University students break political chains

University students break political chains

By A. Wisnuhardana

YOGYAKARTA (JP): "Welcome to the Campus of the Struggle for
New Order" was recently sprayed in black paint by protesting
students of the University of Indonesia (UI) in their Salemba
campus. The act seems to have become a symbolic milestone.

Around the same time, over one thousand students of Gadjah
Mada University (UGM) in Yogyakarta held a similar demonstration
demanding lower prices and political reform.

The Yogyakarta demonstrators used phrases similar to those of
their Jakarta colleagues and rejected the authority of the New
Order.

These acts by UI and UGM students have a deep significance in
the present situation and illustrated a new mode of protest. They
deligitimized the power of the New Order government.

The acts raise the utopian possibility of the New Order, which
was built by the military and university students, also coming to
an end at the hands of university students.

However, with the crisis affecting all strata of society, is
it possible to establish a new social order as a reaction to the
failure of the New Order government to solve the economic crisis?

When the students delegitimized the political power of the New
Order, it provided empirical proof that they have become more
politically focused throughout the course of the last decade.

Students are now asserting a conviction that their political
ideology runs counter to the philosophy of developmentalism
practiced by the New Order political system. By demonstrating,
they are expressing dissatisfaction with the New Order's policies
on development, particularly those which are not oriented toward
people and which are undemocratic.

Under the New Order, the word student is a relatively new
political term. During the days of the Old Order government,
student groups were closely identified with political parties. An
active political role continued in the early days of the New
Order, but students, a prominent political force, were denied
access to formal political structures.

This handicap has bestowed a symbolic importance on university
political activity and has made it a barometer for popular
political sentiment in the dialectical relationship between the
state and civil society.

Student politics have had a checkered history during the New
Order era. In the early days of the New Order, students viewed
the regime as one which promised improvement and reform. The
rhetoric of the New Order regime at that time was firmly opposed
to political and economic misdemeanors practiced by the Old Order
administration.

However, this harmony was short lived. In the 1970s, students
began to show their true colors. They became critical of
expensive development projects which yielded little or no benefit
to the people.

The New Order at this stage did not yet have as full a grip on
the community as it does now. University students escaped full
censure for demonstrating because they could not yet be shown to
be a political grouping opposed to the government.

Once the public was fully in the grip of its power, the
government made efforts to control student criticism of the
government. Independent student organizations were banned in
1978, a move which lead to their demise.

Students after 1978 were depoliticized by the New Order
policies on education and only in the mid-1980s did some
university student groups once again begin to construct a culture
of resistance to New Order policies.

There is a relationship between radical student sentiment and
repressive, domineering and careless political actions taken by
the establishment. Students have once again become more radical
as a reaction to corruption, collusion and nepotism.

In the history of a number of developing countries, students
have not been the telling factors in forcing political reform.
However, in Indonesia it is in student groups that the government
has first found resistance to inappropriate and detrimental
actions.

Student political awareness, born out of theoretical
discourse, has given rise to a new wave of resistance to New
Order policies which are not to the benefit and welfare of
society. University students will continue to act as a buffer to
state domination of the public.

The writer, an alumnae of Gadjah Mada University, is now
working as a researcher in Yogyakarta.