Indonesia awaits its future

Indonesia awaits its future

By Patrick Schwarz

This is the first of two articles exploring the stake of
Indonesian people in the days to come.

SEMARANG (JP): Many foreign executives, diplomats and
educators that faced a posting to Indonesia over the last few
years were handed a book by their organizations that served as a
political introduction to their future host country.

The book is titled Nation In Waiting and was brilliantly
written by a former Indonesia correspondent for the Far Eastern
Economic Review, Adam Schwarz (no relation to this writer).

The book was banned in Indonesia for being too critical of
then strongman Soeharto. The writer was expelled from Indonesia.
Consequently, and certainly to many reader's regret, the book's
depiction of Indonesia's state of affairs ends in 1994.

Nation In Waiting describes Indonesia's more recent history
and takes the reader from her humble beginnings since
independence from the Dutch colonial rulers and its first
constitution, through the era of nation building under its first
president, Sukarno, the amendments of the constitution that
followed, and into the new order regime of the former dictator,
Soeharto.

It provides a thoroughly researched analysis of the
strongman's build up and hold of tremendous power. It describes
how ordinary Indonesians, the economic elite (cronies) close to
the strongman, foreign investors and the Indonesian economy fared
under such power. A power that was so enormous, there is no
comparison to it in modern history. It makes the Marcos's of the
Philippines, the Chiang's of Nationalist China and the Park's of
South Korea -- to name but a few -- appear like pussy cats.

If Adam Schwarz were still in Indonesia today, the past 12
months would have provided him with enough material for an entire
follow up book. Starting with the May riots of precisely one year
ago, it has been a very moving period, full of ironic, violent
and sad events, that made local and international news. And that
are pure history in the making.

Nation In Waiting could not be a more appropriate descriptive
term for what Indonesia is going through at this very moment; for
the days leading to the June 7 elections will culminate the
event-filled past 12 months. These will be followed by
presidential elections at some later date as to who will lead
this nation into the new millennium. Note the term "lead". In a
multi-party democracy, a president leads. The law rules.

The elections will determine whether history will repeat
itself. Whether powers that were and should finally become
history will succeed in their endeavors to cling on, or the
nation that has been waiting ever since its foundation will
finally succeed in taking the giant leap into a full democracy.

At the present stage of this countdown to election day, it
appears that two major powers have now emerged:

On the side of the "old-powers-that-were" is the naughty
ruling Golkar which has announced that the current President,
B.J. Habibie, who stepped into Soeharto's shoes 12 months ago,
will be it's sole candidate. Other names, some of which were
associated with the KKN (Indonesian idiom for collusion,
corruption and nepotism) methods of the Soeharto era in the
public's mind, have been taken off the list. Well into the
countdown toward the elections, Golkar has started pulling lots
of registers from money politics, to outright politics of terror
that includes wanton killings at voter registration meetings.
Even an unbiased, unsensationalized publication like Newsweek
names this "murdering, maiming and bullying for votes".

On the opposing side are the "democratic reformist-humanists"
consisting of three major parties: the Indonesian Democratic
Party (PDI Perjuangan) who nominated Megawati Soekarnoputri as
their candidate; the National Mandate Party (PAN) who nominated
Dr. Amien Rais and the National Awakening Party (PKB) with the
leader of Nahdlatul Ulama -- Indonesia's largest religious
grouping -- Abdurrahman Wahid, popularly known as Gus Dur. Each
one of them is a seriously viable presidential contender in his
or her own right.

Megawati, a daughter of Indonesia's first president Sukarno,
is embedded in the public's mind with the color red and the logo
of a fierce looking black bull over it. She has the furious, the
young and the restless behind her.

In addition, she has funding from the mostly rich Chinese-
Indonesian community. As a result, she sports the largest and
most numerous flags flickering all over Java and Bali, where most
of the votes will come from. And she boasts the most noisy vote-
gathering rallies where the masses' idea of making oneself heard
is to rev up unmuffled motorcycles and blast thousands of
thousands of watts of dangdut music. This, and the fact that she
is the only female contender, makes her a potential front-runner.

With a far more subdued pale-blue-on-white party color, Amien
Rais comes across as the educated, sophisticated intellectual
with the most pronounced (if not only) clear political agenda.
The former leader of the second largest Muslim grouping called
the Muhammadiah, Amien is the favorite of the educated elite. And
he certainly strikes a chord in the international arena.
Whether it is at an unofficial showing at the world economic
forum at Davos, Switzerland, or during an impromptu visit to Hong
Kong, or in an interview with CNN's Riz Khan during the haj
pilgrimage at Mecca, he most definitely comes through as truly
presidential material.

Gus Dur has the backing of Indonesia's largest Islamic
religious organization, the Nahdlatul Ulama, which he has chaired
for a long time and counts over 30 million members. Gus Dur is a
tremendously popular figure. He has made a mark for tolerance not
only in religious circles, but in society as a whole. A deeply
religious Muslim, he nevertheless came through as a staunch
defender of Christian minorities, and told his own Muslim flock
to keep religion out of politics. He has brokered peace on
innumerable occasions of religious unrest in many parts of the
country. He was at odds with the former dictator Soeharto until
before the latter's downfall, when the two made lukewarm amends.
Soeharto, once so often, needed the backing of the Islamic flank.
Gus Dur is a presidential contender against his personal wish.
But he will back the idea. He has just returned from the United
States where he underwent eye surgery that gave him a
substantially more vigorous appearance.

These three powerful contenders announced on May 18 that they
will unite to face the mighty, naughty Golkar. This, following
electoral logic, narrows down the political battlefield to these
two opponents: The "old-powers-that-were" versus the "democratic
reformist-humanists". It will be a close call. While the latter
has the backing of every righteous, free thinking Indonesian, the
former (Golkar) might still make all the difference with the 38
unelected votes that are constitutionally allocated to the
Indonesian Military (TNI).

The writer is managing director of ANP Corporation, Semarang.