The New Order ghosts

While many of us share the frustration that President Abdurrahman Wahid feels about the slow pace of reform, we are baffled by his intentions with regard to the remnants of the New Order regime whom he blames for subverting his reform agenda.

The President's office said on Sunday that the time had come for the nation to draw a clear dividing line between those who truly support reform and those from the New Order regime. Accusing these New Order elements of undermining the reform program, the President, according to the statement prepared by his staff, said he would no longer tolerate their behavior. He said he has given them enough time to mend their ways and to repent for their past misdeeds, but they have squandered the opportunity. It was now the time to deal firmly with them.

The timing of the statement looks suspicious, coming on the eve of Monday's House of Representatives meeting to hear the conclusion of a report investigating scandals in which the President may have been implicated. The statement looked like another attempt by the President to divert the focus of attention away from himself. It also implies that the inquiry against the President was part and parcel of New Order elements' attempts to foil the reform agenda.

Putting aside the real motive behind the President's statement, there is some truth to his claim that the New Order is still deeply entrenched in our political establishment, and that its presence has frustrated the national reform agenda.

Golkar, the political party which called all the shots during the 32 years of New Order's reign, remains the main symbol of that past regime. Yet, Golkar emerged as the second largest political party after the 1999 general election. Claiming to have adopted the reform mantle, the party has consolidated itself, winning many subsequent gubernatorial and regency elections. Now, Golkar is gearing up for the 2004 election while the reformist parties are fighting each other in their attempt to grab power.

With still so much political power and influence in its hands, Golkar has the ability to foil or undermine the Abdurrahman administration's programs and policies. The clearest evidence of this is in the administration's failure to ensure a single conviction against people from the New Order regime for corruption or abuse of power. Golkar has even prevailed in the nominations for the chief justice; the President has rightly refused to select one of the two candidates proposed by the House of Representatives lest he gives the nation's top judicial appointment to someone who either comes from the New Order regime or at least has had close association with it.

The President's "humanist" approach in dealing with the remnants of the New Order has not worked, as he freely admitted in his statement on Sunday. But then, the legal or the constitutional approach too has failed him and the nation in loosening once and for all the tentacles of the New Order.

As forceful as the statement may have sounded, the President did not identify exactly who these elements of the New Order were, and, most of all, he did not spell out how different his approach would be from now on in dealing with the remnants of the New Order.

How exactly does he hope to make a clean break from the past? Surely, he does not envisage draconian laws such as those which Soeharto used in cleansing the political elite and the bureaucracy of communist elements shortly after he assumed power in 1966. Soeharto then outlawed the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), rounded up its members and supporters and packed them off to a penal island in Maluku. Soeharto also introduced laws barring former communists, their offspring and both their close and distant relatives from running for public office, entering the civil service and from joining certain strategic professions.

As tempting as these measures may sound in circumventing the power of the New Order, they would plunge the country back into a new form of authoritarian regime.

The best thing that reformist leaders and groups can do to confront the remnants of the New Order is to join forces. That, sadly, is where the main problem lies. Many of the current leaders elected on the back of the reform movement are far from being united because they have been too preoccupied with consolidating their own power. They, more than anyone else, must take the blame for letting the ghosts of the New Order continue to haunt the nation to this day.