People have yet to adjust after a regime change

People have yet to adjust after a regime change

The following is the first part of an interview with Greg
Barton Ph.D, senior lecturer at Deakin University, Australia, who
is also the authorized biographer of Indonesian President
Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid.

An expert on liberal Islam in Indonesia, Barton started
writing the biography a long time before Gus Dur became President
last October. He expects to finish the book toward the end of
this year. Barton, who is a regular visitor to Indonesia, talked
to The Jakarta Post's Harry Bhaskara on Monday.

Question: What is your reading of the performance of Gus Dur's
administration in recent months?

Answer: Following the news from Australia and based on my
impressions meeting Gus Dur again here these last few days, I
remember that he has predicted earlier in the year that April and
May would indeed very difficult times.

Has he?

He has been saying for a long time that April and May may be
particularly a hard time.

Why?

Well, it is hard to say with Gus Dur because facts have merged
together. There are some people who gave spiritual advice that
those months would be a difficult time but Gus Dur is also a very
rational person. He could predict that at a certain point there
will be a crisis of confident and he would face a backlash of
criticism.

Both because of a natural response and because party political
elements linked with the former regime who would deliberately
want to campaign against him. So there are two things flowing to
each other.

But the point is he was expecting that April, May would be
difficult. And what is interesting and important for us to
understand is he had the conviction that if he comes through May
okay, he will be okay in the longer term. And indeed he has come
through okay.

What do you perceive as his difficulties during April and May?

Obviously you could argue that most of his difficulties is his
own making. For example, his sacking of Laksamana Sukardi (former
State Minister of Investment and State Enterprises Development)
was extremely unpopular and the involvement of Hasyim (Gus Dur's
brother Hasyim Wahid) in IBRA (Indonesian Bank Restructuring
Agency) did give a bad impression.

And there is a lot of unkind and unfounded accusation made
against people very close to him. But these things are just
fabrications but as they say if you throw mud around, some tend
to stick.

One of the facts operating here is that he was facing pressure
from elements aligned to the former regime who were concerned
that he was going to push too hard on chasing out to Soeharto and
his family.

Some of these elements may also deal with Wiranto (a general,
former Minister of Defense) and disaffected members of the
military and they wanted to let him know if he kept on pushing
hard they would be merciless in their response and they have a
lot of power to act against him.

If you think about it, their financial liquidity is far
greater than the government. If Bulogate proved one thing, it
showed us how difficult it is for Gus Dur to operate, how much
his hands are tied.

He wants to send money to Aceh, he knows that solving Aceh is
a very important problem, but Bulogate illustrates how difficult
it is even if he has a small amount of money to channel through
the rein of priority concerns.

Whereas the forces against him really has unlimited funds and
making use of these funds for filling envelops to give to
journalists which is an established cultural practice.

It is one of those things which at one level is entirely
understandable because the way Soeharto quite deliberately
structure the society was that it is a low wage society.

There are cases where newspapers which might ordinarily be put
to be objective were influenced in their reporting by bribing
journalists through envelops but there are other ways like
intimidating or cajoling.

Obviously we need to be very cautious about buying into this
sort of conspiracy theory because it is unhelpful to get consumed
into conspiracy theory. It is a very dangerous tendency.

But on the other hand it seems reasonable to accept the
anecdotal evidence and also the hard evidence we have of what is
happening in Maluku for example is very unusual.

Certainly there are organic reasons as to why the violence
continues and certainly in many ways it is like Northern Island
that there is a cycle of violence. Once started it is hard to
close. On the other hand people have used military firearms and
in some cases people acted with impunity.

You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to speculate that
there is a great collusion with some elements of the military and
some elements of the government and it is more than likely that
in some cases at least this is linked to the former regime.

So, in a sum what has happened to Gus Dur?

If you think about it there is a kind of pincer movement
against Gus Dur: attacking him through the media, The attacks are
not necessarily entirely without bases in the sense that Gus Dur
makes mistakes because you can pick on the mistakes. But the way
the mistakes are blown up is often out of proportion.

There are also things that are simply not true. There are
things said about people who were close to him. In the past about
Ratih (Ratih Hardjono, former presidential secretary) now about
his daughters which are without foundations but which is said
anyway because it is easy with envelop, good money to buy press
coverage and shape opinion.

