Reform has not yielded promised results: Survey

Reform has not yielded promised results: Survey

Muninggar Sri Saraswati, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

When reform swept across the country in 1998, forcing
authoritarian ruler Soeharto to step down, everybody hoped the
movement would improve the life of the nation.

Indonesia has since taken several steps, including four
constitutional amendments and direct legislative and presidential
elections, to build a thriving democracy.

Seven years have passed since Soeharto was forced from office,
but most people believe there has been little change for the
better, according to a recent survey by TNS-Indonesia of The
Jakarta Post readers.

Most respondents believe the economy is worse off than it was
under the authoritarian New Order regime.

The majority of survey respondents said they had seen no
improvements in law enforcement, human rights protection, public
service, security, social affairs or politics.

The poll involved 506 respondents, who were equally divided by
gender. About 400 respondents were over the age of 25.

More than a third of respondents said the reform movement had
brought no change to the country's political life, 30 percent
said the situation was worse than during the New Order and 26
percent said reform had resulted in improvements.

In public service, 60 percent of respondents said they had not
seen any progress, compared to 30 percent of respondents who said
public service had improved in the reform era.

Corruption eradication is a battle that successive post-
Soeharto governments have failed to win, according to the survey.

As many as 35 percent of respondents said current antigraft
measures were insufficient, 28 percent said the anticorruption
drive was a failure and 34 percent said the campaign was working.

Regarding the economy, 54 percent of respondents agreed that
present conditions were worse than in the heyday of the New
Order, 34 percent said there had been no change since the
financial swept across the region in 1997 and 12 percent
expressed satisfaction with the government's efforts to deal with
the crisis.

According to the survey, the reform movement did result in
significant changes for the Indonesian Military, one of the main
pillars of the New Order regime that helped keep Soeharto in
power for 32 years.

Forty-seven percent of respondents thanked the reform movement
for turning the military into a professional force, while 37
percent said there had been no improvement in the military's
performance since the reform era began.

Amendments to the Constitution ban the military from
involvement in practical politics, which is evident in the
exclusion of the military and the police from the legislative
bodies since 2004.

Ikrar Nusa Bakti, a political analyst at the Indonesian
Institute of Sciences, said he was not surprised by the poll
results.

"It is not surprising. Seven years is quite a long time,
people deserve a better life.

"The poll sends a clear message to politicians, both in the
legislature and in the government, as well as to the judiciary,
to work harder to uphold democracy," he told the Post.

Ikrar said the ongoing transitional period from an
authoritarian regime to a democracy was a critical period because
if it failed, the old regime would make a comeback.

"Do not let reformasi stall. Otherwise, people may begin
longing for the prosperity offered by an authoritarian regime,
which was actually false. It is dangerous," he said.