Hopes and fears

As 1998 ends at the stroke of midnight tonight, it brings to a close easily the most dreadful year Indonesia has experienced in decades. What will the new year bring? Indonesians are awaiting the answer with a mixture of hope and apprehension.

Scattered civic unrest sparked by a crippling economic crisis notwithstanding, up to May few Indonesians conceived the possibility that anything could come to shatter the calm and relative prosperity which three decades of government-imposed stability had brought to the nation.

Tens of millions of Indonesians were not even born when an Army lieutenant general called Soeharto crushed a communist-led coup at the cost of an uncounted number of civilian lives -- some say hundreds of thousands -- to end forever, as it seemed, two decades of political strife and insecurity, and usher in a new era of growth and prosperity.

Incredible as it may have seemed at the time, the monetary crisis that began in Thailand in mid 1997 and spread rapidly across the region exposed the rotten core of the self-serving system that Soeharto had built and protected with an iron fist.

Spearheaded by the nation's students and intellectuals, a snowballing reform movement, hardened by the fatal shooting of four Trisakti University students by unidentified troops during protest demonstrations in early May, forced Soeharto to relinquish his presidency in favor of his then vice president, B.J. Habibie, on May 21.

Hailed by some as marking the dawn of a new era for the nation, that moment is seen by many as the beginning of a protracted period of crisis brought about by the new government's perceived lack of credibility and legitimacy. Habibie, after all, was Soeharto's favored protege and could hardly be counted on to successfully complete a democratic reform process which, under Soeharto, he was known to oppose.

Most members of his Cabinet are former Soeharto ministers and, his critics say, many policies are molded in his mentor's style of power politics even though he has been compelled by circumstance to make real concessions to the democracy movement. Many skeptics see Habibie as a mere extension of Soeharto and suspect he might, if given the chance, prefer to return to the old Soeharto style of authoritarian governance. In other words, at the heart of the current antagonism between the government and a sizable part of the population is what analysts see as a crisis of confidence that is being left to fester.

To return to the question of what the coming year will bring: 1999 presents Indonesia with the golden opportunity to resolve its internal conflicts once and for all by bringing them into the open through a general election. That, however, presumes that the conditions that make it all possible exist.

First and foremost, there must be no gnawing uncertainty about the holding of a general election that is truly fair, honest and transparent. This principle must be ensured in the political laws that are at present being debated in the House of Representatives. Unfortunately, while in their public statements all the parties involved have displayed a good understanding of this necessity, the bickering that is at present holding up the discussions is proof that the party factions concerned -- the ruling Golkar in particular -- are placing their own interests above those of the nation.

Many analysts fear that those who want to see the status quo maintained -- the military included -- are still willing to resort to whatever means necessary to ensure their interests are served. This may augur that true democratic reform through a fair and honest general election still remains a dream, or worse, may be indefinitely postponed, since the House of Representatives is still dominated by Soeharto-era politicians.

Add to all this the smoldering discontent and the intergroup rivalries that are rife at the moment, and it does not bode well for the nation in the year to come. Granted, many of these assumptions may be based on a lingering distrust of the government, the bureaucracy, the military and politicians.

If so, a good first step to make toward ensuring the dawning of a better era is by removing the public's distrust of the government. A national dialog would help. But given the obstacles that seem to be still in the way of holding such a meeting of minds, it might be easier for the government to simply begin by abandoning its penchant for invoking controversial policies, such as creating a civilian militia. All it takes is to better listen to the voice of the people.