Road to Indonesian democracy bumpy and full of pitfalls

Road to Indonesian democracy bumpy and full of pitfalls

Dr. Kamal Hossain, a former foreign minister of Bangladesh, is an expert on elections and human rights affairs. He has conducted a number of pieces of research on elections; in Pakistan in 1989, Sri Lanka in 1990 and South Africa in 1994. The senior advisor to the Supreme Court in his country visited Indonesia recently at the invitation of the National Democratic Institute and had a talk with The Jakarta Post.

Question: With the recent political changes in mind, what do you think of the upcoming June 7 elections?

Dr. Hossain: This election emerges out of what has been a popular movement for democracy which seems to have been brought to the surface by a yearning for change widely shared among many sections of the people.

Therefore it becomes important that through this election change is achieved. We had our own experience in Bangladesh in 1990. And even the Armed Forces supported this change because they found that there was a national consensus.

In order for the expectation for change to be fulfilled one should be learning from one's own situation and maybe some of the experiences of others will lead to a simpler situation.

Q: Such as...

H: The need to have all sorts of ways of checking. The best safeguard is to watch the process not only on election day but as it is unfolding. Are all the people who are eligible to vote being registered? Will the regulations that are going to be formulated allow opportunities for everyone who wants to vote to vote? Are procedures being put in place? How many polling booths will there be? Who will conduct the elections so that the conduct is free and fair and if people have genuine complaints and grievances, will their grievances be redressed?

I expect that there will be opportunities for people to express their views before the regulations are published. Suggestions can be made to those who are making the regulations and in fact you could ask to see the draft regulations. Parties or other people, civil society groups, human rights organizations are called and given the draft regulations.

Q: We have only about four months to go, do you think we have enough time to prepare for a free and fair election?

H: I think you are doing this within a fairly short period of time and should start effecting all these things right now... to take an active interest in the election procedures, methods and arrangements. This type of free and fair election is something new and people should begin to understand what the choices are that they will be offered and how to make their own choices in a way that reflects both their own interest and the interest of building a democracy.

Q: Do you think a free and fair election possible in a nation which has just emerged from 30 years of political repression?

H: It's a real challenge. The impression I got is that people would like the election to be held and sooner rather than later. So one should use this opportunity to create public consciousness and awareness about what is important in this election and why it is important for the people to vote.

Q: How did the military relate to the recent change in Bangladesh?

H: The head of the military took over in March 1982, suspended the constitution, proclaimed himself the head of state and held a referendum.

Then after a couple of years he wanted to go for an election. So we asked for a parliamentary election first and elaborated negotiations when we wanted an undertaking that he would not interfere in the elections, he would not involve the military in the elections, people would be allowed to go freely and fairly about their business but, you see, he violated all of those commitments and the elections were badly interfered with.

So then the real movement started saying that we would not accept any election until this president went. There had to be a new administration and we talked to a caretaker government to see that it would have to take over under the clemency of justice and the movement was in action for four years. At the end of the day on Dec. 6, 1990, he was compelled to resign and he went over to the chief justice.

Q: How do you see the role of the military in Indonesia?

H: Of course you have had the army for a longer period and in a much more institutionalized way. You have the military sitting in parliament and you took on a system of the dual role for the army that has been institutionalized.

Now in Bangladesh this has not been institutionalized but attempts are being made to do just that. We found for example that all the important ambassadorial appointments were going to the people in the military. Headships of a corporation running airlines, industries were going to generals. Even civil service positions, head of ministries were going to people in the military.

So these were things which had begun to happen. The democracy movement wanted to stop this and the military in 1989-1990 recognized the tide of public opinion and I know there was a particularly critical day when the whole officer corps met together and the general appealed to them, saying go and repress the people's movement and he pointed out the example of Burma (Myanmar) where they gunned down 2,000 people and finished off the movement.

But our officers who met in that hall of the chief of the general staff said this is not Burma. We don't want the blood of our people on our hands.

That was seven days before Dec. 6, 1990. And that in a way raised the esteem of the people for the military. This is a military who will not have the blood of its people on their hands and instead they told the generals 'it is time for you to resign'.

Q: How did that come about?

H: This came about because the movement has created a situation. I remember a case where a brigadier came to drop his daughter at the university and he suddenly felt that the uniform would attract adverse reactions so he had to put on plain clothes.

So his daughter said to her fellow students, "Look my father is feeling ashamed of wearing a uniform." This kind of thing had a big impact because then the brigadier said, "Look what has happened. What have I done in my uniform that my daughter was embarrassed about it?"

This is the kind of impact, because people live in society and the whole of society forms a particular opinion. The armed forces can not remain outside.

Of course you have learned that the Indonesian military have retained their unelected seats in the House of Representatives and I think you would agree that such a consciousness as you have in your country has yet to materialize here...

Well, you know, I suppose, the context of the process, it is again I think the whole of society which has to strive to create conditions in which you move in the right direction.

The more consensus you have around the direction of and the goal of change the more likely that the consensus will be implemented. Consensus building among democratic forces I think is essential to maintaining the movement of democracy, to sustaining it and completing the process.

