Second round threat to democracy

Second round threat to democracy

By Sidesh Kaul

JAKARTA (JP): As Indonesia awaits the outcome of its second
democratic election since independence (the first democratically
held election was in 1955), the aspirations of the people assume
frightening proportions. Much is expected out of the new
leadership that will be decided in November and the burden of
performance is enormous.

These aspirations need to be seen in perspective lest the
political elite once again stymie the fledgling efforts at
democratization.

In order to ensure a lasting democracy it is necessary to
carefully analyze the factors that led to the post-independence
movement for democratization and the subsequent and early demise
of Indonesian democracy in the years leading up to the era of the
New Order.

Contrary to popular belief, the period just after independence
was not entirely conducive for democracy. The class structure at
that time comprised mainly of a large body of peasants, a middle
class comprised mainly of rent-seeking bureaucrats and a small
capitalist class dominated largely by the ethnic Chinese.

Large differences in Indonesian society were not because of
typical and inherent class contradictions but more along
religious and cultural lines. Despite these differences,
Indonesia society amalgamated as a whole during the freedom
struggle against the tyranny of a foreign oppressor and
developed, as a result of this amalgamation process, a collective
sense of pride, nationalism and self-confidence.

Political leaders of that period, irrespective of political
ideology, responsibly channeled the popular sentiment against
colonial oppression toward nation building and thus laid the
foundations for a new democracy. Democracy was thus seen as a
legitimizing principle and as a means of impacting all spheres of
governance -- social, economic and political.

Today, the Indonesian people have risen once again against the
excesses of authoritarianism -- and political leaders, once
again, have harnessed this power to usher in democratic reforms.

In the early days of the movement in Indonesia, democracy was
seen neither as a system of representation nor as a system for
majority rule. Minority rights, institutionalized opposition,
checks and balances on power and the concept of representation
were completely ignored or missing altogether.

For a newly independent country that was poverty stricken,
where illiteracy and hunger was rampant and was struggling at
managing the plethora of problems, the notion that a responsible
political elite had the total mandate for governance perhaps
could be excused. Today, after three decades of prosperity,
education and exposure, the notion of an unrestricted mandate
would be dangerous and totally unacceptable.

The debate on the pros and cons of democracy (Feith: 1970)
were mainly within the established political streams during the
period 1945-1965 that is Islam, democratic socialism, communism,
Javanese traditionalism and radical nationalism. The framework
still holds true today except for the fact that communism, as a
movement, was eradicated in the Soeharto era.

The late 1940s also saw the emergence of other Asian countries
as independent democracies and this was also a major pressure
that influenced political leaders to adopt a more pro-people
posture. There is no foreign oppressor to overthrow now -- only
the tyranny of an authoritarian rule and the burden of an economy
in tatters that it has left behind.

Interestingly, while the influencing pressures of today might
be similar to those experienced by Indonesia during the period of
its early efforts at democratization, the debate on democracy
still rages within Feith's framework.

The elections in 1955 were fair and honest, the bureaucracy
was strong and vibrant, there was far reaching popular will for
the elections to succeed and there was a relative lack of
dishonesty and corruption. These were conditions that could
nurture democracy. Save for the corruption factor (that has
assumed monstrous proportions), similar conditions exist today.

In the 1995 elections, several minority and four major parties
gained representation; the nationalist PNI received 22.3 percent
of the votes, the Muslim modernist Masyumi 20.9 percent, the
Muslim traditionalist Nahdlatul Ulama 18.4 percent and the
communist PKI 16.4 percent.

Like today, there was no single party that had the outright
mandate of the people. Despite the favorable conditions
prevailing in 1955, democracy was unceremoniously dumped in 1957.
What were the conditions that forced the political leaders to
betray the aspirations of the people in 1957? Did the ruling
elite have the political will back then to bow to the demands of
democracy? Did power hungry rulers sacrifice democracy on the
altar of political expediency? More importantly, could this
happen again?

The period under question stretches from 1959, when Sukarno
introduced his brand of authoritarianism under the guise of
Guided Democracy, to 1965 when the New Order took charge and
dumped democracy for good. This tumultuous period saw several
conflicts that played a decisive role in shaping Indonesian
polity and this can be roughly divided into three sub-periods
(Liddle: 1996): religious conflict from 1950-1955; ethnic
conflict from 1956-1961; and class conflict from 1961-1965.
Superimposed on these periods the era of parliamentary democracy
from 1950-1957 and that of Guided Democracy from 1959-1965.

The period from 1950-1955 saw the most important religious
conflict within the Muslim community. Muslims then, as even now,
comprised the majority of the population and most of them had
their hopes pinned on Masyumi. However, the schism between the
modernist and traditionalist factions in Masyumi caused the party
to be split before the elections and put to rest any hope of a
strong and united representation. The split, in turn, spawned
secession movements in some parts of the country. In West Java,
for example, an Islamic guerrilla group that had fought long and
hard for independence proclaimed an Islamic State of Indonesia.
Aceh soon followed suit and later formed an alliance with the
West Java rebels.

The period from 1956-1961 was witness to an ethnic struggle
that was fanned basically by elements from outside Java who
perceived the government's Java-centric form of tightly
administered, centralized rule as a hindrance. This period also
saw the emergence of the communist party (actively encouraged by
Sukarno as a countervailing check on the growing influence of the
army) as well as a brief period of anarchy when provincial
military commanders staged coups at the local level and formed
revolutionary governments in defiance of the central command.

Sukarno, in a move that can only be labeled as political
expediency, forged an alliance with the army in quelling this
rebellion and thus paved the way for the army to be intimately
involved in the process of governance. In a strident defense of
the perceived threat to his position, Sukarno decreed a return to
the 1945 constitution thus giving the executive branch of the
government dominance over the legislative.

There were pressures on the economic side as well and the
brief period of representative democracy, owing to its fragmented
nature, could not cope with the challenges. Policy
inconsistencies, a weak executive and a sharply divided polity
appeared to provide enough evidence that democracy had failed and
it was time for decisive leadership to emerge. Unchecked and
surrounded by a weak opposition, Sukarno seized the opportunity
to usher in authoritarianism thus setting the clock back for
Indonesia's democratic efforts.

We see the emergence of similar pressure factors (except that
these factors seem to be at play all at once) even today and the
concern is that, like in 1957, democracy faces the danger of
being abandoned once again. Religious and ethnic conflicts in
Aceh, West and Central Java and Ambon; persecution of minorities;
a divided polity; rampant corruption within the government and
bureaucracy; a disunited army; separatist movements in Aceh and
Timor; and a weak economy: These are the very same factors that
stalled the emergence of Indonesia as a democratic power in the
mid-fifties.

The writer is a commentator on economic and political affairs
based in Jakarta.