Indonesia needs free flow of information: Lev

Indonesia needs free flow of information: Lev

JAKARTA (JP): So great is the social and political uncertainty
in Indonesia at present, said political scientist Daniel S. Lev
of the University of Washington, Seattle, there was only a small
political opening for people to continue to push for reform and
improvement.

In such a situation, priorities must be set. The first of
which is absolute press freedom, followed by the abolition of the
pervasive role of the Armed Forces in politics, he said Thursday
in a discussion at The Jakarta Post.

Lev asserted that Indonesians needed "a free flow of
information" more than anything else.

"For more than 40 years now the flow of information has been
controlled by the government (through its information ministry),"
he said. "The press should work out a political strategy to
campaign for the dissolution of that ministry. I think it's
important to be very aggressive in this."

The 65-year-old professor, who wrote a milestone book on the
country's modern history, The Transition to Guided Democracy in
Indonesia (1966), said preserving press freedom should become the
top priority in the present campaign for total political and
economic reform.

"Before anything else, a genuine perjuangan (fight) has to
take place now to preserve the press in whatever way, with
whatever strategy possible," he said.

This social institution was needed to keep alive the spirit of
reform, he argued.

Since the 1959 introduction of the Armed Forces (ABRI)
dwifungsi (dual function) -- which justified the Army to play an
active role in politics alongside its traditional security role
-- any process of building social and political institutions has
been badly impaired, Lev said.

He pointed out how dwifungsi had been abusively implemented by
the autocratic former president Soeharto over 32 years of his
political reign, destroying every institution that got in the
Army's way.

"You simply can't just change everything (in reform now).
Institutions are just too impaired. The damage that the autocrat
(Soeharto) did here is going to take many years to fix," he said.

He believed it was extremely important that priorities of
action be set since, right now, there is such a short period --
one year or less while the new administration and the Armed
Forces are still grappling to find or regain their footing -- of
"political opening" for people to push for reform.

"Now, where do we begin? And where do you preserve some
opportunities to prevail?"

'Dwifungsi'

Lev said that two other priorities besides preserving the
press' free flow of information were the abolishment of the
Army's dwifungsi and the establishment of institutions.

"I think it's important now that you take reform seriously. To
make a powerful argument that the Army must sacrifice a little
bit now. And it (the Army) hasn't done that in a long time.

"The Army has got to withdraw from politics, and institutions
have to be created," Lev stressed.

But, Lev said, the nation must "pay it off to do so" when it
wants the Army to withdraw from politics. Otherwise, it would
continue to be used to fight "an internal war" against political
opponents of the rulers.

"However, if the Army insists on staying in politics, there is
no sense at all to talk about reform. It's impossible. So, this
issue has to be pushed very aggressively, and one has to search
for allies. All the parties must take this issue up in a very
serious way," he said.

Allowing the Army to be active in politics for the next 20
years will be tantamount to committing suicide for the political
parties, he said.

He joked that dwifungsi had so seriously impaired politics in
the country that the National Commission on Human Rights and the
State Administrative Court were the only institutions that people
still trusted now.

Institution

The third priority, Lev said, was to begin building
institutions, and "the most important institutions, from the
point of view of reform, is the forming of political parties."

"Everybody talks about creating a civil society in Indonesia.
But there's already a civil society in Indonesia, it's existed
for along time. So that's not the problem.

"The problem has never been with the society, the problem has
always been the government ... of creating an effective regime,"
he said.

It is simply the creation of a government that people can
control and prevent from doing too much damage, that has yet to
materialize, he argued. This task should be undertaken by the
political parties, he said.

An obstacle to the mission, however, is the existing political
parties' lack of imagination, a factor he attributed to the
members' political inexperience.

"It is as if political leaders now don't really remember how
to negotiate, how to create a program, how to recruit people, how
to compromise ... because compromise is essential in party
system," he said.

On the other hand, Lev said, the long-rooted skepticisms
toward parties and politics in general could become a
contributing factor to eventual failure of the system, as wide
public support was important in the system.

Lev urged the public to hammer home the message to the
political parties that they must come out with programs and play
their expected roles.

"Political leaders are really dangerous, they have to be
guarded, supervised. There must be institutions that could do
this," he said. And one of the institutions, he believed, was
political parties. (aan)