Indonesian politics: The unending soap opera

By Sidhesh Kaul

JAKARTA (JP): Megawati Soekarnoputri needs to wake up. This brother-sister farce has gone on for too long. Her political influenza, stoic silence and discussions on the daily menu at her breakfast meetings with President Abdurrahman Wahid, or Gus Dur as he is familiarly known, has made a mockery of the faith that the people have reposed in her.

Megawati has forgotten that she is the custodian of the aspirations of the Indonesian masses and she runs the real risk of losing her legitimacy in the wake of her continued slumber. The masses are impatient for change, tired of the voluble bickering and polemics amongst the elite and disappointed with Megawati's lethargy.

But dislodging Gus Dur, a wily survivor, is not an easy task. How else can one explain his ascendance to the throne in the first place? To outwit and outmaneuver the leader of a majority party calls for political skills of the highest order -- a reflection of Gus Dur's pragmatic skills at compromise of which he is the best available exponent in Indonesia.

Megawati's inactivity throws pointers at another conclusion -- the inactivity of her party as a political institution. The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan) appears powerless and impotent to goad Megawati into taking a firm stand even as they watch the country disintegrating into chaos.

The party's subservience to Megawati's silence is enough indication of the fact that there is a definite lack of a solid political ideology or motivation which binds her party together -- the party can at best be described as a caucus of complacent, electoral-bandwagon riders who have hitched a ride on the Sukarno charisma train.

Charisma aside, where is the nationalistic pride that her father Bung Karno was famous for, the sense of urgency and a feeling of responsibility to the masses? The party has chosen the path of sophistry -- to take shelter under the "constitutional process" umbrella thus displaying a complete lack of urgency or sensitivity to the travails of the country and the aspirations of the common Indonesian.

The fear of appearing to spearhead a mass rebellion is real in the rank and file of the PDI Perjuangan and they are quick to extinguish any parallels with the Peoples' Power II phenomenon in the Philippines.

The whole world was witness to the fact that even a sophisticated "constitutional process" in the Philippines could not bring President Joseph Estrada to heel. Vice President Gloria Arroyo Macapagal's principled stand of abandoning the wrong and going back to the people was democracy at its' best. Taking a stand is more important than appearing regal or statesmanlike. Inactivity is political hara-kiri.

Today, Arroyo stands tall and proud and has shed the mantle of being President Macapagal's daughter -- she is her own person and relies on her own legitimacy.

Megawati hopes that Gus Dur would either step aside magnanimously or at least hand over the day-to-day operations of running the country to her. This is nothing better than wishful thinking since the time has long gone past for a sensible compromise and to expect Gus Dur, with the attendant delusions of being the mystic torchbearer savior of Indonesia, to swallow the humiliation of taking a back seat ceremonial role displays a complete lack of understanding of Gus Dur's motivations and ambitions.

Gus Dur is a wily opponent. He has succeeded in polarizing not only the masses but also Megawati's PDI Perjuangan. With each passing day Gus Dur knows that his legitimacy is being eroded and he has made sure that some of this erosion in credibility and legitimacy is shared with the PDI Perjuangan.

As the political temperature rises and the various "compromise" formulae fail, the time is not far off when Indonesians could witness a split in the ranks of the PDI Perjuangan (as well as some of the other parties) and the political map could get reconfigured ahead of the next election.

Gus Dur has threatened the country with mayhem should his boat be rocked, and by doing so Gus Dur has called his own bluff. His willingness to bring in the storm troopers has shown that deep down inside he nurtures fascist ambitions.

He believes in the principle that he is the chosen one -- the half torchbearer and half mystic -- to don the mantle as Indonesia's savior. He revels in the patronizing image of a kyai, half loving and forgiving father figure and half comical friend. He revels in contradictions, humility personified at times and stubbornly arrogant otherwise. Gus Dur, to this date, is a bundle of contradictions and remains an enigma. His brand of politics is all about himself.

But Megawati's politics is turning out to be no different. Despite her overwhelming mandate from the people and the almost daily flogging that this mandate receives at the hands of Gus Dur, Megawati refuses to be prodded into action. Perhaps she has taken the mantle of Bung Karno for granted.

Megawati has forgotten that she is not Bung Karno and that the circumstances in Indonesia are vastly different. Instead of aligning herself with the people who brought her into power she is distancing herself from their mandate by her regal, unmoving attitude.

The problem is really not about contradictions. It is the impotency of the system to put an end to this miserable state of affairs. The impotency of the legislative body underscores the weaknesses of the electoral system -- there is a distinct disconnect between the people inside the legislature and the common man.

The Megawati-Gus Dur collaborative, brother-sister family soap opera has held the country to ransom for too long. On the one hand Megawati plays the role of the shy, retiring sister who is unwilling to hurt her elder brother even as she willingly sheds tears at the agony of the masses -- who suffer at the hands of her brother's governance.

On the other hand you have a scheming brother who (having grabbed the leader's mantle that the people had bestowed in the hands of his weak sister) has a complete disdain not only for his sister's agony but also the aspirations of the people.

This opera has been going on for too long and the audience is bored witless. Even the daily accounts of the menu at Megawati's breakfast meetings with Gus Dur have lost their spice and portentous charms.

It is time for Megawati to bring a twist into the story. Or risk losing the mandate of the Indonesian people forever.

The writer is a commentator on regional political and economic affairs based in Jakarta.