The 2004 elections: The enemy within

The 2004 elections: The enemy within

Satish Mishra
UNSFIR
Jakarta

2004 is an important year. This is the year when Indonesian
democracy either opens its doors to a new wave of consolidation
and reform or retreats along the historically familiar path
towards a new kind of authoritarianism. These elections will
decide whether Indonesian democracy will experience a rebirth or
continue to suffer slow suffocation for a second time in fifty
years. That seems like an exaggeration. It may not be too far
from the truth. Consider the following facts.

Despite the claims of economists and financial experts
regarding impressive progress in economic reform over the last
three years, the public mood remains one of deep distrust. People
worry about jobs and not national income statistics. Unemployment
matters. It is commonplace to hear that Indonesia is too poor to
have an unemployment problem. This is splitting hairs. Open
unemployment remains higher than many industrial countries and
the wide prevalence of underemployment means that people cannot
make ends meet even when willing to work long hours at low wages.

The perception of rising economic inequality serves to deepen
public frustration further. In most countries consumption booms
are signs of economic confidence, the type of signal for which
both bankers and investors keep a sharp lookout. In Indonesia the
consumption boom has been in luxury cars and imported gadgetry,
factors that reek of social injustice in difficult times.

This view is further reinforced by rumors that former owners
of distressed conglomerates are back in business often stronger
than before, thanks to the acceleration of IBRA sales in a buyers
market. Initial results from a study by the United Nations
Support Facility for Indonesian Recovery show that asset
concentration in the business sector might have even increased
during the course of the last six years. Witness the fact that
many famous brand names and retail outlets, Sogo, Marks and
Spencer, Starbucks and a host of others, signal not a vote of
renewed confidence in Indonesia but purchases of brand names at
small commissions by well known Indonesian conglomerates of the
New Order vintage.

Two other factors add to this perception of rising economic
inequality. First, decentralization in Indonesia continues to be
driven by resource rich regions. Yet out of the more than 400
districts in the country only around 13 can be classified as
resource rich. Widening public expenditure authority without the
revenue to go with it, and without a convincing formula for
combating inter-regional economic disparities, confirms what most
people seem to believe; that future growth will benefit the
already well off regions.

Second, there is the China factor. China's entry into the WTO,
as well as its ability to attract more foreign investment than
any other developing country, has heightened concern about
possible job losses due to foreign competition. It has also given
employers a weapon which to beat the workers and resist any
further upward wage adjustments even where productivity might be
rising. The reported migration of Korean and Japanese businesses
to Vietnam, China, India and Bangladesh adds to the fear of
globalization that the China syndrome has ignited.

All this is not good news for an emerging democracy. Public
euphoria at the fall of an autocracy can easily turn to public
disgust. Even worse it can turn in to nostalgia for the past.

Part of the problem is the inability or unwillingness of post-
New Order politicians to spell out what democracy actually means
to the lives of ordinary citizens. There is no attempt to explain
to the ordinary citizen the rights and rituals of democracy, no
spelling out of claims and responsibilities, no evaluation of the
damage done by the kleptocracy that passed as orderly government
of the New Order. Is it therefore surprising that in less than
six years since the fall of Soeharto, democracy is equated with
chaos and dictatorship with leadership and stability?

This is the inevitable consequence of political parties who
jockey for parliamentary and government seats without any defined
political positions. Civil society organizations carp and
complain at the margins of political life, content to safeguard
their image and chastity from the depredation of the state and
large business.

The consequence is a stark imbalance between the reform of the
economy and that of other aspects of national life: the state
apparatus, the judiciary, the police and military, the political
parties and civil society in general. In most other democratic
transitions it is precisely these aspects of reform which form
the building blocks of a new governing structure. They are not
dependent on 7 percent growth. They are the enabling conditions
which make a new kind of growth possible: more regulated, more
stable and widely shared.

The elevation of the importance of macroeconomic recovery, the
absence of any transparent plan of political reform and the
ambivalent attitude to corruption in high places has created a
deep seated cynicism in the public mind. This has bred a number
of other anxieties: separatism and disintegration of the nation
state, the capture of political power by a resurgent business
elite, and the lack of any serious leadership which can give the
country a sense of will and direction.

This is fertile ground for the re-entry of the previously
discredited elite into Indonesian public life. The stakes are
high. As Gus Dur reminds us, direct elections for the President
means that the "winner will take all". For a potential winner
from the New Order camp, future economic recovery will make the
job easier. It will be used to prove that order and leadership is
what matters in Indonesian politics.

But things are not as bad as that. The political and
constitutional changes already undertaken, though often flawed,
make an effortless retreat to authoritarian structures of the
past unlikely. Decentralization, parliamentary reform, the
establishment of independent institutions such as the
Constitutional Court, the Audit Commission and the Central Bank,
and the initial steps in military reform should discourage an
unthinking comparison with the 1950s.

This means that attempts to recreate the power structures of
the past will face deeper and more organized resistance than
before. The absence of a common enemy such as the fear of
communism, which provided the glue for military-Islamic
cooperation of the 1960s, cannot be repeated in the post-Cold War
world. The military, no longer the darling of the nation, is
faced with growing internal division. Memories of the
independence movement have begun to fade. A new more open
political system, driven by a free press is beginning to take
root. Religious teaching and influence are beginning to penetrate
the rather monastic world of the average soldier.

What are the prospects for a post-2004 Indonesia? The first,
and perhaps the more likely, is the retreat to old ways of doing
business: the return of a new, more fragmented form of cronyism
headed by born-again-casts from the New Order. For a while, they
might even try to recreate a new vintage of dictatorship. This
would mean more instability and a setback on the road to economic
recovery. It may even mean a resurgence of violent social unrest
or separatist dissent.

This is not however the end of the story. As has been the
experience of many countries in transition to democracy, the
political pendulum is likely to swing back by 2009. The extent to
which it does so will depend on the engines of democratic reform
itself: Political parties, media, civil-society organizations.

It will depend on creating a new kind of leadership which can
work collectively towards working out the steps of a Second Wave
of reformasi.

To understand what needs to be included in the agenda for the
Second Wave they must go to the people. They must engage with
those who oppose them. Democracy is about representing the
people. It is not about hiding in the comforting company of our
own fellow travelers or feeling virtuous in the, self-cleansing
rituals of some select band of brothers. It is time to get real.
It is time to recognize the enemy within. It is time to look in
the mirror. The enemy within is not to be found among the
detractors of democratic government, but in the ranks of its
defenders.