharto's New Order regime. The regime was deluded by the view that "the country will disintegrate if we are not ruling it". Soeharto, for example, used to reject any demand for political reform. But when the country was facing hardships (in 1997 and 1998), he expressed a willingness to introduce reform just to show that: "OK, you can carry on with your political reform and you will die with it."

Habibie's threat can be translated into: "If I am not allowed to continue leading the country, I will let it disintegrate."

Actually, either as president or as presidential nominee, Habibie should have acted as a statesman and said: "Even if I am not nominated or elected as next president, I will help the nation avoid disintegration."

Q: Do you mean that the New Order government was also against nationalism?

P: From the very beginning of its reign, the New Order administration was disrespectful to nationalism because it did not respect the human rights of the nation. At the start of its reign, for example, it allowed the killing of hundreds of thousands of people (merely because they were supposed to belong to the Indonesian Communist Party, which was accused of supporting an abortive coup in 1965).

Hundreds of people were also shot to death in Lampung, Tanjung Priok in Jakarta, Dili in East Timor and in Aceh.

Q: Didn't the New Order government claim to have worked for the interests of the nation?

P: It lied to the Indonesian people if it claimed to be nationalistic. Nationalism cannot be developed while the human rights of the nation are not protected. What the New Order government did was that it was willing to use whatever means to sustain its power.

It had the heart to use whatever means, including our dear symbols of religion and nationalism, to crush the people in order to sustain power. For example, it assigned Muslim youths to work as voluntary civilian security guards wearing head bands with the inscription "There is no god but Allah" and bearing bamboo spears, an Indonesian symbol of revolution for independence, to fight demonstrators during the Special Session of the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) last November.

To follow suit, the current government is also obsessed that the House of Representatives, the members of which are mostly progovernment, finalize a state security bill in spite of strong protest from society members. Even though the bill is said to be more acceptable than the existing oppressive 1959 law, the bill, if enacted, will allow the government to easily obtain approval from the House to introduce a state of emergency. Thus, the bill will help the Indonesian Military (TNI) sustain its dual (sociopolitical) function.

Q: Which part of the country, do you think, was Habibie referring to when he talked about it seeking independence if he was not nominated for the presidency?

P: I think that would be somewhere in the Iramasuka (Irian Jaya, Maluku, Sulawesi and Kalimantan) regions.

Q: Do you think the current demonstrations against Australia are orchestrated to promote nationalism?

P: It seems so, but people are reluctant to join such demonstrations because the nationalism they are looking for is the return of sovereignty to the people.

The argument of nationalism is fallacious simply because the New Order regime has been trampling on Indonesian people, and the people are the nation.

It is both ridiculous and insane for the authorities to invoke nationalistic sentiment all of a sudden after what they have done for decades to our nation, particularly in relation to the East Timorese when they were still part of our nation.

Q: Can we expect Habibie to improve the protection of human rights and uphold nationalism if he is elected president for the next term?

P: Habibie has no moral credibility to be nominated as the next president. How can we expect him to carry out political reform if he cannot be separated personally, structurally and businesswise from Soeharto?

The past 16 months have shown that he cannot accomplish MPR mandates on political reform, human rights protection, the establishment of good governance nor the legal process of Soeharto.

Q: How about the other two nominees -- Megawati Soekarnoputri of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle and Abdurrahman "Gur Dur" Wahid of the Muslim organization Nahdlatul Ulama?

P: Megawati is lacking in political vision and intellectuality to become president, while Gus Dur needs to end the unpredictability of his ideas and political behavior. Democracy needs predictability and rationality because people want to know the direction of their leader's policies.

If I were to choose between the two, I would pick Gus Dur. But, maybe, it is high time to enter Amien Rais of the National Mandate Party into the political equation. (riz)