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.