Pramoedya disenchanted with reform

Pramoedya disenchanted with reform

Lely T. Djuhari, Associated Press, Jakarta

Leaning back in his chair, Indonesia's most acclaimed author looked achingly frail - until he started talking about the country's reform movement and upcoming presidential elections.

Pramoedya Ananta Toer, a champion of democracy jailed under successive regimes, lamented the state of the country's politics. His eyes were afire as he denounced contenders for Indonesia's first direct presidential election on July 5, including President Megawati Soekarnoputri, as a bunch of buffoons.

"We have no leaders and the reform movement has died. That's a tragedy," the ailing Pramoedya, 79, told The Associated Press during an interview at his home on the outskirts of Jakarta.

"Our current president is no leader," he said. "She is a clown. In fact, all of the presidential candidates are clownlike."

Pramoedya's works - and his life - tell the history of Indonesia over more than half a century. Today, he is still the angry leftist intellectual. But his works are little known by the country's young, a legacy from the days when his works were banned during the dictatorship Soeharto - and he spent 14 years in prison.

His career was kept alive then because his 34 books and essays have been translated into 37 languages including English, German, French, Dutch and Italian. He has several times been nominated for a Nobel Prize.

His best-known works - the Buru Quartet novels about Indonesia's independence struggle against the Dutch - were written on scraps of paper and surreptitiously smuggled out while he was imprisoned on the remote island of Buru.

Pramoedya was first jailed in 1947 by Dutch troops for being "anti-colonialist." He was imprisoned again during the rule of Indonesia's first president, Sukarno, and in 1953 he fled to the Netherlands, where he moved politically to the left.

This landed him in jail after his return when Soeharto's right-wing military junta took over in 1965. The long years of incarceration without trial almost ended the career of Indonesia's most influential and prolific writer, who had also popularized American author John Steinbeck by translating Mice and Men, and Russian writers Leo Tolstoy and Maxim Gorki.

Now, he's free to speak his mind - under the government of Megawati, whom he reviles. Yet the nearly blind and deaf Pramoedya has been largely forgotten in the country's chaotic transition to democracy.

"I am sad. The younger generation were not allowed to read his books and now many of them do not know his ideas," said university student leader Ukay, who like many Indonesians uses a single name.

Pramoedya's ideas - once a major factor fueling the pro- democracy groundswell that toppled Soeharto - have been largely cast aside as the country struggles to revive its economy, put down separatist rebellions and defeat terrorists responsible for a string of deadly bomb attacks.

Pramoedya advocated rejecting bureaucrats and politicians "tainted" by Soeharto-era abuses, but many of Soeharto's cronies remain in office. He wanted an inclusive government that welcomed people from areas beyond Indonesia's main island of Java, but the Javanese still hold the reins of power.

Pramoedya has not let his health problems or his declining influence silence him, however.

"I am half blind and almost totally deaf. But I won't stop being angry because not many people are outraged enough at the state of Indonesia," he said.

These days Pramoedya mostly stays at home, where he's been trying to compile an encyclopedia on Indonesia. Recently, he suffered a bout of typhoid fever, and he's been too weak even to walk up to his third-floor study crammed with neatly bound but dog-eared books, magazines and newspaper clippings.

Only a few old friends stop by to discuss politics. One of his favorite topics remains the 82-year old Soeharto, whom he criticizes for "forbidding Indonesians to think and be critical" and for jailing thousands like himself simply because they were linked to the country's Communist Party.

Pramoedya said Megawati pales in comparison to her father Sukarno - Indonesia's founding father - and added she lacks the intellectual heft and political will to address the country's problems.

Many Indonesians seem to agree: Megawati's corruption-tainted party fared poorly in Monday's parliamentary elections, losing more than a third of the 34 percent votes it won in the 1999 ballot that followed Soeharto's overthrow.

The result has thrown into doubt her plans to seek re-election in the presidential contest on July 5, and emboldened her principal rivals - Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a four-star general who served as Megawati's security minister, and Akbar Tandjung, chairman of Soeharto's former Golkar Party.

Some Indonesians say Pramoedya serves as a reminder of the terrible price a nation pays when it silences its brightest minds.

"His plight shows us that we should never again be shackled or restricted in politics," said Thamrin Amal Tamagola, a political observer at the University of Indonesia.

When he seized power from Sukarno, Soeharto imposed a crackdown on communists that killed an estimated half million people within a decade. Pramoedya was active in the cultural and literary wing of the Communist Party.

That party is still banned in Indonesia but in February the country's Supreme Court ruled that former "communists" could stand for election starting in 2009.

Pramoedya expressed satisfaction with the court ruling but said it meant little in a country where corruption is rampant and where efforts to reform the judiciary have largely stalled.

"The courts are nothing but theater plays. Judges allow powerful Soeharto cronies to walk free. We may as well allow the nation to break up," he said.

Defiant as ever, the aging author refuses to disappear into the night.

His yellow, nicotine-stained fingers tap a right ear filled with cotton; it was badly damaged when prison wardens beat his head with rifle butts.

"I am a fighter. I like to fight," said Pramoedya, his wrinkled face revealing an impish smile. "But who will fight me now? Are there any fighters left in Indonesia?"

GetAP 1.00 -- APR 12, 2004 07:32:18