Indonesian perception of Australia: It really isn't a laughing matter

S.P. SETH, Sydney

In the last month or so, Indonesia has featured quite a few times on prime-time Australian television. The context for these stories has been terrorism in Indonesia, particularly with reference to the Bali bombings. One of these programs was recorded in Jakarta with the participation of some high profile Indonesian media personalities, including some Indonesian students with Australia as their special subject. It was intended to assess for the Australian audience back home Indonesian perceptions of Australia around the anniversary of the first Bali bombings.

It was a good humored debate, with some Indonesian participants taking a dig at Australia for its arrogance and insolence by stereotyping Indonesia as a terrorist territory, with its nearly 90 percent Muslim population. One intervention was particularly interesting, when someone pointed out how respectful Australia was toward Indonesia under the Soeharto regime. When the Australian host of the program jokingly asked if this meant that Indonesians might like to revert back to those times, everyone simply laughed it off.

But it is not a laughing matter. Let us see why Soeharto had to go. There were many reasons. But two stand out, in terms of the immediacy of his departure from power. First: there was the Asian economic crisis of 1997/98 which Soeharto could not overcome, as the West (International Monetary Fund et al.) refused to bail out his regime. Second: they would not do it (except through the IMF austerity regime, making Indonesia an economic basket case) as Indonesia was no longer strategically as important after the end of the Cold War.

Imagine such a crisis at the height of the Cold War with the prospects of communists, at home and abroad, exploiting it for political and strategic gains. The U.S. would have done everything to ward it off. There was no such strategic compulsion for the U.S. in the late 1990s. With Indonesia in economic and political crisis, Soeharto had nowhere to go but quit to escape being thrown out. And he wisely chose the former.

But how is this related to the present situation? Like in the Cold War period when communism was the enemy, it is now terrorism. In some ways, terrorism is even more pernicious because it appears to be anywhere and everywhere. Its practitioners are Muslim extremists, keen to blow up the world to create a new paradise for those who share their beliefs.

In this sense, they are self-appointed. And their natural homes are in predominantly Muslim countries. Among them Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world. It has Jamaah Islamiyah, the ideological fountainhead of Indonesian and South East Asian extremism. The terrorists in Indonesia are real as proven by the two Bali bombings, and other attacks at a hotel and the Australian embassy. Therefore, it is imperative that this danger be dealt with effectively.

Indonesia has only recently transited into a democratic system from a 30-year dictatorship. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has the distinction of being the first directly elected president after the long Soeharto tyranny. It is a great achievement in the country's democratic functioning.

The Soeharto oligarchy was a wasted period in political terms because its very arbitrary nature did not allow a self-sustaining legitimate pluralist system to flower and mature. Since his political demise, a pluralist political culture is growing to provide the foundations of a healthy constitutional and institutional structure. It has a long way to go, though, before it can withstand pressures to whittle or manipulate it.

There is always a tendency, anywhere in the world, to find short cuts to deal with terrible times and crimes. It is happening in old democracies like Britain, the U.S. and Australia, where a panoply of antiterror laws to over-ride civil liberties have been enacted. There is no convincing proof, though, that repressive laws will do the job of tackling terrorism any better than the existing laws. But it is still happening.

The only consolation, if at all, is that with older democracies their institutional maturity, combined with public debate (even though constrained under new laws) provides some checks and balances. The new antiterror laws in countries championing democracy for the world are a poor reflection on their credentials, when their governments are prepared to abridge their own democracy when faced with challenges.

But for new democracies, like Indonesia, such short cuts are perilous, because of the danger of relapsing into the dreaded old system. The case in point is the presidential order to reactivate the TNI's old role to tackle internal security, such as terrorism. As TNI chief Gen. Endriartono Sutarto said, "we will also activate the territorial command up to the village level."

As is well known, under Soeharto the Army's territorial role was mostly used to create a climate of fear, intimidation and political repression. And that mind-set in the Army will take a long time to change.

It is not suggested that Susilo has any dark political motives behind his order to involve the army in the fight against terrorism. He is saddened and angry at the terrorist bombings for its indiscriminate killings and for tarnishing Indonesia's international image. And he apparently believes that the Army will do a better job of eliminating terrorism. But there is need for extreme caution, knowing that Soeharto used similar instrumentalities to deal with communism and communists, when an estimated 500,000 so-called communists were eliminated. Indonesia is still bearing the scars of it.

Susilo is no Soeharto, and the times are now different. But Susilo is under pressure by the United States and Australia to tighten his country's antiterror regime, which will inevitably curtail civil liberties, leading to the use of arbitrary powers.

Indonesia embarked on democracy when the Western countries refused to bale out the Soeharto regime during the Asian economic crisis. Now, as in their own countries, they are pressuring Indonesia's new democracy to curtail, if not reverse the process.

In an earlier era, during the Cold War, Soeharto's anti- communist credentials and crusade won him support and plaudits from the United States and Australia. Today, Susilo is being cast in the role of a fighter against global terrorism in his country. How this will square with Indonesia's nascent democracy would remain to be seen!

The writer is a freelance writer based in Sydney.