Time for Indonesia to start second wave of `reformasi'

Satish Mishra, Head, United Nations Support Facility for Indonesian Recovery (UNSFIR), Jakarta, satish.mishra@undp.org

For some reason we are all attracted to the idea of the five yearly review. This year it is the turn of reformasi. Articles and seminars abound. So do demonstrations. There is much blaming and breast beating. There is also much reflection. May 1998 is after all not that far away. Have we moved ahead or fallen behind? Does the future look more secure or bleaker? Will anything ever change?

All these questions are both frequent and widespread. But they are not so much questions about reformasi -- reformasi was never meant to define milestones in a journey. It was more an outbreak of energy and emotion and pent-up frustration. Reformasi was a mood rather than a program; more spirit than body.

The spirit of 1998 was indeed powerful. It was a great river which could not be contained. It brought down a system of government which looked, till the very end, unassailable. It was a system built on blood and arms, on clever balancing of different interest groups, on international anti-communist support of the Cold War and on the organized pillage of the state.

As time went on, its stature grew because of the myth of its past economic successes. Political legitimacy and obedience was bought by a long fiesta of bread and circuses. Most foreign observers cheered. Most Indonesians submitted. A few protested. But, guns and history and charisma held sway. May 1998 seemed decades away from 1997.

The disappointment and the bewilderment behind reformasi lay in how such power of feeling was not channeled into an agent for repair and rebuilding. The spirit of reformasi promised a liberated Indonesian Phoenix rising from the ashes of the New Order. Reality was not so accommodating. The worshipers of reformasi found more ash than phoenix. They saw the ghost of old Indonesia still twisting in the wind.

Five years on, those who gave birth to reformasi talk openly about its untimely demise. They see betrayal and disappointment everywhere. The evidence, they argue is for everyone to see. It goes something like this. The legislature is full of crooks and cronies. The bureaucracy remains a den of thieves and ruthless technocrats. The government is led by the nose by the moneyed classes. The urban young are turning to vice and recklessness. Religious tolerance is in headlong decline. Foreign governments and foreign institutions run the country and harvest its economic resources. The people remain bent and poor and helpless. There is conspiracy everywhere. The military is poised for a take over. The last breath of reformasi is being snuffed out.

Revolutions, even bloodless ones, are earthquakes of history. They are momentary events of great import and even beauty. But sooner or later the ground becomes still. The painstaking task of reconstruction begins. The great spirit of the revolution hardly ever lasts beyond a few initial gasps of the new world. The spirit that can move mountains is strangely inept at building new institutions, let alone clearing sewage and keeping transport systems running. Spirit must give way to system. Why blame the spirit for not doing what it could never have done?

Reformasi was a great success. It brought down an autocratic state. To do more, the spirit would have had to evolve into an agency with a program and a will and direction. That is the real question. Why did the leaders of reformasi possess so few concrete ideas about the steps which might be needed to turn a mood and an idea into an instrument of regeneration?

The puzzle is not as difficult as it seems. To begin with, reformasi was itself a reaction to years of political repression and control. It was the living proof of the old adage that man does not live by bread alone. Freedom matters. People can tell between right and wrong. Notions of fairness and justice cannot just be spirited away by slogans and sham rallies of support.

Turning liberation protests into practical policy needs a political process, and political institutions, such as to encourage debate and interaction. This requires both time and new leadership. Long standing dissident movements or governments in exile have at times succeeded in evolving a policy in waiting.

More frequently, it is the very political space afforded in the early years of liberation which establishes the building blocks of new national priorities and values. Indonesia benefited neither from organized dissidence nor a government in exile. The left had been physically liquidated. Islamic forces were either divided or co-opted. The middle classes were counting cash. Leaders of artificially consolidated political parties owed their positions to government acquiescence and presidential writ.

Indonesia's economic collapse only served to muddy the waters. On the one hand, it rapidly eroded the legitimacy of the New Order regime. Not surprising, since economic growth through political obedience was the great promise of Indonesian autocracy. On the other, an unprecedented increase in its foreign debt forced Indonesia to go to the IMF.

The stage was set for a primacy of economic over political reform. Technocrats in government and external aid agencies constituted a powerful combine. The former tried to win back lost political legitimacy. The latter tried to make every dollar count. Dollars, not democracy, soon became the litmus test of a government's resolve and political will. The river of public concern and debate was diverted into the narrow stagnant waters of anti-IMF and anti-foreign sentiment.

Regional decentralization only contributed to the confusion. The liberation rhetoric of reformasi permeated to the lowest rung of the public administration. Indonesia chose a rather drastic form of decentralization; from a highly centralized government to a system devolving political power to over 400 districts. Issues of ethnic expression and cultural identity were overridden by concerns of control and efficiency. Provinces were left tame and toothless.

All these factors combined to alter the underlying logic of reformasi: From an ideology of freedom and quest for social justice towards the utilitarian calculus of costs and benefits, of the relative merits of democracy and economic growth. Problems of cultural rigidity and habitual subservience to authority were brought into the argument. Skillfully used they would be used to drive home the message that democratization was alien to the Indonesian soul.

This was a dangerous undercurrent to the reform agenda. The economic collapse had been the most severe in recent history, even greater than that which helped the birth of the New Order. Its political institutions had crumbled as if under some sorcerer's curse. Its social fabric, already transformed by three decades of constant migration from its villages was showing signs of deep stress. The politics of gross domestic product growth left in limbo the task of healing deep rooted social divisions. Violent social conflict rocked many parts of the country.

This state of affairs required urgent attention to the creation of stable democratic institutions capable of peacefully containing openly expressed disagreements. It needed the primacy of democratic consolidation over an urgent return to pre-crisis rates of economic growth.

Above all, it needed the construction of a new social contract rooted in rights and entitlements for all Indonesian citizens. Failure to do so would only lead to chronic policy paralysis and increased vulnerability to future economic shocks.

Rather than lamenting the death of reformasi, it is time to begin the second wave. Central to this second wave is the creation of an Indonesian reform agenda and institutions based on the very freedoms that have been won in reformasi's first flush. More rather than less issues-based politics is the urgent order of the day.

The views expressed in this article are strictly personal.