I see democracy building as a process in which the more you have a united people behind your democratic goals, the more you can make people aware of their rights.

This is the notion of the bill of rights: the right to freedom of speech and to freedom of the press and of association, all of these are very important.

The recognition of this within society gives you the strength to come together. The individual has rights and this must be respected by the state. The state is not something that can deal with human beings in arbitrary way and I think this consciousness certainly is something that can be nurtured and as it is nurtured this process goes further and further forward.

Q: What lessons have you learned from the recent changes in your country?

H: You know I feel now after we have been building democracy since 1990 that it is very important to start bringing about a change of attitude because if you have not had a democracy in a country for many years the people tend to become submissive.

People don't have a sense that they have rights. People tend not to assert their rights. People don't speak out. Newspapers are owned by cronies of the ruling forces. They tend also not to expose the truth.

So all of these things which are the legacy of a non- democratic past have to be changed and it requires some people to take the initiative, journalists to have a conscience to start coming out and putting things forward, moving away from past patterns and habits.

Citizens have to become active. This is something I feel very strongly about, that they can't simply feel that because you have just had an election those who are elected will come out and deliver all the good things that you wanted to your doorsteps.

Citizens have to continue to be active, to speak out, to evaluate the performance of the people they have elected, to say they are not measuring up, are not delivering what was promised. This should be reflected through the press, radio, television. The citizens should become more actively involved in discussions of the performance of the government, in evaluating public issues and the more actively you involve citizens, I think that the performance of the public representatives improves.

Citizen activism to me actually is the key and its very important now to be focusing on a free and fair election but even that requires citizen activism.

Q: In the form of monitoring and observing the elections...

H: Yes, this monitoring and observation by citizens, the compliance with rules, because the essence of it is that there are rules, and rules must be obeyed and observed by all the agencies and authorities that are involved. No one should be breaking the rules. And if they can break the rules and nothing happens then it is meaningless to have the rules. So how do you ensure compliance, this is again monitoring, watching, reporting and keeping on the pressure. If you just report and then nothing happens, you don't sit back but say that you want to see action. If action doesn't come about, there should be some institutions working on it, whether the election commission or the supervisory committee.

Q: Talking about democracy as a process, how long do you think it will take?

H: I don't suppose one can give a sort of timetable but you can accelerate the process. The more active you become the more the movement gets strengthened... the fact that you have had a part of the movement and if you are able to build up your own strategy to maintain this kind of a broad unity of pro-democracy forces to guard against divisiveness and fragmentation.

Because the anti-democracy forces are very good at trying to fragment the forces of democracy because they feel threatened by democracy and accountability, transparency in government.

Now I think in the strategy of bringing things to light, pressing for transparency, pressing for accountability, these are things that may accelerate the process and by taking recourse to an audience like human rights institutions to extend the courts to give you public interest litigation. We have to create this and start doing it and knocking at the doors until the courts begin to say 'yes, we will intervene in this process.'

Q: When you started a process of democracy, did you also have such wrangling over elections regulations as we are having here right now?

H: Yes, this is inevitable because when you have had an undemocratic setup for a long time there are people who benefit from it, some of their benefits in fact obtained in unjustified ways so they feel any change will raise questions which would be embarrassing for them. So there are all kinds of reasons they state to slow down the process or block the process and this is why this effort at broad unity I think is very important.

Q: But you finally did overcome it?

H: Well, I don't say that has been fully overcome, it's a continuing process. But among other things in the strategy is a freedom of information act. Within our own vision we are realizing that to reach a common goal we should always be pressing for our right to information.

Now that you are in the midst of democracy building, I think the information act, which has now been passed in a number of democratic countries, could be one of your strategic demands.

If there is a publicly owned TV channel, the state channel, you can insist on autonomy of the channel and insist that ordinary people's voices should be heard. I saw a very wonderful development of this in South Africa, that was a very racist, very authoritarian society, but you should hear of their transition. They enacted a special law on the media and they set up a media commission and it has been a remarkable way of opening up their society.

Q: As an observer, what is your expectation for the upcoming elections in Indonesia?

H: The level of people's interest is high and I feel much depends on the extent to which you are able to harness the aspirations of the people. The fact that there was such a big movement and the fact that the students who took part in it are still there, you have to guard against all kinds of strategies that may be used to try to undermine this forward movement.

Transitions are always a bumpy road, and not without the impediment of political barriers. The more you can concentrate your efforts, work together for all the movement, the more progress you will make. Even today in my own country the biggest effort is put into trying to start building a unity of pro- democracy forces.

Q: Do you see a transition towards a better society or a political setback?

H: I think one should always hope for the best, work for the best but knowing that as in all human efforts, progress will not always be in a straight line. I think some wise persons have said that progress sometimes has to zigzag but so long as your direction is forward this is still progress.

Q: What are the pitfalls for Indonesia's specific political situation?

H: What we have heard, this again is something which is common to many societies and even advanced societies, I mean money politics, the impact of money and of course what you said about manipulation and so on. These are things that are part of the human condition, things there in every society. I don't think Indonesia is any different from any other society and this means that you have to be more vigilant and active. (hbk)