Is no one responsible?

The conclusion drawn from a recent survey conducted by the New Indonesia Alliance (PIB) that by far the majority of Indonesians crave for the good old days of peace and stability under president Soeharto's New Order hardly comes as a surprise.

Of the 600 people polled in the survey, 75.7 percent said they longed for the stability of the Soeharto days, though most of the respondents noted that what they wished to return to was the security and stability of the old days, and not the stringent and oppressive political system that dominated it.

Most respondents also believe that the present government of President Abdurrahman Wahid is incapable of restoring security and order as the majority of people, including the political elite, were letting themselves be trapped in the euphoria of the newly acquired atmosphere of freedom.

Sadly, it is difficult to disagree with this gloomy point of view as youth and student activists are preparing to mark the third anniversary of the May incidents of 1998, set off by the fatal shooting of four Trisakti University student protesters in front of their campus on May 12 of that year.

Today, three years after the event, police and military authorities, legislators and human rights officials are still bickering over what actually happened and who should shoulder the responsibility for the incident. In the meantime, more tragedies have occurred to add to the list of human rights violations without anyone apparently being capable of solving the mystery of the shooting and no one willing to take responsibility for what happened -- with the possible exception of Lt. Gen. (ret) Prabowo Subianto, who accepted responsibility for the incident, even though he denied having had a hand in it.

Little wonder that on the eve of what has since become known as the Trisakti Incident, frustrated students of the university converged in protest at the House of Representatives building, demanding that the special legislative commission in charge of the investigation of the incident, known as the Pansus Trisakti, either show some results or be disbanded. In the straightforward opinion of most ordinary Indonesians, regardless of whatever happened at the time, it is clear who must take responsibility. Among the Indonesian Military, after all, there is a saying that a foot soldier is never to blame; the ones who are to blame whenever an abuse occurs are the officers in command. Only a handful of junior officers have been tried and given relatively lenient sentences for "deviating from proper procedure".

One inescapable result of this has been that accusations have been heard of "horse-trading" -- bartering privileges -- between legislators and military officers. Some in authority, for their part, have argued that the fatal shooting of a number of students and youth protesters during and since the Trisakti Incident, including the shootings on two different occasions at the Semanggi cloverleaf, were merely "excesses" of the reform process that have to be accepted.

It should be remembered, however, that all those unresolved tragedies -- from the Trisakti Incident to the May 13 through May 15 riots in Jakarta and the two Semanggi incidents, not to mention the forceful June 27, 1996 takeover of the Indonesian Democratic Party headquarters and the kidnapping and torture of democracy activists -- add to the list of violations that have over the past years contributed considerably to the fall in prestige of the Indonesian Military.

It is therefore in the interests of all parties -- not least the military -- that those unresolved incidents be cleared out of the way so that the military can clear itself of its tainted past and start anew. At this point in its history, surely this country needs a military and police force which the entire nation can look up to.