Yeni: Breaking the taboos

Yeni: Breaking the taboos

By Ati Nurbaiti

JAKARTA (JP): Politics is taking up so much of her time. But
everyone needs a job. And Yeni Rosa Damayanti, an activist who
has just returned for an unplanned stay for safety's sake in the
Netherlands, had wanted to take up portrait painting.

"I wanted to fill the market between painters (of the upper
class) and street painters, like those in Pasar Baru (Central
Jakarta)." With one portrait costing at least Rp 750,000, the
occupation should have been enough for a month's budget -- in the
old days, before the rupiah sank.

Speaking last Wednesday at her parents' spacious house in East
Jakarta, she said: "I don't just make sweet portraits of
people... I transfer a character..."

She may have to make new plans because portraits are not
exactly on many people's priority lists nowadays.

Released in 1994 from a one-year prison term for insulting
then president Soeharto, she had planned to stay a short while in
the Netherlands.

But friends had told her that she was wanted for an alleged
involvement in organizing addresses to Indonesians in Dresden,
Germany, by former legislator Sri Bintang Pamungkas. She said the
Indonesian Embassy withheld her passport and she had to stay for
an indefinite period.

Then she received a scholarship from the Institute of Social
Studies (ISS) in The Hague, where she took a few courses. After
finishing her last course, in the women's' studies department,
Yeni returned to Indonesia on June 3, as soon as she got her
passport. That was less than two weeks after Soeharto resigned.

Back home, Yeni, 31, is restless.

"I'm worried that the middle class will only be content with a
clean government," she said, although she maintained it is in no
way an insignificant issue.

The drive against collusion, corruption and nepotism is
radical enough for people who have only recently been able to
discuss such matters without having to peer over their shoulder.

But Yeni is far from satisfied.

She had joined groups like the Indonesian Students' Action
Front, who raised issues considered taboo.

"Our formidable task was always how to involve the middle
class..." in actively supporting efforts toward democracy.

When students were still largely tame, activists like Yeni
were already calling for an extraordinary meeting of the People's
Consultative Assembly (MPR) to make Soeharto step down. It was
one of their fairly radical demands at that time, bringing them
under constant suspicion.

"I am glad we paved the way for students," she said.

Activists kept up lobbying overseas but theirs remained fairly
lone voices while business was just as usual back home.

End

"We," Yeni said, meaning prodemocracy activists, "had to
acknowledge the government's legitimacy was upheld by economic
development." That led to nothing more than grumbling among urban
professionals, she added.

"Now that legitimacy has ended," she said. The crisis, she
said, brought a paradox of sorrow and gladness to activists. The
students' nationwide movement was unprecedented in the New
Order's history and the middle class had at last become a little
bolder.

Yeni is also from this class. Born of Minangkabau parents, she
majored in biology at the private National University, South
Jakarta. Her late father was an army officer, to whom she gives
credit with his advice "to uphold justice".

Yeni cited her days as a member of a biological science club
as leading her to a life of activism. The hard life of timber
workers in Kalimantan forests was one of her first experiences of
what she perceived to be injustice, and she sought answers beyond
her scientific training.

Now she fears that the voices raising issues beyond collusion
and corruption are too few.

"I don't want to live in a country like Singapore," she said,
relishing a bowl of noodles and meatballs. She was referring to
the impression of the city-state's super clean and efficient
government but lack of democracy.

"I want to live in a country which guarantees political
participation for everyone," she said. This would require the
guarantee of the right to free speech, freedom of assembly and
freedom to organize.

This, in turn, she said in her still-spirited way, requires a
change of the 1945 Constitution.

"Just look at clause 28 (which includes) the freedom to
organize. It doesn't say the freedom is granted, as we've
interpreted it to be, it says that freedom to organize will be
established with laws."

The 1945 Constitution has become a word which has always gone
hand in hand with the Pancasila ideology; tampering with either
one has carried the threat of being charged with subversion.

