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."