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.