Not much credit is due Habibie's presidency

Not much credit is due Habibie's presidency

After Soeharto finally relinquished power a year ago due to a
combination of the economic downturn, bloody riots and
unrelenting pressure from students, he put vice president B.J.
Habibie in power. Political analyst J. Soedjati Djiwandono taps
into the nation's pulse on the merits of his successor.

JAKARTA (JP): Two positive things about Habibie's presidency
readily come to mind: He is a civilian and non-Javanese. Under
Soeharto, the prevailing myth was that his successor would
inevitably be an Army four-star general and a Javanese (apart
from being Muslim).

The fact that Habibie, a native of South Sulawesi, is a member
of an ethnic minority should have given a good and healthy face
to Indonesia as a diverse nation. Unfortunately, however, he does
not seem to realize its significance and he seems instead to have
abused it. He has surrounded himself with a good number of people
of his own ethnic group or the region of his birth. Surely, the
argument goes, it's the Indonesian president's prerogative to
appoint his ministers at his own discretion.

In President Habibie's case, however, it could be cause to
disrupt Indonesian nationhood, at a time when national unity is
facing a serious threat from disintegration. It may be one
indication that he is not really a politician, let alone a
political leader. As such, he has no power base. He was once
chairman of Golkar's board of patrons. But even his membership in
Golkar was initially ex officio since, ironically, as part of
Soeharto's manipulation, all Cabinet members were to be not only
members but also functionaries of Golkar.

His lack of a power base may explain his apparent reliance on
his colleagues in the Indonesian Muslim Intellectuals Association
(ICMI) when forming his Cabinet, although ICMI is definitely not
a political party. Yet, it seems doubtful if people regard
Habibie either as a political or an Islamic leader. Muslim
intellectuals gathered around him and elected him chairman of
ICMI apparently not only because he is an intellectual,
particularly a reportedly highly qualified engineer, but also
because he was at that time closest to the center of power --
Soeharto. As such, he could be used as a vehicle by which Muslim
intellectuals could have access to political power, which they
thought, rightly or wrongly, had been denied by the New Order
regime, including the military.

On a personal level, President Habibie seems to be jovial,
friendly, more approachable and fair-minded, and less
feudalistic, than Soeharto, although on occasions he lacks tact
in expressing himself.

Unfortunately, not much credit is due concerning his one-year-
old presidency. Nevertheless, many foreign -- mostly Western --
observers and journalists tend to be naively generous in giving
him credit he does not really deserve on a number of issues.

President Habibie has taken pride in the fact that people are
enjoying greater freedom under his presidency. But this is not a
gift from him, not even in the case of the greater freedom of the
press, although foreign journalists readily refer to his "policy"
in granting publishing licenses (SIUPP) as an example of his
liberal mindedness.

Greater democratic freedom, including freedom of the press,
has been won through bitter struggle as part of the student
reform movement, which even Soeharto buckled under and which the
much weaker Habibie could not have done much about.

He could not have arrested the trend that continued to gain
strength and momentum when he assumed the presidency almost out
of the blue. If credit is due at all in regard to freedom of the
press, it is to Minister of Information Muhammad Yunus, a three-
star general, apparently one of the very few decent individuals
in the present Cabinet. He once defended the freedom of the
media, ironically against a member of the House of
Representatives, a representative of the people reportedly with a
doctorate in communications.

Besides, if President Habibie were really liberal and a
democrat at heart, he would not have agreed to the enactment of
Law No. 9/1999 on freedom of expression, particularly with
respect to demonstrations, as I have referred to before in this
column. The law is against democratic freedom, and this in the
supposedly reform post-Soeharto era!

The relevant question here is whether President Habibie is
really committed to reform as outwardly indicated by the
designation of his Cabinet. Admittedly, Habibie is faced with one
thousand and one problems, prominent among them the economic
crisis inherited from the Soeharto government. Unfortunately, he
himself may be part of the problem. Under Soeharto, Habibie may
have played a substantial part in putting the nation's economy
into ruin.

As president, he has failed in dealing with security problems,
such as the cases of the missing political activists, the
shooting of the Trisakti students last May and the Semanggi
tragedy, to name just a few. He is ambivalent in his attitude
toward the issue of investigating the wealth of the Soeharto
family, perhaps for fear of his own alleged involvement being
publicly exposed.

Perhaps Habibie found these problems intimidating when he
assumed the presidency. He stated not long afterwards that he had
no interest in running for president in the coming election.
Then, he had second thoughts, and finally he decided he did want
to run. He has even claimed to having a full presidency rather
than conceding he is a transitional president. He is Golkar's
sole candidate for president this time round, copying Soeharto's
style of retaining power over the years.

Many naive Chinese-Indonesians have been led to believe that
Habibie is an antiracist and antidiscrimination reformer through
his ordering that the terms pribumi (indigenous) and nonpribumi
(nonindigenous) be discarded, and his move to eliminate all forms
of discrimination in existing laws. It is actually deceptive
grandstanding, for he has no constitutional competence to do such
things through the presidential instructions in the style of
Soeharto. Rather, these acts should be done through proper
legislation.

The underlying problem seems to be that President Habibie has
never set his order of priorities. If anything, his Cabinet seems
to be as uncoordinated as the last two of Soeharto.