Indonesia's 54th anniversary in uncertainty

Indonesia's 54th anniversary in uncertainty

By Marianus Kleden

KUPANG, East Nusa Tenggara (JP): There are at least two
peculiarities of our motherland's 54th anniversary of
independence. First is the uncertainty about her future. Since
this is the last commemoration of Indonesia's Independence Day in
the 20th century and in the second millennium, there are
questions about where she is headed in the new era.

Second, this celebration is marked by the uncertainty of the
country's land size: whether East Timor will remain part of the
country or will it go its own separate way. The uncertainty is
twofold: temporal and spatial.

From a cyclical perspective, temporal segmentation is of no
special significance since time comes and goes like clockwork.
Christian pessimism of Judaic origin, Balinese belief in the
karma pala or the natural law of reward and punishment, the
Chinese horoscope consisting of 12 animals, all aptly reflect
most Indonesians' habit of viewing everything as dull and
repetitious.

Rivers flow into the ocean, but the water of the seas does not
increase. The sun rises in the morning and sets in the afternoon
and each day there is rice, so why hurry? Tears and laughter may
be traded in a matter of minutes, for ancestors that have passed
away will reappear in newborn children. For a good part of the
Indonesian people, the coming of a new era does not mean so much.

On the other hand, Indonesian development programs have been
designed linearly, a landmark example that the Five-Year
Development Plan is nothing but an almost literal application of
Rostow's ideal stages of a country's economic growth. Stages have
passed and suddenly we have come to the "liftoff" stage, which
means we have been able to fulfill our basic needs and maintain
sustainable development without relying on foreign aid. Are we
prepared to come off the ground? Yes, we are, says the
government.

To mark that important moment in national development,
Soeharto solemnly broke ground for the opening of the ambitious
and symbolic airplane maker PT Industri Pesawat Terbang Nusantara
in Bandung, which absorbed almost every single penny from our
country's coffers. According to Habibie (the then minister of
research and technology), after 30 years we would be able to
compete with countries in the Pacific Rim. While 30 years is too
far away for us to become excited about, we have been forced to
come down to earth with the problem of how to sell our priceless,
sophisticated toys.

Since our neighbors have a much better understanding of
diplomatic politeness, they expressed eagerness at buying the
advanced playthings. But as they did not have enough money,
Indonesia had to resort to a primitive economic habit of
bartering the ships with glutinous rice or cotton, then
popularized under a modern vernacular as "equal purchase". Then
came the downfall of Soeharto, and the destiny of this equal
purchase evaporated into the profusion of political euphoria.

Being unable to take off, our giant airplane crashed into
pieces of economic, political and social problems. It is on this
stage that we were suddenly being championed as one of the
biggest debtors in the world, East Timor's future became
uncertain and unrest continued in Aceh. We have learned from
experience that too much focus on the future results in the
neglecting of urgent needs that should be satisfied here and now.
While too much preoccupation with the daily nitty-gritty will
leave us lagging behind in the global economic and political
race. Our ambitious economic plans so far have not proven
effective in resolving the dilemma.

Now that a new government is expected to come into power,
cyclical worldview and linear orientation have arrived at a
common ground from different directions. While the first is
waiting for the reemergence of the glorious Majapahit kingdom of
the past, the latter is heading forward to reach the peak of
normal and gradual betterment.

The spatial problem has to do with the fate of East Timor.
Several books on East Timor give historical and cultural as well
as political justification of Indonesia's annexation of East
Timor. Historically, so argue the writers, East Timor and the
western part of the island were once a kind of commonwealth
consisting of small kingdoms living peacefully. When the
colonizers came, they divided the island into an eastern part
which belonged to Portugal and a western part which became the
property of the Dutch. In that case, we cannot blame Indonesia
for annexing East Timor; rather was a historical process of
reintegration of long time dividedness, or even reunification of
separated brothers and sisters.

Others would argue that East Timor was part of the Majapahit
kingdom, and since Indonesia is the reincarnation of that old
kingdom, East Timor could not be anything but integrated into
Indonesia. The writers were unaware that they had stepped onto a
formidable brink of suggesting at the same time the possible
appropriation of Sarawak, Brunei Darussalam, the southern part of
Thailand, Malaysia and the southern part of the Philippines would
also have been justifiable just because of the common historical
past of cultural similarities.

Politically, the appropriation of East Timor was justified
because of humanitarian consideration on the one hand, for the
East Timorese were abandoned by the Portuguese without due
provision and at a time of dire conditions. On the other hand,
the takeover could also be justified with the Balibo declaration.
This declaration, so the official story goes, was made on Nov.
30, 1975, when the East Timorese -- represented by prointegration
groups Apodeti, the Timorese Democratic Union (UDT), Kota and
Trabalhista -- expressed a wish to be integrated into Indonesia.

In fact, what is called humanitarian consideration was
realized in a remarkable physical development, but, as
articulated by students from East Timor, upon blood and bones.
And the celebrated Balibo declaration was not made in Balibo, a
small town in the Maliana regency bordering East Nusa Tenggara,
but in Bali, precisely at Paneeda View bungalow located on Sanur
Beach -- all were engineered by the State Intelligence
Coordinating Board (Bakin) under the chairmanship of quick-witted
Lt. Gen. Ali Murtopo, as later disclosed by Guiherme Maria
Goncalves, Apodeti chief, and Jose Martins from Kota in
interviews with Radio Nederland 20 years after the event. UDT
secretary-general Domingos de Oliveira revealed the same thing to
George Aditjondro personally in Australia.

Judging from the above, we may conclude that there was no such
thing as historical, cultural and political justification for the
integration. At this point we can also conclude that Habibie was
on the right track when he decided to let the East Timorese
determine their own future. Despite his failure in managing
temporal matters, he -- vested-interests aside -- deserves much
credit in maintaining spatial problems.

Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle chairwoman Megawati
Soekarnoputri, in a recent speech, accused Habibie of whimsically
handling the problem of East Timor. She may have forgotten that
her father emphasized the importance of the will to unite in the
process of nation-building, which is not at all embodied in the
People Consultative Assembly's (MPR) Resolution No. VI of 1978
promulgating the inclusion of East Timor as part of Indonesia.

She has been inconsistent in placing the sovereignty of the
people above the sovereignty of the MPR concerning her
presidential candidacy, while at same time reproaching Habibie's
effort to place the sovereignty of the East Timorese above the
sovereignty of the MPR concerning their own destiny.

It is perhaps the last occasion for Habibie to be the prime
host of Indonesia's anniversary celebration. May his initial
success in handling spatial problems be perfected by the next
president through his or her dealing wisely with temporal
matters, especially those of Ambon and Aceh.

The writer is a social science lecturer at Widya Mandira
Catholic University in Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara.