More statesmen needed

More statesmen needed

With the economy still in disarray and violence still raging
in parts of Maluku, Aceh, Irian Jaya and other spots in the
country, the focus of attention here seems of late to have taken
a rather odd turn. Tired, perhaps, with the barrage of press
reports about communal strife in these areas, attention in the
past week has turned to the war of words that is at present
raging among the country's political elite.

Indeed, to many Indonesians, it now looks as if it is this
constant bickering among the political elite -- from leaders of
political parties to legislators and President Abdurrahman Wahid
himself -- that is fueling the present troubles. At the very
least, the open discord is making life easier for the masterminds
who are believed to have been planning, devising and financing
the violence, and prevents the government from taking effective
measures to counter the subversion.

It gives little consolation for Indonesians to observe that
the authorities seem to have some solid clues -- if still lacking
in evidence -- as to who they believe is stoking the violence in
Maluku and other parts of the country.

The minister of defense, Juwono Sudarsono, in a statement that
was rare in its directness, said on Thursday that supporters of
former president Soeharto were fomenting the unrest to escape
justice and to destabilize the government of President
Abdurrahman Wahid.

"There are strong indications that the cronies (of Soeharto),
not necessarily from the Cendana family, are involved in some of
the unrest and bombings in North Sumatra, part of East Java and
Maluku," Juwono said, referring to the street (Jl. Cendana) where
Soeharto and his family lives.

That is certainly progress. But still, the constant quarreling
at the top in Jakarta is making it unlikely that even if real
proof were obtained the trouble would cease. Besides, Indonesia's
problems are currently mainly in the economical field, where the
turmoil is keeping investors away and putting heavy pressure on
the national currency, the rupiah, which closed against the
dollar at Rp 9,305 before the weekend.

All of which is reason for Nurcholish Madjid, one of the
country's most respected Muslim scholars, to urge the two top
dignitaries embroiled in the war of words, President Abdurrahman
Wahid and the chairman of the People's Consultative Assembly,
Amien Rais, to stop making controversial statements.

In their case, restraint is all the more important since
Abdurrahman Wahid is a former chairman of the Nahdlatul Ulama
(NU) and Amien Rais a former chairman of the Muhammadiyah
organization. These are the largest Muslim organizations in the
country. One can imagine what damage an open conflict between the
two could do to the country.

To be honest, though, one can understand the exasperation
Amien must have felt over the President's penchant for making
wanton remarks, which he often later lightly corrects or
withdraws. The final straw must have been the President's remark
that the "culprits" behind all the trouble in Maluku and
elsewhere were to be found in the Assembly and the House of
Representatives.

A number of those legislators, he said -- and later denied
having said -- were soon to be taken into custody for
questioning. To this, Amien retort was to urge the President to
make no further remarks whatsoever, at least until the upcoming
session of the People's Consultative Assembly.

This incident is but the latest escalation of the war of words
that has been going on for some time between the two men. Other
politicians, however, are just as guilty of stoking it up to ever
new temperatures.

In all this, one is uncomfortably reminded of the era of
"liberal democracy" in the 1950s -- an episode in Indonesia's
history that was characterized by the unbridled use of democratic
freedoms, when Cabinets often stayed in power for just a few
months. The chaos which this resulted in led to the institution
of "guided democracy" under President Sukarno in 1959.

That spelled the end of Indonesia's first experiment with
democracy. If the present experiment is to last, this country's
political leaders would be well advised to spend some effort on
turning themselves into real statesmen, rather than mere
politicians.