RI faces dissolution threat

It's a long way from Berlin to Aceh, but as The Jakarta Post's Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin made that mental journey recently, some provocative parallels came to mind.

HONG KONG (JP): As the 10th anniversary of the destruction of the Berlin Wall by People Power was commemorated recently, the crucial role of one key personality was completely forgotten.

Of course, the then U.S. President George Bush was honored -- even though at one stage he made that famous "Chicken Kiev" speech in which he advised the soon-to-be-independent Ukrainians that they should stay part of the collapsing Soviet Union.

Of course, the then Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was warmly remembered for agreeing to a reunited Germany, even though his glasnost and perestroika reforms were intended to save the Soviet Union, rather than create a democratic Russia shorn of its Empires.

But amidst all the celebrations no one recalled the leader who, more than any other, brought the Cold War to a conclusion and the Soviet Union to its knees: Leonid Brezhnev.

Nikita Khrushchev had at least tried to politically reform the Soviet Union, notably with his revelation of Stalinist excesses. Brezhnev saw reform as being too risky. Avoidance of risk plus the endless pursuit of stability were the name of the game in Brezhnev's Kremlin.

It remained the name of the game for nearly two decades as Brezhnev and his surrounding gerontocracy stayed in power far too long. Checkpoint Charlie, the Berlin Wall, the Cold War, the Soviet Union itself, all seemed to be permanent and immutable. But it was only a facade, concealing an illusion.

As the Brezhnev Era endured, the internal Soviet problems simply accrued faster than any ability to solve them. The speedy dissolution of both the Russian Empire (which comprised the socialists republics of the Soviet Union) and of the Soviet Empire (which comprised the so-called captive nations of Eastern Europe) became more, rather than less, inevitable.

By the time Gorbachev had a chance to take charge over the mess that had been created, Brezhnev's endless pursuit of the status quo had created a wholly intractable problem. Whatever Gorbachev did it was bound to be too little, too late. So, with previously unimaginable speed, first the captive nations became free, and then the captive republics within the Soviet Union asserted their independence, too. Today even the parts of the Russian Federation are proving troublesome, as in Chechnya.

The Brezhnev Era illustrated with devastating clarity that there is nothing so destabilizing as leaders who stay in power too long, pursuing stability.

The changes brought about by People Power in Berlin in 1989 came to mind this week as People Power in Asia flowered in Aceh, the province of 4.3 million people in the northernmost part of the Indonesian island of Sumatra.

As a huge crowd gathered in Banda Aceh on Nov. 7-8, one old technique of people power movements was much in evidence: playing a numbers game, so that there is exaggeration of the number of people demonstrating.

The organizers of the General Session of the Council for the Fight for the Referendum, as the rally was called, at first suggested that half a million Acehnese were attending.

Reporters, some of whom never left Jakarta, quickly escalated this number to a million, some Hong Kong newspapers headlined 1.5 million, and local Aceh papers ended up asserting two million, or half the local population.

Two level-headed reporters who were in the thick of it maintained that the crowd was between one and two hundred thousand. Still pictures and video back up this conclusion. Their careful reporting was drowned out as the would-be secessionists played the numbers game with the media, and clearly won.

Yet the precise numbers matter less than the reality of a massive outpouring of popular Acehnese feeling sending a very plain message: The people were utterly fed up with Jakarta's promises and performance. Any Javanese government in Jakarta was suspect. Time and again, in response to reporters' questions, ordinary Acehnese said they didn't care if Indonesia broke up. Compromise was pointless. They wanted a referendum in order to vote for independence.

The basic political message for President Abdurrahman Wahid is equally plain. He will not enjoy the usual political honeymoon for newly installed leaders. He is face to face with Aceh's longstanding historical urge for separation, for being its own independent self. He has very little time to play with. If he talks about the principle of an Aceh referendum -- and does not deliver, then that will be one more Javanese broken promise, making the Acehnese even more intransigent.

This means that the future of Indonesia is on the line. Giving in to the Acehnese demands, let alone allowing them to become independent, conjures up the very real threat that other parts of the archipelago will insist upon equal treatment -- and that Indonesia might break apart. Already there is restiveness in Riau and west Irian.

Yet for Jakarta to attempt another militarily-imposed solution is simply not an option. It is precisely the use and abuse of military attempts at imposing a solution upon Aceh, over the last two decades particularly, that has created the present impasse. Like Mikhail Gorbachev and former Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze faced with the dissolution of the Soviet Empire, Abdurrahman can only take the extremely difficult, but essential, decision that military force is not an answer.

Also like Gorbachev, Abdurrahman faces an utterly intractable problem born of the fact that two Empires are in dissolution. On the one hand, there is the dissolution of the Soeharto family's business empire -- the tentacles of which extended to, and infuriated, the Acehnese, just as they had offended the East Timorese.

On the other hand, there is the vision, beloved of former president Soeharto, of Indonesia as essentially a Javanese Empire. Seen from Aceh, President Abdurrahman and Vice President Megawati Soekarnoputri initially sustain this image because they are both Javanese -- replacing B.J. Habibie, the first Indonesian President to come from the outlying islands. While the eventual Abdurrahman-Megawati combination was a dream ticket in many ways, it was not so in relation to Indonesia's many centrifugal pressures.

Indonesia faces the danger of dissolution because Soeharto, who came to see himself as a Javanese King, was to Indonesia what Brezhnev was to Russia. He stayed in power far too long.

The longer Soeharto stayed in power, the more easily he believed that he was beginning a Javanese dynasty. And the more frequently he ordered violence as the natural military means for keeping the Javanese Empire stable. It is that longstanding pattern of violence and brutality which makes Aceh so unwilling to compromise today. Other parts of Indonesia feel the same way.

There is nothing so destabilizing as leaders who stay in power too long, pursuing stability.

So will President Abdurrahman come to be seen, like Gorbachev, as a man who climbed to the top of the greasy political pole too late, who tried to reform things but was fatally handicapped by the long years in which there had been absolutely no reform?

Not necessarily. While the current situation in Indonesia is very definitely precarious, it remains relevant to expect the unexpected.

Abdurrahman might yet manage to re-arouse faith in a New Indonesia, to persuade the Acehnese, and others, that his promises of real autonomy and real revenue sharing will be kept. He can articulate a strategy of reform which enhances national unity. In the longer run he could usher in a federal, instead of a unitary state on the valid grounds that it is more rational for a far-flung archipelago.

Vice President Megawati might yet generate some renewed passion, in the manner of her father Sukarno in the struggle against the Dutch, for a nation that stretches from Sabang to Merauke (Ironically that former Sukarnoist slogan extended from Aceh to west Irian, the two areas now most prone to depart.)

Perhaps Indonesia's shift towards democracy has not come too late but just in the nick of time to release the Indonesian political imagination in an atmosphere of freedom, and to bring about overdue change. Jakarta must quickly acquire a heightened sense of national urgency before it is too late.

Window: Indonesia faces the danger of dissolution because Soeharto, who came to see himself as a Javanese King, was to Indonesia what Brezhnev was to Russia. He stayed in power far too long.

So will President Abdurrahman come to be seen, like Gorbachev, as a man who climbed to the top of the greasy political pole too late, who tried to reform things but was fatally handicapped by the long years in which there had been absolutely no reform?