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Subject: IN: Army Hdbk: Ch 4.05 - Political Process
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ID number :AR ARMAN INDOCH4.05
Title :CHAPTER 4.05: THE POLITICAL PROCESS
Data type :TEXT
End year :1994
Date of record:03/08/1994
Keywords 3 :
| Indonesia
Text :
THE POLITICAL PROCESS
Pancasila democracy retained the forms of representative
democracy mandated by the 1945 constitution, but the content was
refashioned to fit the requirements of the New Order. Political
parties existed to channel popular energies into support for
government goals. Elections were "Festivals of Democracy" to make
people feel a part of the system. Underlying the formal
"depoliticized" political system in the early 1990s was an
intense political dynamic in which leading institutions and
groups competed for power and influence in shaping Indonesia's
future.
Political Parties
The Multiparty System
ABRI viewed the pre-1967 multiparty system as
unsatisfactory. The army had been an ally of Sukarno in the
emasculation of competitive party politics under Guided
Democracy. In a regime in which consensus and mobilization of
human and material resources for development had the highest
priority, partisan politics was viewed as divisive and wasteful.
Yet the parties, with the notable exception of Masyumi and the
PKI, had made the transition from the Old Order to the New Order
and expected to play an expanded role. The Muslim political
parties, in particular, felt they should be rewarded for
enthusiastic participation in crushing the PKI and alleged
communist sympathizers in 1965. The civilians who had thronged to
alliance with ABRI under the banners of various anti-Sukarno
action groups also felt they had earned an autonomous stake in
building Indonesia's future. The problem for ABRI was how to
subordinate the political party system to the needs of unity,
stability, and development (and implicit ABRI control). The
answer was to establish a political structure that would be fully
responsive to the interests and agenda of ABRI and the
government. It needed to be a structure that would compete in
elections with the regular political parties but, as an
expression of Pancasila democracy, it would not be a political
party in the usual sense of aggregating and articulating
interests from below.
Political party competition in Pancasila democracy in late
twentieth-century Indonesia was conceived of in terms of
advancing the best programs and leaders to achieve the national
goals. Opposition politics based on ideological competition or
appeal to partisan interests growing out of social, ethnic, or
economic cleavages had no place and, in fact, was defined as
subversive. In Suharto's words, the adoption of the Pancasila by
the parties "will facilitate the prevention of conflict among
various political groups which in their efforts to attain their
respective goals may cause clashes detrimental to national unity
and integrity." In 1973, in order to guarantee that disruptive
competition would not occur, the political party system was
restructured and simplified by government fiat, forcing the nine
existing traditional parties to regroup into two electoral
coalitions. The four Muslim parties, despite their historical,
ideological, sectarian, and leadership differences, were joined
together in the United Development Party (PPP), and the Christian
and secular parties were uneasily united in the Indonesian
Democratic Party (PDI). The desired result was to further weaken
the existing political parties. The Political Parties Bill of
1975 completed the process of reconciling the parties to the
requirements of Pancasila democracy.
The PPP, PDI, and the non-party Golkar became the "three
pillars" of Pancasila democracy, the only legal participants in
the electoral process. Other kinds of political activity were
proclaimed illegal. The parties were placed under the supervision
of the Department of Home Affairs, and the president was given
the power to suspend their activity. Most importantly, the 1975
law institutionalized the concept of the rural population as a
"floating mass," prohibiting the parties from organizing and
mobilizing at the rice-roots level between election campaigns.
This gave Golkar a great advantage, because government officials
from the center to the village were members of Golkar. The net
effect of political party legislation was to "depoliticize" the
political parties of the 1945-65 period.
From the government's point of view, political parties were
not considered vital elements in a continuous critical political
process but structures that would function episodically every
five years in "Festivals of Democracy" designed to promote the
government's legitimacy. Golkar's crushing victory in the 1971
elections put an end to any expectation that meaningful
multiparty politics could be resurrected in Indonesia. By
maintaining a highly disciplined party system, the government
provided a limited sense of public access and participation in a
political system that was, at its core, military in inspiration.
More narrowly, the party system allowed for the cooptation of the
civilian leaderships of the old political parties into the New
Order plan in a nonthreatening way. Although the politicians may
have chafed under the restrictions, they at least were part of
the process. Also, the continued existence of the political
parties and elections contributed to the regime's international
reputation, particular after the harrowing trauma of its violent
birth (see The Coup and Its Aftermath, ch. 1). Finally, parties
performed a useful "feedback" function. This role was
particularly true with respect to the Islamic parties grouped in
PPP, who gave voice to issues close to Islamic values. For
example, the 1973 Marriage Bill as originally drafted would have
legalized all civil marriages. However, due to Islamic concerns
the law was eventually amended to legitimate marriages made
according to the laws of respective religions. Still, the
government did not always heed the alarm raised by Islamic
outrage. Football pools (known as porkas from the English
"forecast") were introduced in December 1985 to support national
sports programs; the porkas were denounced by Muslims as a
violation of the Islamic law against gambling. The opponents of
porkas added a social dimension to the criticism by pointing out
that the players were those Indonesians who could least afford to
gamble. Unmoved by the opposition, the government allowed the
lottery to continue as of 1992.
Golkar
The government's chosen instrument for political action was
Golangan Karya (Golkar), the ABRI-managed organization of
"functional groups." Golkar had its roots late in Sukarno's
Guided Democracy within the left-dominated National Front as an
army-sponsored functional grouping of nearly 100 anticommunist
organizations. These groups had a diverse membership, from trade
unionists and civil servants to students and women. As a
political force to balance the weight of the PKI and Sukarno's
PNI, this Golkar prototype--the Joint Secretariat of Functional
Groups--was ineffective, but it provided a framework for the
military to mobilize civilian support. After 1966 it was
reorganized by Suharto's supporters, under General Ali Murtopo,
head of ABRI's Special Operations Service (Opsus), as an
ostensibly nonpartisan civilian constituency for the New Order's
authority. Golkar's mission was "to engage in politics to
suppress politics." Its core membership was the Indonesian civil
service and government officials at all levels of society,
including the villages, and employees of state enterprises were
expected to be loyal to Golkar. Behind the patronage and the
semimonopoly on communications and funding that facilitated
Golkar's electoral superiority, was the unspoken but occasionally
overt power of ABRI.
Suharto was directly involved in Golkar's organization and
policies from the beginning of the New Order. The organization's
top advisory leadership was composed of senior ABRI officers,
cabinet ministers, and leading technocrats. Day-to-day operations
were under the direction of the chairman of the Central Executive
Board. Under the chairmanship of Sudharmono from 1983 to 1988,
Golkar increasingly became Suharto's personal constituency as
opposed to an ABRI-New Order regime-oriented grouping. Sudharmono
attempted to make Golkar a more effective political instrument by
transforming it from a "functional group" basis to individual
cadre membership. It was expected that the cadres, augmenting the
official outreach, would help in the rice-roots mobilization of
the "floating masses" at election times. As a mass-mobilizing,
cadre party loyal to Suharto, there was some speculation that
Golkar was emerging as an autonomous political force in society,
no longer fully responsive to ABRI. Credence was given to this
speculation by Suharto himself, when he admonished Golkar in 1989
to adopt a central position rather than "sit on the sidelines."
Further evidence of the change in Golkar was seen in the
emergence of a second-level younger civilian leadership as
represented by its secretary general, Sarwono Kusumaatmadja,
brother of Minister of Foreign Affairs Mochtar Kusumaatmadja.
Concerns about Golkar's direction probably contributed to
ABRI's initial dissatisfaction with Suharto's selection of
Sudharmono to be vice president in 1988. The possibility that as
vice president Sudharmono might seek concurrently to keep his
Golkar position came to the fore at Golkar's October 1988 Fourth
National Congress. At the congress, ABRI pushed countermeasures
including installing military men in Golkar's regional
leadership, and Suharto avoided confrontation by replacing
Sudharmono with Wahono, the relatively obscure former governor of
Jawa Timur Province. Wahono was a man personally loyal to Suharto
and without succession aspirations. Nevertheless, Golkar's
commanding position in the "open" political process left
unanswered the question of its potential to become a rival to
ABRI or an alternative political base for future aspirants to
power.
United Development Party (PPP)
The United Development Party (PPP; also sometimes referred
to as the Development Unity Party) was the umbrella Muslim
grouping that developed when the four Muslim parties were forced
to merge in the 1973 restructuring of the party system. The four
components were Nahdatul Ulama, the Muslim Party of Indonesia
(PMI), the Islamic Association Party of Indonesia (PSII), and the
Islamic Educational Movement (Perti). The PPP's constituent
parties neither submerged their identities nor merged their
programs. As a result, no single PPP leader with a platform
acceptable to all the sectarian and regional interests grouped
under the PPP umbrella emerged. Despite their manifest
differences representing divergent santri streams, however, the
PPP's parties had the common bond of Islam, and it was this that
gained them the government's close attention. The dominant
partners were Nahdatul Ulama and the PMI. The PMI was a
resurrected version of Masyumi, which had been banned in the
Sukarno era. The return of the modernist Islamic
interests--represented by the PMI--to mainstream politics was
stage-managed by the government, and the PMI within the PPP was
seemingly favored by the government to counterbalance the appeal
of Nahdatul Ulama. The rivalry between Nahdatul Ulama and the
PMI, while strong, was suppressed for the 1977 electoral
campaign. But a severe split in the PPP over candidate selection
and ranking on the PPP's electoral list occurred before the 1982
elections, leading the government to intervene on the side of the
more docile PMI leadership.
The split between Nahdatul Ulama and the PMI over the
political destiny of the PPP became a schism in the wake of the
August 1984 PPP National Congress, the first since its 1973
formation. The principal task of the congress was the adoption of
the Pancasila as the PPP's basic ideological principle. The
party's general chairman, the PMI's Jailani (Johnny) Naro, who
was backed by the government, stacked the new thirty-eight-member
executive board with twenty PMI supporters, leaving Nahdatul
Ulama, the largest of the component parties, with only thirteen
seats. The decline in Nahdatul Ulama's influence in the PPP,
together with constraints on the Islamic content of the PPP's
message, confirmed the traditionalists' perception that Nahdatul
Ulama should withdraw from the political process and concentrate
on its religious, social, and educational activities. The theme
of Nahdatul Ulama's December 1984 congress was "Back to Nahdatul
Ulama's Original Program of Action of 1926." While
constitutionally accepting the Pancasila as its sole ideological
principle, the Nahdatul Ulama congress tacitly opted out of the
Pancasila political competition by holding that political party
membership was a personal decision and that individual Nahdatul
Ulama members were not obligated to support the PPP.
Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI)
The Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) was created from a
fusion of the two Christian parties: the Indonesian Christian
Party (Partindo) and the Catholic Party (Partai Katolik); and
three secular parties: the Indonesian Nationalist Party (PNI),
the League of the Supporters of Indonesian Independence (IPKI),
and the Party of the Masses (Partai Murba). The PNI, the largest
of the PDI's five parties, and the legatee of Sukarno, had its
base in East and Central Java. IPKI had been strongly anti-PKI in
the Old Order in contrast to the once-leftist Partai Murba. Even
more heterogeneous than the PPP, the PDI, with no common
ideological link other than the commitment to the Pancasila as
its sole principle, was faction-ridden and riven with personality
disputes, held together only by direct government intervention
into its internal affairs. It was only under the auspices of the
minister of home affairs that the PDI Executive Committee could
meet at all after the 1983 elections. The government insisted on
keeping the PDI viable to avoid the risk of polarization and a
direct Golkar-PPP, secular-Islamic face-off. With the gradual
public rehabilitation of the late President Sukarno as an
"Independence Proclamation Hero" and the father of the Pancasila,
the PDI was not reluctant to trade upon the Sukarnoist heritage
of its component party, the PNI. Using a son and a daughter of
Sukarno on its ticket and waving posters with the image of
Sukarno, the PDI went into the 1987 elections aggressively
courting young voters who had no personal experience of Guided
Democracy and who were looking for channels of political protest.
Elections
When Indonesians went to the polls every five years to elect
members of the DPR, it was not with the expectation that in
casting a vote they could effect any real changes in the way
Indonesia was governed. The system was not designed for
opposition. The PDI and PPP did not present competitively
alternative platforms to Golkar's government platform. The
parties' candidate lists were screened and individual candidates
approved by the government. For the 1992 elections, 2,283
candidates were on the lists for the 400 seats at stake.
The elector did not vote for a particular candidate but for
the party, which if it won would designate the representative
from the party's list. The elections were organized by the
government-appointed election commission headed by the minister
of home affairs. All campaigns were conducted in the framework of
Pancasila democracy, which meant that in the twenty-five-day
campaign period, reduced in 1987 from forty-five days, government
policy and programs could be criticized only warily and
indirectly, and the president could not be criticized at all.
Strict campaign rules applied. For the 1992 election, automobile
rallies and picture posters of political leaders were banned. No
PDI posters of Sukarno, for example, were allowed. Large outdoor
rallies were discouraged, which meant that acts of violence and
rowdyism by youthful participants in the "Festival of Democracy"
decreased in 1992. Radio and television appeals had to be
approved in advance by the elections commission. There was no
campaigning at all in the five days before the elections. Even if
there had been fewer constraints on campaign freedoms, the
results in terms of structural impact on the functioning of the
government would not be much greater than those engendered by the
large number of appointed members of the DPR and the minority
position of the elected members of the DPR in the MPR.