But Yeni, reiterating the views of a few intellectuals,
insisted that the Constitution is obsolete. She pointed to the
explanation attached to the Constitution, which repeatedly refers
to "the spirit of leaders".

"The (writers) assumed that leaders would be good," but
because power tends to corrupt, she insisted there was no way one
could hope for benevolent leaders to write laws guaranteeing
civil rights.

Yeni continued: "this country is not only for the middle class
or professionals." Thus, she said, the well-to-do should not
reject, for instance, efforts toward equal rights for maids.

"Maids should work standard hours and be paid for overtime."
Quite an offensive idea to any house employing a maid, and one
which shocked her own mother.

Another issue Yeni sees essential for the road to democracy is
doing away with the military's dwi fungsi (dual role). This has
been a subject of much debate, on and off, and since the crisis,
it has rarely been mentioned.

"(Activist) Amien Rais told me we need the military in this
transitional period." After that, she said, no clear answer.

Like the government brought down by the student movement,
"legitimacy to the military's dual role is also finished. Their
role was justified to safeguard stability for the sake of
development."

Yeni dismissed the classic arguments that dwi fungsi has its
historical origins in the revolution for independence, that the
military did not only join in the armed struggle but in the
political struggle.

"Civilians also joined the armed struggle but they didn't mix
in military affairs afterward."

The danger of keeping the dual role would be "the continued
entrenchment of the military's interest" in the economy and
politics, she said, besides the justified creation of
extrajudicial bodies like the Agency for the Coordination of
Support for the Development of National Stability.

The argument that ABRI is not entitled to vote has justified
the appointment of 75 military members to the House of
Representatives.

Revising the five political laws, an issue raised since the
early 1990s, which has been resounded in the students' movement,
is the priority to open up politics, she said.

"I'd simply like to say 'go back to the barracks'," Yeni said.
"But, of course, it's not that simple" after years of rare
dissent to the military's role.

Debate on the subject, she said, has led to the egg and
chicken argument, with one side saying dwi fungsi need not be
debated; it would automatically fade away along with empowerment
of civil society.

But again, this needs the opening up of politics and Yeni sees
no compromise; such political reform would have to begin with the
self-dissolving of the legislature.

This, she said, would be the only meaningful agenda for an
extraordinary meeting of the MPR, which many parties say is a
prerequisite for new elections.

"We do not recognize any product of the 1997 election," said
Yeni. This view stems from the violent takeover of the Indonesian
Democratic Party's (PDI) headquarters on July 27, 1996, before
the next year's election. As a result, the PDI that was
represented in the election was that of a rival camp of ousted
chairwoman Megawati Soekarnoputri, who also does not recognize
the election's results.

Kidnapping

Before and after Soeharto resigned, arguments against such
views for a political overhaul have pointed to the worrying
possibility of a vacuum of power given the absence of alternative
leaders.

"I'm so angry (on comments of a vacuum). We have lots of
potential people but they have not been allowed to come up."

The same irritation, she said, came up in lobbying in Europe.

"They (Europeans) said there could be anarchy if they didn't
support Soeharto." The turning point was the kidnapping of
activists, Yeni said, which made people less convinced that
supporting Soeharto was a way to avoid chaos.

Given her belief in many potential leaders, Yeni talked of the
need for a national coalition to lead the country while necessary
changes were being made.

Current new groups, like MARA, the Council for People's
Mandate comprising leading public figures, still look frail but
Yeni said this was no obstacle. "A coalition is realistic."

"Hold campus meetings and have students declare their support.
Students should be asked who they want in the coalition because
students are in the forefront of the movement."

Any presidential candidates? "I'd have to check their views."
Her usual checklist includes all those off limits, uneasy
subjects such as the military's dual role, a referendum in East
Timor and a change of the Constitution.

She said she was now preparing her final paper for the ISS
women's studies department. It will be on the discourse of
Indonesian women in politics and will include a main cause of
women's weak political role: The control of their sexuality.

Yeni is treading into even deeper taboos. As she said: "We
have a long way to go."