Pakpahan relishing life on the outside

Pakpahan relishing life on the outside

By Ati Nurbaiti

JAKARTA (JP): The sun was shining on a small garden with a
tiny brook and bridge reminiscent of Japanese landscaping. The
view was irresistible to Muchtar Pakpahan, who was released May
25, after his year-long bed-rest and five months behind prison
walls.

"Can we stand over there?" he pleaded with television
reporters preparing to shoot an interview. "It's been quite some
time since I've seen a garden."

No, the light was not favorable, he was told. He had just
opened a seminar held by SBSI, the Indonesian Prosperous Labor
Union, at the building of the Indonesian Family Planning
Association. Another function was going on in the neighboring
room. As the camera rolled, participants in civil servants'
uniforms were in a coffee break.

Pakpahan seized the opportunity -- and so did they.

In the budding "reform era" civil servants have recently, in a
few sporadic incidents, expressed courage rarely seen in the
previous three decades.

Jostling state employees joined Pakpahan on air as he said,
"... as long as civil servants must join Korpri (the compulsory
civil servants' organization under the Golkar ruling party), they
will never struggle for the betterment of their welfare. Their
wages ..."

A pretty employee butted in, "And rice! The rice is awful!"
and more colleagues approached.

"Yes, and their monthly ransom of rice ..." he complied.

He continued, "... also, because civil servants are entitled
to the state's Astek health insurance, they should be served
first, and not ..."

"like second class citizens!" interjected an elderly man.

When the camera was switched off he continued his "campaign"
with the employees of the National Land Agency.

Convinced

"Now you can shake my hand without fear anymore," he said,
offering his hand, "Join SBSI, or set up your own unions ... If
one day I arrange my land documents with you, I will no longer
have to pay you to get them processed," unlike civil servants in
the past who would have succeeded in improving their wages and
productivity, he said.

SBSI was officially registered as a union on June 1, six years
after it was set up, and Pakpahan is now convinced that civil
servants and other workers will have the pluck to join his union.

"The wall has crashed," he said of the end of the ban on SBSI.
At the end of the week Pakpahan was scheduled to fly to Geneva to
an International Labor Organization convention.

Unlike at earlier conventions, SBSI is now in the government
delegation. Officials will no longer be embarrassed being seen
with Pakpahan, who in an earlier convention turned up as he was
invited by international unions.

Pakpahan said workers afraid to speak up against their
superiors, or hesitant to join the only legal union under
Soeharto, FSPSI (the Federation of the All Indonesian Workers
Union), could now turn to SBSI.

His prison guards in Medan, where he was detained for
allegedly instigating a riot in 1994, and in Cipinang, Jakarta,
where he spent the last part of his term, are among the civil
servants who have joined his union, he said.

Among the Cipinang guards' complaints was that they had become
victims in the escape of convicted tycoon Eddy Tansil; the
special treatment given to him was on the request of a senior
official, Pakpahan said.

Pakpahan acknowledges the huge task facing the union following
its official recognition: "We only have idealism and militancy,
we are in dire need of intellectual and bargaining skills."

With this task in mind he repeats that SBSI, claiming a
membership of 500,000, will never be a political party.

The two-day seminar, SBSI's first ever legal event, "and the
first one in an air-conditioned room," he quipped, included the
best minds in labor studies and labor practice. It was an
immediate response to the union's challenge. "The results will
serve as our platform for action," the chairman said.

His address to the seminar was strewn with apologies for his
schedule: "After these few weeks, I will be back at home." He
wasn't referring to his family -- "I'll be back with SBSI."

He told participants he understood that "political rhetoric"
wouldn't help priorities like overcoming growing unemployment and
lack of access to basic food supplies.

"But how can we improve the economy without taking care of
politics first?"

He cited firsthand experience. "We've helped to set up
foodstalls to help boost the income of laid-off workers." But few
were buying meals: "Office people say now they try to have a full
breakfast and bring something from home, or only eat some bread
for lunch." Among the foodstalls is one set up by his wife under
the Cikini train station in Central Jakarta, to supplement the
family income since Pakpahan could no longer earn from university
teaching.

