Political demography of integration
Political demography of integration
By Riwanto Tirtosudarmo
The following is the second of two articles on national
integration.
JAKARTA (JP): The New Order view of transmigration as a
means to achieve national integration was explicitly stated for
the first time at a transmigration seminar in 1970. Even though
the issues of national integration and national unity had been
discussed since the early years of independence, their importance
reached new heights during the 1956-58 regional rebellions.
The decisive role of the military in ending the rebellions was
a major factor in reshaping the role of military leadership on
the national political scene. In addition, national integration
has become the key issue and the prime concern for the military
leaders, whose power was further consolidated by the political
chaos of 1965.
The conceptual links between transmigration policy and
national integration, according to a senior staff member at the
National Defense Institute -- the think tank of the Ministry of
Defense -- should be viewed from a geopolitical and geostrategic
perspective.
Transmigration policy is an effort, method, and means to
achieve geographic-integration, which is a basic condition for
the unity of the nation, to improve the people's welfare and
awareness, and provide an opportunity to utilize natural
resources.
Achievement of geographic-integration, on the one hand, will
protect the nation from centrifugal tendencies, and on the other
hand, strengthen centripetal forces. Geographic integration is
also a medium to build understanding, friendship and cooperation
with other countries.
From the point of view operational defense, transmigration
supports the Popular Defense and Security System in order to
resist the threat of subversion, infiltration and invasion from
abroad, particularly through the provision of human resources.
Thus in the view of the military, geographic integration, in
which transmigration policy plays an important role by providing
human resources, is a necessary condition for national
integration.
Population mobility and employment data, as revealed by
population censuses and labor force surveys during the last two
decades, clearly have indicated that the mode of population
mobility is strongly associated with the broader socioeconomic
processes instigated by government policies.
A marked shift from predominantly planned or assisted
migration to voluntary population movement occurred in the mid-
1980s as the government's capacity to finance transmigration
program was declining. Yet as the data shows, from the mid-1980s
up to early 1990s, population movements continued to increase.
This movement apparently is related to the process of labor
reallocation from agriculture to non-agriculture, stimulated by a
drastic change in the economy's growth regime from import
substitution to export promotion. In addition, a large number of
migrants have moved beyond the nation's boundaries, particularly
to Malaysia, as they perceived that more job opportunities were
available in neighboring countries.
In the last twenty five years, politics has become highly
regulated and strongly dominated by the President, evidently in
contrast to the economy which tends to be liberalized. Such
incongruity has created a climate of uncertainty among the
population, particularly the educated and intellectuals, who
believe that it is impossible to liberalize the economy without
deregulating civil and political rights. A major concern, due to
the lack of political checks and balances, is a process of
uncontrolled accumulation of economic power in the hands of a few
people.
Over the last 25 years, the New Order's economic development
program has elevated the people's level of economic prosperity.
The proportion of the population living under the poverty line,
according to official statistics, has been reduced considerably.
Yet, the widening income gap, as shown by independent economists,
is the underlying cause of the people's grudges. It is not
surprising that a feeling of being economically squeezed by the
central government is found among people in the rich natural
resources provinces such as Aceh, Riau, North Sulawesi and Irian
Jaya (Sondakh, 1994).
The primordial sentiments, originating from ethnic and
religious self identification, also may be a natural human
reaction to the uncertain national political and economic
climates. The flourishing of quasi-intellectual associations,
based on religion, such as ICMI (Moslem), PIKI (Protestant), ISKA
(Catholic), PCHI (Hindu), ICBI (Buddhist), in the last five years
supports the parochial and sectarian tendencies among the
educated urban-based population.
Nazli Choucri, another political scientist from MIT, argues
that for a nation, security, stability, and social cohesion in
the comprehensive sense encompass the ability to adapt to a
changing environment and to adapt at a cost that is deemed
acceptable and affordable by society. Such adaptation, she
further noted, begins most fundamentally with the meeting of
social demands. These demands are defined initially, and most
critically, by the configuration of the population and its
overall characteristics.
The link between population and conflict is not a new
phenomenon. Conflict is a central feature of all political
behavior, at all levels of human interaction, and the prominence
of population variables in shaping political behavior places
population issues and conflict in close proximity.
When conflict becomes violent it truly threatens the social
fabric. In the case of Indonesia, given the archipelagic nature
of the country, as well as its ethnic and religious plurality,
the most serious population variable which has a strong
probability to create conflict is population mobility. The
regional variations in population growth have apparently resulted
from regional in-migration differential rates rather than from
the natural population increase.
As clearly shown from various demographic sources,
population mobility to outer island provinces, such as Irian
Jaya, East Timor, Maluku, East Kalimantan, Riau and Aceh has
increased remarkably since the mid-1980s. The increase in the
volume of population mobility, as mentioned earlier, is
essentially the logical consequence of surplus labor and secondly
the opening up of economic growth centers, particularly in urban
areas in several provinces.
In this regard, recent conflicts between migrants and the
local populations in eastern Indonesia's provinces strongly
indicate that ethnicity and religion have intermingled with
economic and political factors. The indigenous population in
eastern Indonesia generally has a lower human resource endowment
and has clashed with migrants from western Indonesia who have
relatively higher human resource capacities.
After independence, regional resentment of the national
government occurred in two periods: the 1950s and 1990s.
Interestingly, they reflect different political and ideological
features. Maley (1995) shows that the regional rebellions in the
1950s, such as PRRI-Permesta in West Sumatra, South and North
Sulawesi, DI-TII in West Java, were able to destabilize the
political agenda of the central government, but did not aim to
separate their regions from the Indonesian nation.
However, the organizations behind regional unrest in the
1990s, particularly in Aceh (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka), Irian Jaya
(Organisasi Papua Merdeka) and East Timor (Fretilin), despite
only having a little effect in influencing national integration
and central government hegemony, had their own ideological basis
and a secessionist nature attempting to form a separate
government.
Looking from a national perspective, it seems that the
perceived threats, particularly while President Soeharto is in
supreme control, are unlikely to materialize in destabilization
of national integration and the political stability of the
country. Yet, as President Soeharto gets older, the process of
transferring political power is becoming vulnerable. In such an
uncertain future, various centripetal factors, emanating from
primordial sentiments based on region, race, ethnic, religion,
economic classes and social groupings are clearly flourishing.
The jolting process of power transfer from Soeharto to his
successor will easily provoke the perceived into real threats to
political stability and national integration.
Sustainable development, after all, is a matter of
democracy. A genuine democracy, essentially the presence of
political checks and balances, hardly exists in Indonesia. The
flourishing of primordial sentiments, clearly indicated by the
formalization of the quasi-intellectuals associations based on
religion, shows a sectarian tendency among the educated
population at the national level.
At the regional level, as is occurring in eastern Indonesia's
provinces, particularly Irian Jaya and East Timor, proved that
provincialism, ethnicity and religion cannot easily be submerged
if economic achievements are not equally distributed,
particularly between indigenous and 'opportunist' migrants.
The various changes in political-demographic configurations at
the national and the regional levels, among the educated elite in
urban centers, as well as at the grassroots level in rural areas
and the periphery, undoubtedly are red flagging the popular
demands for a more democratic development approach from the
ruling elite.
Fulfillment of the people's democratic demands and aspirations
is a formidable national task for the government. A genuine
effort towards the realization of the people's democratic
aspirations is the basis of sustainable development and the only
solution to the problem.
The writer is a researcher at the Center for Population and
Human Resources Studies at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences.
This article is an abridged version of a paper which appeared in
the Indonesian Quarterly. Vol.23, No.4, Fourth Quarter, 1995.