So that was one arm of the pincer attack. The other arm is the
attack against this government to force such a level of
instability so that the people will say that the government lacks
the capacity to bring about change.

This was obviously calculated to unsettle Gus Dur and those
close to him. I am not saying that the whole of the problem in
Maluku was engineered but there were certainly elements who
seized on the opportunity to make things worse, clearly to
intimidate Gus Dur.

I think that was largely behind what happened in April and
May, the intense pressure on these two fronts.

And now you seem the think that the difficult times is partly
over?

The psychological factor that Gus Dur expected this to happen
and expected that if he came through it he would be alright for
the longer term, is a very important factor. It is in his
confident and confident is critical. All of these have to be
understood in the context of regime change. In this context
you need to do two things.

One, you need to be willing to make compromises. Isolation
doesn't appear reasonable but in the context of regime change you
have no realistic alternative. And for Gus Dur it means that
there are limits just to how hard he can push corruption and
particularly cases against the former first family.

But secondly you have to have the courage of your conviction
to press ahead. So for example, Marzuki Darusman (Attorney
General), could not keep on doing his job if he does not have the
courage of conviction. Gus Dur could not keep on doing his job
unless he believes on what he is doing.

And the psychological factor is very important. So the fact
that Gus Dur now has gone through a very difficult period and
believes that things will get better is really critical to the
success of his government.

You seem to believe that things are getting better?

I think objectively there are reasons for believing that
things are now getting better. Not only as personally he is now
more relaxed and in good spirit but the talks a few days ago
about impeaching him have now evaporated.

And certain ill-informed or immature responses to him such as
Amien's comment that he should have an independent medical
examinations have collapsed on their own accord.

Afterall Gus Dur has the best medical doctors in the country
looking at him and suggestion that these people lack professional
integrity of course is insulting.

He has also recently been at the John Hopkins hospital and you
can be quite sure they are not going to create a false report of
good health just for some local political purposes.

So that was a foolish blunder on Amien's part and it collapsed
so we can reasonably expect there will be no move to impeach him
in August MPR (People's Consultative Assembly) session and he
will come through it strengthened.

Do you think he will reshuffle the cabinet?

Certainly, he is now in a position where he has the green
light to go ahead and restructure his cabinet. Obviously it is up
to him to some extent. He still faces limitations in terms of
human resources but the limitations are much less than they were
in last October, November when he was in a very difficult
situation in terms of the constitution of the cabinet.

Do you think he will create a real solid cabinet in term of
professionalism unlike the compromised one before?

Politics is the art of the possible and everything in politics
is compromised. He can not afford to completely disregard party
political concerns. There has to be a factor.

Another factor is that the most professional and experienced
people often have been involved in the former regime. People who
don't have links with the former regime are often inexperienced.
They are often sincere but not necessarily mature in terms of
knowing how politics works.

So that in itself is a basis of a compromise. He doesn't have
an unlimited pool of talent from which to choose. By the way that
is true in Germany, Great Britain or France, America or
Australia. Any democracy , what you get is not the absolute best
but the best under the circumstances.

Gus Dur's cabinet will be a compromised one but it will be
much less compromised than that he had up until now and it will
also undoubtedly affect his own judgment of what is the best for
him.

It may not sit well with the judgment of other people. The
cabinet that works best for Gus Dur is not necessarily the most
professional cabinet in every objective sense because they need a
level of cohesion, it needs to be a team that work together.

In retrospect what has been Gus Dur's priority in his nine-
month old government?

It is clear that Gus Dur has two top priorities. First is
connected to the current process of control of the military. If
that fails, everything fails. So the reform of the military and
the consolidation of that reformists is the first priority.

Secondly, there is a question of economic recovery. An
economic recovery requires starting with you are having the best
of it and it also requires some sense of confident from the
investors. So it is important to get some sense of surety and
stability.

I think these things probably mean that the pursuit of justice
will have to wait a little longer, particularly the pursuit of
corrupters and so on.

It is already clear that the Attorney General office is doing
his best but it is probably trying to do too much at once.
Marzuki (Attorney General) is in charge of a large staff but only
a tiny fraction of that staff are really useful to him. And they
are stretched to their limit.

Apart from these two things, obviously a third really
important area is trying to maintain social harmony. Presumably
in the case of Maluku there is underlying social economic
divisions and factors that were unresolved during the Soeharto
period.

