It Isn't a Laughing Matter

It Isn't a Laughing Matter
S.P. SETH
Sidney

In the last month or so, Indonesia has featured quite a few
times on primetime Australian television. The context for these
stories has been terrorism in Indonesia, particularly with
reference to the Bali bombings. One of these programs was
recorded in Jakarta with the participation of some high profile
Indonesian media personalities, including some Indonesian
students with Australia as their special subject. It was intended
to assess for the Australian audience back home Indonesian
perceptions of Australia around the anniversary of the first Bali
bombings.

It was a good humored debate, with some Indonesian
participants taking a dig at Australia for its arrogance and
insolence by stereotyping Indonesia as a terrorist territory,
with its nearly 90 per cent Muslim population. One intervention
was particularly interesting, when someone pointed out how
respectful Australia was to Indonesia under the Soeharto regime.
When the Australian host of the program jokingly asked if this
meant that Indonesians might like to revert back to those times,
everyone simply laughed it off.

But it is not a laughing matter. Let us see why Soeharto had
to go? There were many reasons. But two stand out, in terms of
the immediacy of his departure from power. First: there was the
Asian economic crisis of 1997/98 which Soeharto couldn't
overcome, as the West (International Monetary Fund et al.)
refused to bail out his regime. Second: they would not do it
(except through the IMF austerity regime, making Indonesia an
economic basket case) as Indonesia was no longer strategically as
important after the end of the Cold War.

Imagine such a crisis at the height of the Cold War with the
prospects of communists, at home and abroad, exploiting it for
political and strategic gains. The US would have done everything
to ward it off. There was no such strategic compulsion for the US
in the late-nineties. With Indonesia in economic and political
crisis, Soeharto had nowhere to go but quit to escape being
thrown out. And he wisely chose the former.

But how is this related to the present situation? Like in the
Cold War period when communism was the enemy, it is now
terrorism. In some ways, terrorism is even more pernicious
because it appears to be anywhere and everywhere. Its
practitioners are Muslim extremists, keen to blow up the world to
create a new paradise for their co-religionists.

In this sense, they are self-appointed. And their natural
homes are in predominantly Muslim countries. Among them Indonesia
has the largest Muslim population in the world. It has Jamaah
Islamiyah, the ideological fountainhead of Indonesian and South
East Asian extremism. The terrorists in Indonesia are real as
proven by the two Bali bombings, and other attacks at a hotel and
the Australian embassy. Therefore, it is imperative that this
danger be dealt with effectively.

Indonesia has only recently transited into a democratic system
from a 30-year dictatorship. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has the
distinction of being the first directly elected president after
the long Soeharto tyranny. It is a great achievement in the
country's democratic functioning. T

The Soeharto oligarchy was a wasted period in political terms
because its very arbitrary nature didn't allow a self-sustaining
legitimate pluralist system to flower and mature. Since his
political demise, a pluralist political culture is growing to
provide the foundations of a healthy constitutional and
institutional structure. It has a long way to go, though, before
it can withstand pressures to whittle or manipulate it.

There is always a tendency, anywhere in the world, to find
short cuts to deal with terrible times and crimes. It is
happening in old democracies like Britain, US and Australia,
where panoply of anti-terror laws to over-ride civil liberties
have been enacted. There is no convincing proof, though, that
repressive laws will do the job of tackling terrorism any better
than the existing laws. But it is still happening.

The only consolation, if at all, is that with older
democracies their institutional maturity, combined with public
debate (even though constrained under new laws) provides some
checks and balances. The new anti-terror laws in countries
championing democracy for the world is a poor reflection on their
credentials, when their governments are prepared to abridge their
own democracy when faced with challenge.

But for new democracies, like Indonesia, such short cuts are
perilous, because of the danger of relapsing into the dreaded old
system. The case in point is the presidential order to reactivate
the TNI's old role to tackle internal security, such as
terrorism. As TNI chief General Endriartono Sutarto said, "we
will also activate the territorial command up to the village
level."

As is well known, under Soeharto the army's territorial role
was mostly used to create a climate of fear, intimidation and
political repression. And that mindset in the army will take a
long time to change.

It is not suggested that Susilo has any dark political motives
behind his order to involve the army in the fight against
terrorism. He is saddened and angry at the terrorist bombings for
its indiscriminate killings and for tarnishing Indonesia's
international image. And he apparently believes that the army
will do a better job of eliminating terrorism. But there is need
for extreme caution, knowing that Soeharto used similar
instrumentalities to deal with communism and communists, when an
estimated 500,000 so-called communists were eliminated. Indonesia
is still bearing the scars of it.

Susilo is no Soeharto, and the times are now different. But
Susilo is under pressure by the United States and Australia to
tighten his country's anti-terror regime. Which will inevitably
curtail civil liberties, leading to the use of arbitrary powers.

Indonesia embarked on democracy when the Western countries
refused to bale out the Soeharto regime during the Asian economic
crisis. Now, as in their own countries, they are pressuring
Indonesia's new democracy to curtail, if not reverse the process.

In an earlier era, during the Cold War, Soeharto's anti-
communist credentials and crusade won him support and plaudits
from the Unite States and Australia. Today, Susilo is being cast
in the role of a fighter against global terrorism in his country.
How this will square with Indonesia's nascent democracy would
remain to be seen!

The writer is a freelance writer based in Sidney.