Knocking at the sturdy wall named ABRI

Knocking at the sturdy wall named ABRI

TNI Bukan Tentara Rakyat

By Coen Husain Pontoh

Published by Solidaritas Nusa Bangsa, 2000

Page, 198

Price : Rp 17,000

JAKARTA (JP): You are jailed for opposing the military's
involvement in politics. A year later you walk into a free world
with a book about your jailers in your hand. That is the story of
Coen Husain Pontoh, the author of this book.

As the title is an absolute negation of decades of almost-
sacred myth: the TNI is a people's army, this is clearly a
reformist's book.

A student activist in the East Java capital of Surabaya who
was jailed by the Soeharto government in the late 1990s, Coen
predicted a long time ago that the political setback suffered by
the military today is but a small victory of the reformation
movement.

The reality now is that the military's representation in the
House of Representatives and the People's Consultative Assembly
has been assured up until 2004 and 2009 respectively. The
reformist movement seems to have gone nowhere.

The military, Coen warned, still wield true political power,
and it is not impossible that it will regain its former glory.

Coen, an activist of the militant People's Democratic Party
(PRD), which was banned by the New Order government, discusses
these issues in his book, which he wrote after emerging from one
year of incarceration at a prison house in Surabaya in July 1998,
two months after Soeharto fell from power.

His crime: his opposition to the military's role in politics.

It is obvious what kind of man he is by looking at the way he
responded to his imprisonment. Rather than nurturing a hatred
against the military he buried his head in books and dug into the
history of this most feared and powerful institution in
Indonesia. This illuminating book is the fruit of that study.

The smooth flow of words, free from revengeful emotion, is one
of the strongpoints of this 198-page book, especially when one
remembers that the author is the very victim of his subject.

It attempts to unveil the upbringing of the military in a
fledgling nation, which is very important to understanding why
the military behaves the way it does. Coen picked up historical
notes from numerous sources and blended them into coherent
reading.

He implies that the military's internal dispute over civilian
supremacy stems from a conflict between the Japanese and the
Dutch military traditions. There is one more element in the
juvenile Indonesian army, the Laskar Rakyat (People's Warrior).

Coen discovered the much covered-up origin of conflict within
the Indonesian armed forces between those who perceived
themselves as the better "educated" force and those considered
the "less educated" force. In short, a conflict between the elite
and the commoners.

The book could not have appeared during the Soeharto years
when the military went all-out to portray itself as an untainted
defender of the people. As one goes from chapter to chapter it
feels as though one myth of the military is being knocked off
after another.

One example is the Oct. 17, 1952 incident (chapter 3.3) when
military trucks took thousands of people to the front gates of
Merdeka Palace.

Earlier, the mob, numbering no less than 30,000 people, had
ransacked the legislature building.

The military, or more precisely, the army, wanted the then
president Sukarno to dissolve the legislature. Sukarno, however,
refused to budge and the first attempt by the military to seize
power was defused.

From this episode one learns that provoking unrest runs deep
in the veins of the Indonesian military.

Another move in the same vein, was when an officer's attempt
to stir a riot in Jakarta in October 1956 was foiled.

The book is very important for the younger generation
especially university students, student activists and NGO
activists whose formal schooling failed to introduce them with a
more honest history of the Indonesian military.

In fact it could be an excellent reference book for school
students and serve as a good starting point for discussions.

For the general public it unveils the other side of the story
they have become familiar with during Soeharto's 30-year rule of
the Indonesian military.

Had the book been available a decade ago, the people's
resentment of the military would not have been as deep as it is
today.

Fighting against the military's role in politics is an issue
of conscience, Coen says in his book. If he did not fight against
it he would feel guilty for failing victims of violence in the
country from Aceh to East Timor to Irian Jaya, and also victims
of the 1965 bloodbath.

Apart from defense matters, the Indonesian Armed Forces or
ABRI (as it was known up until 1999) has had a strong grip on
politics for over three decades, hence the term dual-function.
Some critics, however, say it should be called a triple-function
because of the military's key role in the economic sector.

As the reformation movement is undergoing a "disorientation"
under the leadership of Gus Dur and Megawati, Coen dismisses as
naive the widespread view that if one goes on pushing TNI to the
wall, a coup d'etat will result.

The book comprises five chapters which don't just examine the
birth of ABRI and its growth into a modern institution. Coen, who
hailed from Baroko, a small village in North Sulawesi, put ABRI's
history in the context of pre-independent Indonesia since the
19th century up until independent and post-independent.

The weakness of the book, as observed by George Aditjondro in
his introductory remarks, is that it fails to elaborate on the
source of funds which the military used to finance its numerous
operations, overt or covert. (Harry Bhaskara)