Trailing ABRI's future political role

By C.P.F. Luhulima

JAKARTA (JP): The National Institute of Sciences recently produced a report saying "ABRI needs to reduce its political role". The details of this report were published in The Jakarta Post (Feb. 25). The report said: "The Armed Forces (ABRI) needs to minimize its political role to allow democracy to flourish and political reform to take place." The study on ABRI's socio- political role produced six recommendations which were extensively quoted in the paper.

Taken out of context, these recommendations invite many questions such as who is giving these recommendations or instructions to ABRI and what political power base they have to directly make recommendations to the public to that effect.

Any study on the social and political role of the Indonesian Armed Forces should -- if taken out of the context of the President's assignment -- proceed from the very basic question of the analysis of power. Who tries to exercise power over whom? In what way? With what results?

One approach is to look at the resources which may convey power, while the other tries to assess the ability of people to influence events or the ability to change the probability of certain events evolving. In trying to answer these questions one would immediately conclude that it is only the President that has the resources and the ability to instruct and influence ABRI as this stage.

I quite agree with Arief Budiman's article (The Jakarta Post Feb. 27) that the most organized and powerful political institution -- next to the President of course -- is the military. It is relatively unified. It is indeed difficult to expect that the initiation of democratization would come from the Indonesian military. Even though the power of the civil society is rising, to expect that people power would become strong enough to change the configuration of government in the near future is unrealistic.

By examining the purpose of power of the Indonesian military one could start by asking the question whether that power has over the years become "cooperative", power that is geared towards the pursuit of common welfare and the peaceful management of conflicts or whether it is "assertive power" which is political power that is geared towards political or societal exclusivity.

In the future, I would say that the basic divide between these two concepts of power would not so much represent the basic divide between democratic and authoritarian systems. Here I would agree with Hanns Maull that the divide would rather be between open and cooperative politics, on the one hand, and assertive and exclusionist regimes on the other. There would of course be some correlation between openness and democracy.

Democracy recognizes the opposition's creative potential; it emphasizes the peaceful and hence the inclusive settlement of political and societal disputes. But to assume that the democratic system is the "end of history", is equally unrealistic. As a political system, the democratic system may weaken and decay, just like the socialist system did.

The cooperative and assertive character of power seem to be the future pattern of political behavior as a consequence of the quantum leaps in scientific enterprises and their revolutionary technological applications. It is this technological revolution that will enable the power holders to be more assertive, more exclusionist and perhaps more fundamentalist.

It is also this revolution that will enable the people to engage themselves in collective efforts to negotiate and bargain with the military that power be made more cooperative in order that life be made more open and politically more acceptable. Recent developments have made the military realize that power has to be more cooperative but not at the cost of stability.

A study of the divide between cooperative and assertive power in the future should try to identify the elements of that divide in order to negotiate with the military power holders. This would enable both sides to share power and opt for cooperative power in order that socio-political life be made more open and acceptable. The majority would then be more receptive to the quest for the legitimate rights of existence, of speech and endeavor, of the peaceful settlement of political and social disputes and thus of a transparent political system.

The writer is an observer of political-economic and international affairs.