Political pacts have yet to include the people

Political pacts have yet to include the people

By Olle Tornquist

OSLO, Norway (JP): Time moves swiftly in Indonesia. Just two
years ago, the Asian crisis put an end to authoritarian
development and the hallelujah choir fell silent. The dominant
West was as bewildered as the oppressed opposition was weak. Six
months later, the students instead ensured that Soeharto was
deposed and that most agreed that democracy was the only
solution. The military was weakened. The monopolists were shaken.
Ordinary people demanded those responsible to be held
accountable. With the June elections this year, the world's
largest democracy was born. But now the party is over and the day
after is already here.

Soeharto's "new order" has been replaced by Abdurrahman
Wahid's (Gus Dur's) "pact order." The people voted their protest
and won the election, but the elite horse-traded their stakes and
won the presidency. All the important groups -- including the
military, the former ruling Golkar party and the conservative
Muslims -- are part of the new government. The genuine democrats
are essentially marginalized or else free to pursue their private
projects in civil society. So who has the time and the
inclination to develop political democracy? Even the West lost
interest as soon as the election was over.

Certainly, Gus Dur is the charming and liberal Muslim that the
world needs. But even if he is not, as people say, crazy about
women like Sukarno, crazy about money like Soeharto or absolutely
crazy like B.J. Habibie, he is instead driving everyone crazy
with his capricious maneuvers. And so, democracy is no longer
seen as a solution. The elite now worry instead about how to keep
the country together if Aceh is given free rein, how to pay all
the debts if the provinces are allowed to share revenues, and how
to constrain the fury of the people when subsidies are withdrawn.

The civilian Defense Minister Juwono Sudarsono has gone so far
as to request a nearly doubled budget in exchange for keeping the
military out of politics and the economy, and is threatening a
coup if the politicians cannot create a "healthy and strong"
political atmosphere. So while the media are sending warnings of
a breakdown and neighboring countries are having nightmares about
boat refugees and pirates, "realists", including in the West, are
delicately refraining from "provoking" the military by pointing
out their crimes against human rights.

This position is, of course, wrong on the facts.
Embarrassingly enough, for instance, the same national commission
on human rights that was considered by the West just a few months
ago to be uncritical, is now indicating that the military is so
politically, economically and organizationally weakened that no
concessions are necessary. First and foremost, however, the
position is a political catastrophe. For when Sudarsono is
speaking up and others are mumbling about the weak capacity of
democracy to uphold stability, they rely on the same
justification as the West did when supporting Soeharto: that
democracy is impossible before economic and social development
controlled by the elite has created a strong middle class with a
strong civil society. But not even 30 years of such modernization
helped. Democracy did not emerge until the project broke down.

If we wish to learn from history, we must realize that the
root of the present situation is not the absence of state
control, but rather the lack of democratic institutions and
people's capacity to use them. The first problem, then, is that
the former powers have been given new legitimacy. Golkar is
recovering quickly. The students' discovery of the falsified
history has not brought new curricula and cultural
transformation. The elite is avoiding the accounting of decades
of state violence that could give common people the courage to
build democracy and the country the chance to regain its former
stature. Corruption is condemned and decentralization commended,
but there is no policy to promote the social and political
movements that could bring forward a society founded on the rule
of law and counteract the power of local bosses.

The second problem is that there is only a political pact
among the elite, no social pact with the people. Consequently,
the prerequisites are lacking to handle social and economic
setbacks through, for instance, negotiated agreements between the
state, labor and capital rather than fighting in the streets. The
Ministry of Labor is still unprioritised and is controlled by
Golkar. The Ministry of Social Services has been disbanded (a
feat unmatched by even Margaret Thatcher) with its duties
dispatched to the districts, which have little administrative
capacity, and the civil society, which mainly consists of
competing religious groups that vulnerable people are now
becoming even more dependent upon.

The third problem is that both unitarians who sing the praises
of nationalism and federalists who call Indonesia a colonial
construction seem to believe that the country will fall apart
without stringent central control. Few are pausing to consider
that Indonesia grew forth from the anti-colonial struggle for
freedom and democracy. Few are taking note of the fact that
today's problems are due to the steamrolling of democracy since
the late 1950's. And few are discussing whether the problems and
demands at the local level might be better resolved through a
return to democratic element in the original national project
rather than to despotic modernism in Jakarta or rivaling ethnic
and religious communities in the provinces.

The vacillating between the thesis that elitist development is
the only path to democracy and the idea that rapid
democratization is possible through import of human rights, civil
society, and free elections must come to an end! The first path
ends with dictatorship and the second is inadequate. The
historical compromise would rather be if the latter were used to
create the prerequisites for democratic development with which
the former has failed.

The writer is Professor of political science and development
research, at the University of Oslo. The article was first
published in Svenska Dagbladet, Stockholm.