Will RI's infant democracy survive to full maturity?
Will RI's infant democracy survive to full maturity?
WASHINGTON: If the astonishing advances that democracy achieved in the past decade are to continue a few countries are key. Nigeria and South Africa on their continent, Colombia in South America, Ukraine and Poland in Eastern Europe -- these are large countries whose success will encourage democrats in neighboring lands and whose failure could prove alarmingly contagious. In Southeast Asia, the testing ground is Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous nation.
Indonesia faces all the familiar questions of democratic transition: whether civilians can tame a politically active military, how to hold the old regime accountable for human rights abuses, balancing economic and political reform -- and whether it can hold together at all as a democracy.
Indonesia calls itself a republic, but the archipelago is also a kind of empire, a vast collection of 17,000 islands whose far- flung population of 216 million encompasses several religious and ethnic groups. For more than 30 years, the dictator Soeharto and his military held this improbable nation together by dishing out economic benefits to loyalists and meting out repression to enemies. In 1998 the Indonesian economy collapsed, and Soeharto was swept from power amid massive street protests. Now his first elected successor President Abdurrahman Wahid is trying to build cohesion through peaceful, democratic means, avoiding the sort of bloodshed that attended East Timor's separation last year.
The cease-fire signed last week between his government and separatist guerrillas in the region of Aceh, where 300 people have been killed in the past four months, suggests that democracy might just have a chance.
The Free Aceh Movement has been waging war for independence off and on for a quarter of a century. The rebels, who are supported and trained by Libya, have committed their share of atrocities against civilians, but the counterinsurgency response by the Indonesia military, which conceives of itself as the ultimate guarantor of territorial integrity, has been bloodier. The Indonesian forces' brutality has compounded Aceh's long- standing grievance over the way its abundant natural resources are exploited for the benefit of other islands. Thus, even though the rebels are not popular, the people of Aceh are increasingly alienated from the Jakarta government, and many hope that Aceh can vote for independence in a referendum as East Timor did last year.
Yet they might scale for less if the central authorities convincingly offer them a fairer share of the country's wealth, better conduct by the armed forces and a measure of justice with regard to past human rights violations by the government.
Wahid appears to understand this. The cease-fire agreement, to be signed on May 15 in Geneva, would require both the rebels and the army to stop offensive operations, it is still not clear whether the government has promised to withdraw large numbers of its forces. In the peaceful interval that would follow, the two sides could discuss the terms of a final settlement.
Uncompromising elements in either the Free Aceh Movement or the Indonesian military may yet use violence to sabotage this peace process. But Jakarta's initiative is the first ray of hope the troubled territory has seen in a long time and an encouragement for those who hope to see democracy establish itself in this important nation.
-- The Washington Post