Looming anarchy

Anarchy loomed in Jakarta on Friday, reminiscent of the days before the massive and brutal riots of May 1998. Clashes between students and security officers, previously confined to the elite Menteng area where former president Soeharto lives, spread to busy streets, Jl. Salemba and Jl. Kramat Raya in Central Jakarta.

Predictably, the students, who are demanding the trial of the former despot, were joined by ordinary people whose presence in the streets were not necessarily motivated by the same concerns. The crowds were only steps away from the Senen shopping complex, which has had a long history of being burned during riots these last four decades.

The police were nowhere in sight as students checked passing vehicles to apprehend and beat members of the police or the Military who inadvertently strayed into the area. Military vehicles were stopped, overturned and set afire.

To the students' credit, they exercised restraint by targeting their anger specifically at the property of law enforcement agencies. But there is no guarantee that this condition of selective outrage will continue. The May 1998 experience demonstrated that all that is needed to lose control is the arrival of provocateurs to provoke the students and those not so idealistic to an extreme emotional state sufficient to engage in acts of mass destruction.

The situation today, which bordered on anarchy, was not all that dissimilar to the days just before Jakarta erupted into an orgy of arson and looting over two years ago. This is not a situation that will bolster already failing investor confidence. On the contrary, it is likely that many of those who are still here will be thinking about packing their bags again, possibly for the last time.

While it is easy to place sole blame on the students for trying to force their way to Soeharto's Jl. Cendana residence, the government must assume the lion's share of the blame. The clashes between students and security forces were manifestations of the student's scorn for the law enforcement apparatus rather than a disregard for the law.

Looking at their demands, one can extend this point to include disrespect for all law enforcement agencies, from the police, prosecutors and investigators, to the courts. Public confidence in the law is at a very low ebb largely because the popularly elected government has failed to a large extent to respond to the people's aspirations for justice under the law, particularly in pursuing past abusers of power, including most of all, Soeharto.

If student militancy has grown in recent months, that is because the government is making such little headway in its legal investigations, not only in Soeharto's case, but also in almost all other high profile cases. Other investigations that have attracted a lot of public attention include the 1996 attack on the PDI headquarters in Jakarta, the 1984 massacre of Muslim protesters in Tanjung Priok, the Bank Bali scandal, and the killings in Aceh and East Timor. If those are not enough, one could add the recent Bulog scandal to the list.

In the seven months that President Abdurrahman Wahid has been in office, there has not been a single conviction for the high profile cases of corruption or abuse of power. Most investigations have been slow, with little or no prospect of reaching the courts any time soon, if at all. And the decision last week to drop the investigation into the loan scandal at the Texmaco Group for insufficient evidence could well be the first of many investigations to be stopped.

While the conviction of 24 soldiers and junior officers for the killing of unarmed civilians in Aceh allows the government to claim that progress is being made, it failed to convince many people because the senior officers, who clearly gave the command to kill, are still roaming free.

The Soeharto investigation is probably the most important of all the legal cases being pursued by the government in its drive to show that justice exists in this country. The reputation of this government hinges on its ability to bring Soeharto to court, and to convict him for misdeeds committed while he was president.

And the government's plan to remove Soeharto from his Menteng residence because of constant student protests is not likely to solve the problem. It will merely shift the problem elsewhere because the students will most likely find this new secure location and take their protests there.

For an administration that was elected on the back of the student-led reform movement, it has put on a very disappointing performance in upholding the principle of rule by law. The public do not condone the use of violence, but they share the students' disillusionment and frustrations with such a poor showing. Friday's clashes between students and security forces in Jakarta streets are reminders for the government that patience, and therefore time, is fast running out.