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.