Indonesia to stay in tact but Jakarta to lose much power
Indonesia to stay in tact but Jakarta to lose much power
Dr. Robert Cribb is associate professor of history at
Queensland University. He was educated at Queensland University
and the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. He
teaches Southeast Asian history and has strong research interests
in Indonesia.
His recent publications include Gangsters and Revolutionaries:
The Jakarta People's Militia and the Indonesian Revolution, 1945-
1949, A Historical Dictionary of Indonesia (with Colin Brown),
Modern Indonesia: A History since 1945, and A Historical Atlas of
Indonesia. He is currently working on a history of environmental
politics in Indonesia and an economic history of the Indonesian
revolution on Java.
Following is an excerpt of an email and telephone interview
with Dr. Cribb conducted by Dewi Anggraeni, Melbourne-based
contributor of The Jakarta Post.
Question: The coined cliche, 'history repeats itself'
obviously has some factual base to it. As a historian, observer
of Indonesian political history and a scholar, do you think that
phrase can be applied to Indonesia? Is there anything cyclic in
the events that have happened in the course of the twentieth
century?
Answer: I don't think so. I know that it is tempting to see a
cycle of centralized, repressive but relatively prosperous rule
alternating with poorer and more chaotic periods of freedom, but
I think that the causes of today's problems are not the same as
those of 1965 or 1945.
The political tensions in 1965, involving the communist party,
were very different from today's issues, while the issues in 1945
were also different -- much more straightforward because they
simply had to do with national freedom.
Q: Indonesia has moved in and out of international sympathy
during the century. Do you agree that the 1940s was a sympathetic
time, while Indonesia is further away from international sympathy
now?
A: Although Australia was rather sympathetic to Indonesia in the
1940s, most of the West was not, and the U.S. pressured the Dutch
to admit defeat mainly because they feared that a continuing
national revolution would help the communists, not because they
believed in Indonesia.
I think that Indonesia had three episodes of international
prominence -- under Sukarno, when Indonesia's allies were on the
global left; under Soeharto before 1975 and the invasion of East
Timor created a strong anti-Indonesian lobby in the West; and
during the late 1980s and early 1990s when Soeharto's economic
policies seemed to have made Indonesia a political and economic
force to be reckoned with.
Indonesia still has some goodwill in the international
community, especially in ASEAN, but the current prickliness of
Indonesians over outside involvement does not help keep that
goodwill alive.
Q: How have events in East Timor shaped Indonesia's image
outside?
A: The violence following the referendum in East Timor did
enormous damage to Indonesia's reputation, partly because the
number of victims was grossly over-stated in much international
reporting, partly because the violence was so clearly vindictive
and vengeful, rather than serving any clear political purpose.
Q: Do you think most Indonesians realize how crucial the
country's image is, in terms of diplomatic relations, and more
immediately, in terms of recovering from the deep economic
crisis?
A: No, I don't think they do. My impression is that many
Indonesians feel that their country is so rich in natural
resources that it will naturally attract outside investment.
They tend to feel that the problem is controlling the excesses of
foreign involvement, rather than attracting it in the way that
Singapore did. But most of the resources that Indonesia
supplies to the outside world are also available elsewhere, and
investors and tourists will shun Indonesia if they are made to
feel unwanted.
Q: Since its independence 55 years ago, Indonesia has only had
four presidents. What does it say about its democratic system or
lack of it?
A: I don't think that the number of presidents on its own is very
significant, but of course the long period of Soeharto's rule
left a lot to be desired in terms of democracy. I think we have
to be wary of assuming that there is only one way to be
democratic -- good democracy can allow for stable government,
and heads of government have served more than one term.
President Roosevelt of the United States for instance, served
for 12 years, 1933-1945, and Prime Minister Robert Menzies of
Australia served for 17 years, 1949-1966.
Q: Why does Indonesia still not have a real democratic system
working? Is it the inherent feudal values among the population?
A: I think that so-called feudal values are seriously over-rated
as an obstacle to democracy in Indonesia. For one thing, all
political systems need a certain amount of deference to authority
to be able to function.
Feudal deference can actually be useful as a source of
stability in the system, as it is in Britain for instance. For
another thing, I don't think that traditional Indonesian values
are so very feudal after all.
Indonesia's rulers from early times may have tried to claim
feudal loyalties, but people were always sensitive to
exploitation and domination and took every opportunity to escape
from it when they could.
Q: How can education help?
A: Education is very important, mainly because it should enable
people to make informed and thoughtful judgments about government
policies. It should give them some idea of what is realistic and
what is not, some idea of the way in which policies affect the
long and short term future.
Ideally, education should help people to recognize that their
own short-term interests are not always in the long term
interests of the nation.
I think that there are two other serious obstacles to
democracy.
One is the sheer size of Indonesia, which means that the sense
of identity between politicians and their supporters is likely to
be much more remote than in a small country like Denmark, with
only five million people.
