Indonesia will survive, but needs fresh leadership

By Michael Vatikiotis

HONG KONG (JP): When the Soeharto regime collapsed in May 1998, the world was in a hurry to herald a new democratic era in Indonesia. But, two years on, one transitional government, a hastily held general election, and an indirectly elected president hardly constitute a political transformation.

Optimists say give the process time; at least it's moving in the right direction. They applaud President Abdurrahman Wahid for keeping the military out of politics. "He's our Yeltsin," says one Indonesian senior editor, admiringly.

But successful political change needs constant momentum, and Russia is not the model. More realistically, reflecting on the past two years, not enough has changed. If anything, some of the worst aspects of New Order political culture have, like lingering bacteria, survived and now threaten reform.

Abdurrahman Wahid's government has employed some of the extra- legal and autocratic ways of the New Order regime to consolidate power and pursue its aims.

Parliament is investigating allegations that the President abused his power, bent laws, and engaged in corruption. Gus Dur's position in the political party he leads, PKB, has been compared to that of Soeharto in Golkar. He shows little respect for parliament and threatens to use a loyalist mob if his position is challenged.

His protection of crony businessmen is no secret -- he has named them in cabinet meetings. On his numerous overseas trips, aides complain that his family's shopping habits are already more extravagant than anything seen under Soeharto.

The failings of Gus Dur's presidency reflect to a great extent the shortcomings of democratization in Indonesia, which has been erratic and half-hearted.

Indonesia's political and business elite simply does not have the courage or the imagination to push for real democratic reform and are happy with a presentable status quo. Look no further than the leadership of Golkar, or the PDI-P.

What's more, the conservative leadership of these parties find support in the wider region for not rocking the boat too hard because no one wants to see another political upheaval in Indonesia.

The international community is more or less impotent. Americans bark and bay, but seem incapable of biting where it hurts.

Likewise the IMF and World Bank issue stern warnings, but cannot afford to cut off the money. Foreign powers are afraid of being labeled colonial.

Singapore, where leaders tried to impress upon Gus Dur that it is time to get serious, earned a vitriolic riposte from the president.

The result is a disappointing array of half-measures. For most of the country's political leaders, reform is simply a matter of changing clothes. There simply isn't the will to change, and here lies the source of Indonesia's political problems and perhaps the key to its survival.

Of course, it may be unfair to give this government a negative report card in the face of all it has to cope with: feed and settle over one million internal refugees, deal with fractious politicians, as well as appease foreign creditors.

It may also be too much, after just two years cleaning up after the Soeharto era, to expect the emergence of a tidy democracy with all the trimmings.

Nevertheless, it is time for some real change in Indonesia. The world is tired of hearing about the obstacles to reform posed by the old guard, the need to consolidate power and deal with unrest or secession.

Apologies for Gus Dur generally dwell on his ability to keep everyone off-balance-keeping the old guard at bay. Yet even his closest advisors have given up hope that he can implement real reforms and they wait despondently for the next political crisis.

Gus Dur flies around the world telling people that things are improving. He tells his advisors divine voices assure him that this period of upheaval will be followed by a long period of peace and prosperity.

Who is the president fooling? The knives are out, and guess what? The cast of characters waiting in the wings to replace him doesn't have a radically different plan. The real threat to Indonesia comes from the people who claim to be its leaders.

Old elite survives

Long term stability in Indonesia will only be assured if democratic reforms lead to more direct representation to reflect the popular will on the one hand, and real legal and administrative reform on the other.

Presently, the president is elected by the People's Consultative Assembly, which itself is not wholly comprised of directly elected representatives. The status quo suits the elite for two reasons.

Firstly, it ensures that the country's leadership is determined by a narrow group of vested interests. Secondly, it keeps popular concerns at bay. We must assume that if politicians were more directly elected, the people would demand swifter and deeper changes.

The current system of indirect election means that the old political elite survives, and therefore not much changes in Indonesia.

Why is Indonesia's elite so selfish? First of all, there are many reasons to hide the past and seek protection from it. The nation's founding fathers were already divided one upon the other.

There were civil military tensions from the start -- Remember General Sudirman: "the government can change everyday, but the army stays the same". There were tensions between those who fought the Dutch and those who collaborated; and there were ethnic and religious tensions.

Then came 'Gestapu' and the upheavals of 1966. The trauma of anti-communism and the rise of military rule created an overlay of new fissures and a debt of blood.

Hence today, we see Gus Dur struggling to reconcile his record of support for human rights and religious tolerance with the bloody legacy of his religious organization's role in the anti- communist purges of 1966. Indonesia's history is littered with unresolved and unreconciled conflicts.

History has been hidden for so long that these conflicts are only now surfacing.

Another reason why the elite finds it hard to embrace democracy is that it is far too rich. Wealth creation in Indonesia has been fantastically lopsided from the beginning. The rhetoric of liberation was unaccompanied by a real re- distribution of wealth.

The old elite, which was supported and patronized by the Dutch, continued to take shelter in a legal system after independence that drew on colonial Dutch law, which was framed on principles of inequality.

This situation remains basically unchanged, and no one wants to see the system reformed overnight, because it would mean handing over their wealth and yielding to popular scrutiny and justice. That's the basic fear.

Key to survival

Without a genuine commitment to democratic reform, it's hard to imagine a stable outlook for Indonesia. But the country can survive without democracy. How?

By employing tried and trusted tools of authoritarian political control. This means in all likelihood that the military will continue to play a role in politics and civilian supremacy will be hard to achieve.

