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