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)