Looming anarchy

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.