Indonesian politics: The unending soap opera

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.