Toward reconciliation

A lot is being made these days of the nonattendance of three of the four persons generally considered to be the top leaders of this country's "political elite" at a gathering organized by Jakarta's native Betawi community at the Jakarta Convention Hall on Sunday. As has been widely reported by the media, President Abdurrahman Wahid was the only leader from among the "political elite" who responded to the invitation by turning up together with his usual entourage which included First Lady Sinta Nuriyah.

Absent from the gathering were Vice President Megawati Soekarnoputri, who is also chairwoman of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan) which controls the largest number of seats in the legislature, People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) Speaker Amien Rais, who is one of the leaders of the loose coalition of Islamic parties known as the Axis Force (Poros Tengah), and Akbar Tandjung, speaker of the House of Representatives (DPR) and the chairman of Golkar.

Their absence promptly drew criticism from observers and politicians, who apparently read into it a reluctance on their part to sit together to search for a political reconciliation that would end the nation's protracted political and economic crisis -- apparently forgetting that similar meetings held earlier had failed miserably to bring about a solution to Indonesia's travails. Vice President Megawati was probably correct when she told representatives of a number of Islamic organizations on Monday that such a meeting would be useless unless it was held with a clear-cut purpose and agenda. But even with such an agenda, the success of such a meeting would probably have been doubtful.

Nevertheless, this is not to say that a discourse, whether formal or informal, would be totally useless. At the very least, a discourse could be a useful start for the formulating of a shared commitment the details of which could be gradually worked out later. As media executive Jakob Oetama put it to members of the Supreme Advisory Council (DPA), first of all Indonesians must understand that the Indonesian house is on fire and that the fire must be extinguished. The problem is that the damage that decades of misrule under both president Soeharto's autocratic New Order regime and his predecessor president Sukarno's "guided democracy" have inflicted on this country's social, political and economic infrastructure is too fundamental and too rampant to be easily remedied.

For one thing, the present difficulty in finding an amicable settlement to existing differences between political, religious and ideological groups is not merely due to the fact that group and personal interests tend to predominate over the common or national interest. As universally accepted standards of ethics and morality in politics have as good as vanished, force and violence are becoming valid means of conflict resolution and democratic rights are becoming a mockery.

For another thing, this country's legislators represent first and foremost their political parties -- not the people whom they are supposed to represent. This is a natural consequence of the fact that they are chosen by a proportional electoral system under which the people have no direct say as to who is to represent them in the legislature. The result is that there is no direct contact between the so-called political elite and the people at the grassroots level.

In the final analysis, a total, fundamental overhaul of the system seems to be the only way out of Indonesia's present troubles. In the meantime, though, every avenue that could offer the hope of a solution, however faint, is worth exploring.