Also there is a cycle of violence that will take some time to
break because once people have experienced the bitter tragedy of
loved ones being killed they feel a natural desire to fight back.

But another factor that has been sustaining that violence is
outside (the region) interference. And while we can only
speculate, presumably all of these have links to the former
regime.

So if Gus Dur can negotiate the situation, those elements will
pull back their forces. It would be much better in the short and
medium term. In the long term, of course, it needs to be pursued
with justice.

Do you think this list of priorities would stay after August?

I think this list of priorities is for the whole five-year
term of Gus Dur government. There are priorities which is set
there for the longer term because that is an actual regime change
and there are also priority that happens to sit well with Gus
Dur's strength and weaknesses.

He is good at negotiating with disparate groups. He proved
that in 1999 when he was able to negotiate with a disparate
collection of forces. He was able to bring about some reproach
between Muhammadiyah and NU (Nahdlatul Ulama), between modernist
and traditional Muslims and even between himself and Amien (Amien
Rais, former leader of Muhammadiyah, now MPR Speaker) and made
that work. More recently he has shown part of his long standing
pattern with Gus Dur.

But it certainly became clear in recent months how he can
negotiate with the military because it is a nature of a regime
change, it is a nature of the military reform.

But it is not enough just to be brave, it is not enough to
have integrity. You need to find some way of winning over, a sort
of floating mass of people who are not quite sure which way to
go.

It is one thing to oppose those who were clearly bent on
subverting democracy and preventing reform. But the majority of
people in the military are not like that. Nor are they
automatically prescribed to democracy. They need somebody who can
negotiate with them in the sense of persuading them that it is
worth going this road. That the possible gains outweigh the short
term pain of it. And Gus Dur has been brilliant at doing this.

I think for the same reason he is one of the few individuals
who can negotiate with elements linked to the former regime with
a degree of authority, and a degree of real dexterity and
ability.

Do you think a comparison with other countries which have
undergone a regime change help?

I think the situation in Indonesia will be very much clearer
for us if we made a comparative studies with other countries
which have experienced a regime change.

I am not an expert in this field but it just seems to me this
is an obvious thing we have to look at. The approach taken by Gus
Dur while was imperfect is appropriate.

In other words, not too high expectation, preparedness to
compromise, a sense of priority of what is important and what is
less important.

For that reason I think the context of regime change is not
going to change at the macro level over the next four years. It
will be a feature of Gus Dur's government or his whole term of
government.

In that sense you couldn't say that Gus Dur is running a
transitional government. It is not that it is not legitimate in
the democratically elected government although the circumstances
of that formation is probably unique and probably won't be
repeated.

But its whole task and its whole orientation and its modus
operandi is that of transitional government. This is not peace
time, this is war time. So even one sense Gus Dur is like Winston
Churchill, a strange eccentric maverick leader, there may be that
was what we need at the time as it were war time rather than
peace time.

Later on, when hopefully we get to the other side and
hopefully there is a degree of stability and a degree of
consolidation and successfulness of regime change process we can
have a more conventional government, a more conventional
president.

What kind of things commonly happen in a country undergoing a
regime change?

Before answering this question, it is interesting to reflect
upon the nature of nation building in Indonesia. I think despite
all the problems, nation building project in some ways has been
quite successful.

The mythical or the guiding vision of the nation has been the
revolution of 1945 to 1949. It is the nature of a revolution that
you have a clear purpose, you fight, you struggle for what you
deserve, for your rights, in the end justice is done and you have
your independence. That is what people experienced of a regime
change. The other experience of regime change was 1965-1966 which
was just awful.

So, Indonesians do have some experience of regime change but
if not it does not prepare them for this current regime change
because on the one hand revolution is overly romantic.

The hallmarks of countries undergoing regime change, we can
expect the outbreak of inter-communal violence that often has
sectarian or ethno-nationalist element, often involving religion.
Not necessarily religion is the cause but because it is invoked.

This is a common pattern of countries that have released
themselves from military-backed authoritarianism. The most
frightening example was Yugoslavia. For years there was peace
between ethnic and religious groups. When the authoritarian
regime was toppled, a nightmare unfolded.

I don't feel Yugoslavia would be repeated here and I certainly
do not subscribe to the theory of balkanization of Indonesia. But
that reminds us that what happened in Yugoslavia is common to
what happen in many countries that experienced a sudden lost by
authoritarian military-backed government.