Scholar warns nation of bloody coflicts
DEPOK, West Java (JP): Political scientist Mochtar Pabottingi has warned that "bloody" conflicts could take place if power holders continue to ignore the pressing public demand for political reform.
"Indonesia may not disintegrate totally (as other observers have feared), we're strong enough to survive that," he said here yesterday.
But he added that the conflicts could erupt into "something bloody" between those seeking to maintain the status quo and groups who wanted to see change and believed that Indonesia has reached a point of no return.
"By resisting change, the government is taking a dangerous step... it's risking conflicts of great magnitude, between those who believe that they have everything to lose and those who have nothing to lose," he told The Jakarta Post.
Mochtar was speaking on the sidelines of a discussion marking the launch of Evaluasi Pemilu Orde Baru (The Evaluation of General Elections under the New Order Government), a journal of the University of Indonesia's School of Social and Political Studies. Military scholar Z.A. Maulani also spoke in the discussion attended by Indonesia's doyenne of political studies Miriam Budiardjo.
The senior researcher at the Indonesian Institute of Science was referring to a 1995 study, commissioned by President Soeharto, on the possibility of Indonesia changing its general election system from the current proportional representation to the district system.
Mochtar led the team of researchers who suggested a set of gradual political reforms that the government should take and eventual replacement of the current poll system. In the end, however, the government ruled that there would be no changes to the current political format.
Mochtar said anarchy in economic and political lives was an early sign of a situation which could lead to conflict. The current economic crisis was anarchy, as was the toppling of Megawati Soekarnoputri from the leadership of the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI), he said.
The researcher, however, said he was still optimistic that change would come within the next 10 years, pushed by people who want "rationality in politics".
"And democracy is political rationality par excellence," he said. "If the power holders resist change, they risk being sidelined, or becoming irrelevant to people's lives.
"The government should learn before it is forced to learn from societal coercion," he said.
Mochtar and Maulani spoke about the various riots that marred the campaign period and the May 29 general election this year, and agreed that the unrest signified a demand for change.
Maulani said that most of the riots took place in small towns, far from Jakarta's social and political control. He said the worst incident was the May 23 riot in the South Kalimantan capital of Banjarmasin, a city with a population of 650,000 people, which saw the death of 123 people.
"The farther (the sites were) from (Jakarta), the farther they were from control institutions, and the more the demands were felt," Maulani said.
He identified several complicated, interrelated causes for the riots, including "arrogance of the power holders", social injustice, the economic supremacy of nonindigenous people over indigenous people, and the combination of religious sentiment and social envy.
Mochtar, however, said the riots were actually people's way of questioning the current government's legitimacy.
He said the anarchy originated from the New Order government's fixation toward political stability. Calling the narrow- mindedness "a dwarfish perspective", Mochtar cited how the power holders sidelined the country's transcendental values for economic growth.
He also criticized the government for interpreting political stability as "governmental stability" which in the end leads to "the stability of the head of state" which makes it difficult for people to replace the head of state. (swe)