The Golkar backlash

Growing calls to outlaw the Golkar Party may seem justifiable given the ghastly record it accrued while ruling the country for 32 years, but they have come too little and too late. To many people, Golkar remains a stigma from the New Order regime, but the fact that it has managed to survive the reform era has given it the legitimacy for continued participation in this country's political landscape.

On the contrary, the demands, especially if they are accompanied by violent attacks on Golkar property as we have witnessed these past few days, can be detrimental to the reform movement. Those who are seeking Golkar's dissolution are veering toward unconstitutional and undemocratic practices, the very acts which the reform movement has been fighting to eradicate.

The issue of Golkar's political legitimacy and its right to exist should have been settled once and for all some two or three years ago. Its fate should have been sealed when the reform movement brought the tyrannical regime of president Soeharto to its knees in 1998. Golkar was, after all, the political machine which propped up the autocrat for more than three decades.

Golkar's fate could also have been settled before the nation held its first ever democratic general election in June 1999. The fact that not a single one of the new reformist parties questioned Golkar's participation then was tacit approval that the party, whatever its past record may have been, still had a right to contest the elections in a democratic Indonesia.

As it turned out, Golkar not only survived, but it defied predictions by coming second in the general election, behind the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan). Golkar, therefore, has managed not only to entrench its political legitimacy, but as the election runner-up, it retains the right to call some of the shots on major national political issues.

Thus, Golkar chairman Akbar Tandjung, despite having served in three different Cabinets under Soeharto, secured his post as speaker of the House of Representatives after the 1999 elections. Golkar played a major role in electing Abdurrahman Wahid of the National Awakening Party (PKB) as president in October 1999 when it became apparent that its own candidate, the incumbent B.J. Habibie, did not have enough support to run against the leading contender Megawati Soekarnoputri of PDI Perjuangan.

The largest single mistake made by the reform movement, as well as the political parties that were formed out of the movement, was in relaxing its momentum once Soeharto resigned. By treating his downfall as an end, the movement effectively ended its reform agenda there, leaving some of the main pillars of the regime intact. As these new reform parties busied themselves in preparation for the 1999 elections they completely forgot about Golkar, which quietly but quickly consolidated its position to emerge from the turmoil virtually unscathed.

Today, like it or not, the nation has to live with this fact. As long as we profess to live with democratic principles and to abide by the law, we must accept the fact that Golkar can and will determine some, but not all, of the developments in the country's political process.

Golkar can frustrate the reform agenda. The present administration's failure to prosecute past human rights abuses and prominent corruptors are cases in point where Golkar has made its presence felt. Now, the nation must even live with the prospect of Golkar returning to rule, in the same way that some communist parties have been returned to power in Eastern Europe.

Why the issue of Golkar's legitimacy should be raised today has something to do with the ongoing power struggle between the House of Representatives and President Abdurrahman. While Golkar played a role in last week's move to censure the President over his alleged role in two political scandals, it was not, by any means, the only faction to have done so. PDI Perjuangan and other reformist parties also had a hand in the censure motion.

Golkar, however, given its terrible record, makes for an easy and convenient target, witnessed by the violent backlash at Golkar offices in a number of East Java towns this past week after the President manifested the Golkar stigma. But by doing so, the embattled President risks provoking Golkar and its supporters, whose strengths must never be underestimated.

Ultimately, given that Golkar's political legitimacy has been secured in a democratic Indonesia, attempts to outlaw the party in itself would give the reform movement a bad name.