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.