Other people are afraid to open stalls in case mobs begin
rampaging again, he said. "This is all because of the uncertain
political conditions."

Pakpahan, who earned his doctorate in state administrative law
from the University of Indonesia, has reiterated what he sees as
necessary immediate changes such as those regarding elections.

Removing the police from the Armed Forces is one priority, to
enable them to become law enforcers. "At present, they use the
security approach and shoot first before investigating."

Another repeated appeal is "Please do not take over alleged
stolen property yourselves, Soeharto's or anybody else's; let's
leave it to the courts." The courts should also be made
independent from the government immediately, he said.

God

Pakpahan cites "God's hand" in his risk-filled life. One
example, he said, was when he was convicted for allegedly
instigating labor riots in Medan in 1994, but then had to be
hospitalized.

The resulting lung tumor, said the devout Christian, must have
been God's doing; it led to international advocacy for his
freedom and access to medical services. Most of his prison term
was spent at the Cikini hospital. "And the C-3 ward became the
center of SBSI meetings."

The tumor, he thinks, "disappeared the minute (former
president) Soeharto stepped down."

He reflects that in prison "I increasingly understood what God
expects of me."

It appears that Pakpahan's sincerity has won hearts although
he has no experience of, for instance, organizing labor in a
factory. He was once a self-employed pedicab driver in Medan to
pay his way through university.

Born in Bah Jambi II, Tanah Jawa, in Simalungun, North Sumatra
on Dec. 21, 1953, his father Sutan Johan Pakpahan died when he
was 11; his mother Victoria Silalahi passed away a few years
later. "I was brought up by my older brother; he's the only
person that I have never opposed."

He says his achievement in gaining a bachelors degree in law
was "strange" ("How could an orphan get a degree?") and he says
he felt an obligation to the downtrodden.

He helped set up a few unions before finally founding SBSI in
1992. It gained popularity mainly because the legal union, then
SPSI, frequently proved impotent, and also because it was banned.

SBSI gained an international reputation but Pakpahan and his
secretary-general Sunarti, a former factory worker, remain modest
and without pretensions. She giggled when Pakpahan, shouting into
his mobile phone, turned out to be holding it upside down.

Also, Pakpahan's public addresses lack rhetoric but to most
people that does not seem that necessary. At a strike by drivers
of the state-owned PPD bus company, also on Wednesday, he
basically told the crowd what SBSI understood their problems to
be, what the proposed solution was, and enthusiastic roars filled
the air.

Though modest, the labor leader is far from naive. He recites
an unexpected causality of his mission; another brother lost his
business because of Pakpahan's activities. "He begged me to help
save his business. I was to sign a statement brought by the
authorities that I would be loyal to the Constitution and
Pancasila (the state ideology)."

"I apologized ... I told him that if I signed this it would
mean I have never been loyal" and that his activities would be
tantamount to being subversive.

Pakpahan promises that once his obligations following his
release are over -- addressing students and various other
functions -- there should be time for the family.

The youngest of his three children, Ruth Damaihati, 12, has
said, "I wish we could all spend some time together again, like
going swimming."

The last time they plunged in the pool near their home on Jl.
Kayu Putih in East Jakarta was before Pakpahan was arrested in
Medan in 1994.

The family had previously managed to go swimming on weekend
mornings, "before union gatherings," Pakpahan said, because
workers only had time for organization activities on weekends.

"I know I should have been there for them ... asking who
they're dating," Pakpahan said. "I've asked for their
understanding." Ruth's brothers, Johanes Dartha and Binsar
Jonathan, are 16 and 17 respectively.

His wife Rosintan Marpaung Pakpahan, who teaches physics at a
high school, says she had a hard time "being both father and
mother" to the teenagers during his detention. But his family is
firmly behind him.

Rosintan was an activist with GMKI, the Indonesian Christian
Students' Movement, when she first met Pakpahan in Medan.

"We hope he will never be arrested again," says Rosintan. "No
one should ever be arrested again (for organizing labor). That's
why we need to fight for democracy."