The army was unhappy about being sidelined politically and never had much faith in the democratic political process. Asked recently if he felt the civilians could succeed in stabilizing the situation in Indonesian, a senior army general replied: "Make me believe it."

Sudirman's "diktat" lives on.

Now, because the political elite is fearful about the future, it has no choice but to protect the army's role in politics. This explains why the politicians agreed to preserve the military's presence in parliament until 2009.

That's why Vice-President Megawati Sukarnoputri is seen riding in tanks and sporting military uniforms. She has acquired a coterie of former generals on her political staff.

Gus Dur has angered the military by failing to manage the threat of secession in Aceh and Irian Jaya. The army has felt hamstrung by the forced surrender of its security duties to the police.

Senior generals are now openly calling for a new strategy, one that involves a greater measure of military security. Even the president's cabinet colleagues wish that he would, in the words of coordinating economics minister Rizal Ramli, "bring in officers who can lead the troops."

Firm leadership is a refuge of those who fear exposure to the popular will. Of course, in Aceh and Irian Jaya, they may just be too late and political compromises that make concessions to the separatists will need to be hammered out.

Another major area of concern for the future is decentralization. Although few members of elite acknowledge it, the way Indonesia is governed is on the brink of change.

From January 2001, all the country's districts will gain more autonomy. But again, the way Indonesia's elite works, this may obstruct rather than promote democracy. No one expects the provinces to have the resources to govern themselves -- the current budget does not provide for it.

Local officials are if anything a thousand times more corrupt than their colleagues at the center, and consensus on how to divide up resources will be hard to reach.

The prospect of local factions seeking help to resolve their disputes from powerful figures at the center has many observers already expecting Jakarta's power to be enhanced, not weakened.

Bad name

Meanwhile, the legacy of a full year of "democratic rule", has left many people wondering if the exercise was worth it.

Democracy means little to ordinary Indonesians whose livelihoods have not improved; democracy means nothing to Chinese Indonesians who have not seen their opportunities to integrate in society widen appreciably. Democracy means nothing to those in the business community, which sees missed opportunities to stamp out bribery and corruption.

The number of passive reformers, those who would support democratic change, but not fight for it, far outnumbers committed activists.

To many ordinary Indonesians or visitors to the country, political freedom has brought anarchy and a breakdown in law and order. Petty thieves are lynched in broad daylight, nightclubs and bars are ransacked for staying open late, and dubious Islamic activists threaten to expel Americans, or worse.

Government isn't working. Even the president's own spokesman admits that Gus Dur "doesn't have the competence to govern."

"With democracy what you get is chaos," says a recently retired army general. "So people begin to think maybe the Chinese are right, perhaps the Pakistanis are right." In short, democracy Indonesian-style is giving democracy a bad name.

After a recent visit to Indonesia, a Malaysian said he feared the "the spillover effect all this uncertainty and instability will have on Malaysia and Singapore." Although critical of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, he said that "one thing I see truth in now is what he has always said -- there are some people who are not ready for a full-fledged democracy."

Fresh blood

So, what can be done to save Indonesia's democracy and restore the region's faith in democratic values? Top of the list has to be a replacement of the current political elite.

Avoiding messy conflict with the old guard by allowing them to stay on may be appropriate in cultural terms, but it is holding the country back.

Fresh blood is needed to remove lingering obstacles to reform. Sadly, under the current government or legislative arrangement this is hardly a realistic prospect.

Proportional representation protects the old political elite by ensuring they continue to be elected. "In the proportional system so long as you are close to the party leadership, you are assured of a place," says Andi Mallarangeng, a young politician who is staying out of the fray for now.

The MPR is constitutionally empowered to elect the president and vice-president, but is virtually powerless to remove them. Gus Dur is out of touch with the country's youth; so is Golkar and all the other major political parties. Their game is self- preservation.

Many of the smartest young political aspirants, figures like Andi Mallarangeng, Faisal Basri, and others who made names for themselves at the dawn of "reformasi", are steering clear of the political arena until closer to 2004, when fresh elections are due.

They are practicing a form of political cryogenics -- trying their best to stay fresh and untainted so that when political conditions improve they will be able to emerge.

The only way to improve conditions sooner is to change the rules. Indonesia needs a new constitution, and perhaps more importantly a fair and transparent constitution-writing exercise, similar to the mechanism by which Thais accommodated public opinion in the framing of Thailand's 1997 Constitution.

There is nothing wrong with the principles enshrined in the 1945 Constitutions. But a new charter, building on the old one, would elaborate on the rights and obligations of the Indonesian people; it would make less ambiguous the form of democracy the country now has.

Skeptics thought that the new Thai constitution would be ineffective in the face of an ingrained tradition of patronage and corruption. Yet powerful politicians have been hauled up on corruption charges and lost their jobs.

Democracy would be served well by true legal reform. It simply isn't possible to have any faith in the courts or law enforcement agencies if members of the elite can flaunt authority and escape justice by paying for protection from the law.

The military would have done well to help enforce the law, rather than standing aside and allowing the police to expose its institutional weakness.

Finally, Indonesians need to be properly enfranchised. Direct elections are a must. It isn't sufficient to create layers of representation that insulates the elite from popular anger and frustration.

All politicians must be accountable. Given the history and track record of Indonesia's politicians, this will be the hardest change of all to swallow. For despite enjoying almost six decades of freedom, the majority of Indonesians have yet to have a real say in how they are governed.

The writer is Managing Editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review in Hong Kong. A former Jakarta Bureau Chief for the Review, he is the author of Indonesian Politics Under Suharto and a regular writer on Indonesian affairs.