Indonesian politics still a host of uncertainties

Indonesian politics still a host of uncertainties

By Peter Richards

This is the second of two articles on possibilities in the
development of Indonesian politics up to the general election
planned for May 1999.

JAKARTA (JP): The incumbent ruling Golkar grouping is likely
to have the best privileges among participants in the general
election scheduled for next May.

Among the three established political formations, which all
have advantages of existing machinery across the country, Golkar
has money as well as the entrenched grassroots' organization long
denied to both the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) and the
United Development Party (PPP).

If not carefully monitored, Golkar could become the channel
for vast sums in the defense of the gains of past privileges. It
will be difficult for all but the biggest new parties to meet the
legal, organizational and financial requirements for a successful
political campaign in mid-1999.

Golkar is the incumbent and the current president is its man.
Incumbency has its advantages and it would be naive to expect
Golkar not to use them. The reseeding of the People's
Consultative Assembly (MPR), for instance, is entirely within
Golkar's right under the present political system. So is the
refusal to undo the engineered split within the PDI, particularly
given the political implications of such a reversal.

On the other hand, watchful Indonesians and others may
perceive some of the organizational and financial advantages
enjoyed by Golkar as simply so unfair, however legal, that they
will question the legitimacy of the ensuing government and
national policy.

It will be the task of those who want an election that is not
just direct, free and secret but also fair and reflective of the
people's views, to prevent both the monopoly of access at the
village level and inundation of funds to local officials and
electors in exchange for votes.

Selling votes is not a political crime in hard times, but
buying them is. And the best way to return ill-gotten gains to
the people is through support of the nine basic commodities,
keeping Indonesian children in school and paying off the enormous
foreign debt burden.

The final danger is that a major political force, asserting
that it has been betrayed by a flawed political process, might
refuse to be the "loyal opposition", content to criticize the
government and await the next chance to win power at the polls,
thus denying the legitimacy on which Indonesia's economic future
depends.

In the absence of massive electoral irregularities, such a
claim may be a remote possibility. The current leadership of all
Indonesian opinion has very present memories of where
irreconcilable, polarized politics led in the Sukarno period.

But the very possibility should sober those in the military
and the government who would risk all for the victory of old
values. In current circumstances, such behavior would surely come
uncomfortably close to treason.

So what can go right? The real grassroots' formation of a
pluralistic civil society is emerging from the shadow of the
military-bureaucratic monolith. A year, of course, is a very
short time, but people are increasingly becoming involved in the
formulation and negotiation of interests that make civil society
work.

If civil society needs to be sold top-down to bemused
electors, it will probably fail. Nobody in places where civil
society exists ever thinks about it. It is more a function of all
the associations free citizens devise in the absence of state
participation or state inference.

There is evidence that Indonesians -- albeit with numerous
local exceptions where pent-up rage has resolved itself violently
-- are behaving with that patience and restraint, and good
manners and good humor that are a hallmark of this country.

But they are making claims that will certainly change the
country and its content. It is too bad that this is happening at
a time of economic crisis. It would be nicer if people could
think about politics without the current economic stress.

On the other hand, the economic crisis achieved what nothing
else but personal incapacitation could have -- the removal of
Soeharto as chief executive officer of Indonesia Inc. by those
powerful stakeholders who saw their former mentor as harmful to
their interests in the company.

The crisis also weakened all the institutions on which the
Soeharto system rested, thereby increasing the relative power of
two groups.

The first group includes farmers, factory workers and informal
service sector workers who always live close to subsistence,
having gained a little during the Soeharto era and about to lose
it in pawnshops with its collapse.

The second is those Indonesians of many characteristics --
call them dissidents -- who held out for years against the denial
of values they believed were essential to Indonesia's being.

These two long disenfranchised groups are now active in the
"Jakarta spring". Much may depend on whether they have the time
and the inclination to share what they know about how Indonesia
works and could work.

And what of the prime beneficiaries of the Soeharto years? In
the first place, most of them seem quite comfortably ensconced in
power or at least in the wealth that nurtures power.

Most Indonesians probably know that the calls for "total
reform" and the ouster of anyone implicated in the Soeharto
regime are excessive. The process of a thorough cleanup would
waste valuable time and where would it end? Thirty years is a
long time and almost everyone must have something from which they
would prefer to move on.

Moreover, people can change. Indonesians know from the shadow
puppet and from experience that characters are rarely entirely
good or entirely bad. Some can rehabilitate themselves from the
injury to others (and to their true selves?) of the past 30
years; others cannot.

Participatory democracy allows voters to judge who is who. It
also encourages those seeking office in a fair election to do
good (as well as sound good) if they want to catch the votes of
an increasingly informed electorate. An electorate which has the
opportunity to elect them or reject them for the first time in
over 40 years.

The writer is a former Canadian diplomat who is now working as
consultant in tourism marketing for the Indian Union Territory of
Pondicherry. He wrote this article in his private capacity.