Is no one responsible?

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.