On a vast stage like Indonesia, -- or like India or the United
States, it is simply a lot more difficult for politicians to stay
in touch with society as a whole. In these circumstances, money
politics inevitably becomes more important, and is deeply
subversive of real democracy.
The other difficult factor for democracy in Indonesia is the
question of the place of Islam. It seems to me that Indonesians
are fundamentally divided over the question of to what extent
Indonesian society and Indonesian politics should reflect the
status of Islam as the religion of the majority. Of course there
is a wide range of views on this topic, so Indonesia as a whole
is not polarized, -- though Maluku certainly is.
Nonetheless, democracy is very difficult to sustain when one
large group in society is defending or pushing for something
which another large group regards as fundamentally unacceptable.
For this reason, I think that pressing for greater democracy
or reforming the present system is less important for Indonesia's
future than establishing the rule of law. Only with the rule of
law will everyone in Indonesia have a reasonable feeling that
they are safe from the arbitrary treatment which has been a
feature of every regime from the Dutch onwards.
Q: Of the four presidents, who do you think has had the most
significant role in its political history?
A: I think there is no doubt that Soeharto was the most
significant president. Even though Sukarno was enormously
important in developing national identity, Indonesia was always
much more than just the creation of Sukarno.
Soeharto's brutality in 1965-1966, his imposition of a system
of political stability and control, and his passionate pursuit of
both national development and his own family's welfare
transformed Indonesia -- for good and bad -- more thoroughly
than anything Sukarno did.
Q: Is Indonesia's nationalism on the decrease? If that is the
case, is it a good thing?
A: I'm afraid it is. There are so many problems at the center
today, and such little hope that they will be solved effectively
or soon, that many people have become at least more open to the
idea that Indonesia was a mistake.
I think this is a terrible shame, because the ideas of
justice, rule of law, prosperity and modernity which inspired
Indonesian nationalists are still very relevant.
Integration, rather than disintegration, is the path towards
prosperity in the future. But Indonesia has made many mistakes,
both in dealing with outlying regions and in managing the center.
I am not certain that confidence can be restored.
Q: Should Indonesia be maintained as a nation?
A: The advantages in a break-up of Indonesia would be that real
democracy might be easier to sustain in some regions, especially
those whose economies are based on agriculture or industry.
On the other hand, democracy is terribly difficult to sustain
in economies based on natural resources, because there are so
many opportunities for corruption.
It is also true that some social and economic policies can be
handled better within smaller units than by a country as vast as
Indonesia. But the problems of an archipelago fractured into
several states would be considerable.
There would be enormous problems in deciding citizenship and
in demarcating borders -- after all the Dutch tried and failed to
find workable borders for ethnically based states in the 1940s.
The problem of the status of Islam would be as much an issue
in many of the possible smaller states as it is now in Indonesia
as a whole. There would be a long period of jostling for status
between the new states, as there has been in the former Soviet
Union, during which co-operation for economic development would
be difficult to achieve.
And many of the constituent states would be vulnerable to
outside influence, including organized crime, as are the small
islands of the Caribbean.
As I've said (in a paper presented at the Indonesia Update
Conference earlier this year in Canberra), Java might do very
well from a break-up of Indonesia. Sumatra, too, has a lot of
potential, and could probably function rather well as a federal
state based on the current provinces, as long as Tapanuli was
separated from North Sumatra and Medan became a federal
territory.
But I would be terribly pessimistic for the economic welfare
and political stability of Kalimantan and Eastern Indonesia.
Q: Despite his very poor record on human rights and freedom of
expression, Soeharto has achieved a great deal in the economic
sector of Indonesia, before it all unraveled in the late 1990s.
What do you think Abdurrahman Wahid will have achieved by 2004?
A: My hope with Abdurrahman Wahid was that he would have a
soothing effect on politics, that the passions unleashed by the
fall of Soeharto would be calmed and that the economy would have
time to recover.
In retrospect, however, I think that establishing the rule of
law should have been given a much higher priority. Doing so would
have reassured people about the future, set ground rules for
dealing with the past, and given the government an air of
principle and determination. The current sense of drift and
uncertainty is a real problem.
I am also fearful that the decentralization currently being
worked out will end up being chaotic in practice and that this
failure will still further strengthen disillusionment with the
center.
Q: If you look into your historian's 'crystal ball', how do you
see Indonesia in the next ten years?
A: Historians don't like predicting the future! It is hard enough
to explain the past. But I think the most likely scenario for
Indonesia is that the country will hold together as a single
state -- even Aceh and Papua will fail to break away, but that
Jakarta will lose a lot of power to the regions.
There will be less political freedom, but no return to
military rule or to the authoritarianism of the New Order. The
economy will grow, but only by enough to keep pace with an
increased rate of population growth.
Crime and violence will be serious problems for all
Indonesians and the tension between Islam and other religions
will grow sharper. It is quite a depressing conclusion and it
makes me sad to think about it.