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.

The New Order regime had ruled the country for 32 years from
1966. Led by former president Soeharto, a former military
official, the authoritarian government imposed a militaristic
approach and closed the door on public participation in all
elements of social structure.

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.

Ignas said that the condition was triggered by, among other
things, the tendency of many political parties here to rely on
the state to finance them.

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.

"(People) always look to their leaders to ask them what to do.
This condition has lead to the (reform) failure," he told the
participants, commenting that Indonesians currently face "a very
difficult situation".

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.

Nono, meanwhile, 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.

"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," Ignas said.

Soeharto stepped down in 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.

However, the sluggish development of the reform process has
forced some people to say that life under the New Order regime
was better than during the reform period, despite the fact that
they had lived under oppression.