Toward reconciliation

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.