Reform movement going nowhere after 5 years

Reform movement going nowhere after 5 years

Muninggar Sri Saraswati, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The sluggish reform process, which was expected to deliver
democracy to the country after the end of former president
Soeharto's 32-year authoritarian regime, has also given
opportunities for counterreform forces to destroy it, a scholar
said on Monday.

"World history teaches us that reform always creates
counterreform. That's why we have to remain vigilant to prevent
the reform movement that started in 1998 from being intercepted
by counterreform forces," said Ignas Kleden, a noted sociologist
with the Center for East Indonesia Affairs (CEIA).

He presented his paper during a discussion about the
development of the 1998 Indonesian reform held by Tempo weekly
and the Freedom Institute on Monday. Also presenting their papers
during the talk were noted Muslim scholar Nurcholish Madjid,
economist M. Chatib Basri and legal observer Nono Anwar Makarim.

Five years after the reform movement started, Ignas said,
Indonesian politics still focus on state interests rather than on
society's.

He said the recent case against the separatist Free Aceh
Movement (GAM) exemplifies this fact as it is considered more
dangerous than the sectarian conflict in Maluku, which claimed
more than 6,000 lives over three years.

He said that the issue of national stability, which was
popular propagation during the New Order regime, has been
replaced with the issue of national territorial integrity.

"Political powers tend to avert people's dependency on the
state by manipulating civil society's powers, which succeeded in
forcing then president Soeharto to step down," he said.

Soeharto stepped down on May 21, 1998 following widespread
student demonstrations across the country against his government.
People pinned their hopes on the reform process to lead the
country to become a democratic one.

Unfortunately, Ignas said, the orientation of political
parties before and after the reform era, which is to struggle for
power rather than to focus on the use of power, was still
unchanged.

Nurcholis concurred and said that the sluggish development of
the reform process was due to a lack of public participation.

The condition had slowed the development of the reform
process. Worse, the reform of the country's judicial system,
which was supposedly leading the reform program, had yet to show
any results.

Nono criticized all post-Soeharto administrations for their
misleading perception of law reforms, in which judicial reform
would need the reformation of the country's legislations.

The government and the House of Representatives, especially
during former president B.J. Habibie's tenure, have passed
numerous laws and issued many regulations, but there is no legal
certainty while corruption remains rampant.

"The country's judicial system has been badly tarnished to the
point that it is impossible to fix it without enacting
legislations," Nono said.

Nono believed that people could no longer reform the country
by relying on the government and the House. He asked the public
to participate more in the decision-making process in the
country.

Ignas, meanwhile, said: "Reform is not a simple thing. People
have to focus on the process, instead of the target. As a process
will produce many possibilities, they should be decided together
by the people. That is the meaning of democracy."

Nucholish, who is seeking presidential candidacy for the 2004
election, said that Indonesia sorely needs leaders who are
strongly committed to the state.

"A leader must have the public's trust and always provide room
for grassroots participation in national life," he said.