Even so, elections did matter. They were one of the elements
in the institutionalization of the New Order system. It was
estimated that 111 million Indonesians were eligible to vote in
1992. Giving the broad population a sense of participation
contributed to regime legitimacy. The elections also provided, to
some degree, a channel of public opinion feedback to the
government. Finally, the election process helped to mobilize the
public to support government policy. The feedback and
mobilization function of the electoral process was becoming more
important as the number of voters who had no direct memory of
pre-Suharto Indonesia increased. The 1992 election saw 17 million
first-time voters.
During the first twenty-five years of New Order government,
there were five national elections (see table 28, Appendix). The
1971 election was Indonesia's second general election since
independence and the first since 1955. (Provincial elections were
held in 1957.) Golkar and nine other parties ran, compared with
twenty-eight parties in 1955. The outcome was predictable given
the rules of the game and the resources available to the
government supporters. Golkar won more than 62 percent of the
vote. The four Islamic parties shared 27.1 percent of the total,
led by Nahdatul Ulama's 18.7 percent. The remaining 10.1 percent
of the total was scattered among the other five parties.
Not surprisingly, Golkar dominated every successive
election. In 1977 the second DPR election saw the field of
parties reduced to three as a result of the 1973 party merger.
The relative percentage of votes was not dramatically different,
with Golkar losing less than 1 percent; the PPP gained 29.3
percent and the PDI, beginning its decline, fell to 8.6 percent.
The size and loyalty of the PPP's electoral base, despite all-out
government support for Golkar, reinforced the government's
interest in limiting political Islam. In the 1982 elections,
Golkar won 64.3 percent of the total vote cast, trailed by the
PPP's 27.8 percent and the PDI's 7.9 percent. Golkar swept
twenty-six of the twenty-seven provinces and regions, losing only
strongly Islamic Aceh to the PPP. The victory was made sweeter
for Golkar by its recapturing the electoral edge in Jakarta from
the PPP, which had won the district in the 1977 elections. In the
1987 elections, Golkar won in a landslide, crushing the
opposition parties with more than 73 percent of the vote to the
PPP's 16 percent and the PDI's 10.9 percent. Golkar's victory led
to fears that Indonesia had become a de facto single-party state.
Golkar even triumphed in Aceh with a 52 percent majority. The
precipitous (40 percent) drop between 1982 and 1987 in the PPP's
vote total can be attributed largely to the 1984 decision by
Nahdatul Ulama, the PPP's largest component, to withdraw from
organized competitive politics. Analysis of the election returns
showed that many of the former Nahdatul Ulama votes for the PPP
went to Golkar in a demonstration of both Nahdatul Ulama's
ability to deliver its constituents and a guarantee of continued
government favor to Nahdatul Ulama's institutions and programs.
The June 9, 1992, election had no surprises. In a calm and
orderly atmosphere, more than 97 million Indonesians voted, 90
percent of the 108 million registered voters. Golkar won 68
percent of the popular vote, down by 5 percent from 1987, but
nevertheless very satisfactory for the government. Golkar support
ranged from a high of more than 90 percent in Jambi, Lampung, and
Nusa Tenggara Timur provinces to Jakarta's 52 percent. The PPP
held its own with 17 percent of the vote and, at least in the
official final tally, actually ran ahead of the PDI in Jakarta
with 24.5 percent of the vote to the PDI's 23.1 percent. The
support for the PDI, the closest to a "democratic opposition"
party, jumped from 10.9 percent in 1987 to 15 percent. These
figures translated into 281 DPR seats for Golkar (down 18 seats
from 1987), 63 for PPP (down 2 seats), and 56 for the PDI (an
increase of 16 seats).
The outcome of the 1992 election led to some cautious
conclusions. The election was "routine" because the earlier
polarizing issues of Pancasila democracy had already been firmly
resolved to the government's advantage. Since the stakes seemed
even lower than in previous elections, there was a lack of
political passion on all sides. The decline in the Golkar
percentage may be partially attributed to ABRI's distancing
itself from active intervention on behalf of Golkar as a sign
that it should not be taken for granted. It did not appear that
Suharto's campaign to woo the Muslims had an appreciable
electoral result. The PDI apparently won the largest number of
first-time voters. Its rallies attracted a youthful crowd, many
under voting age, and suggested that a basis did exist for future
increases in voter support. Golkar won slightly more than 61
percent of the total number of votes cast on Java, where nearly
two-thirds of the voters resided. That meant that about four out
of ten voters at the country's core were in opposition.
Nevertheless, that Golkar increased its vote in Jakarta by 4
percent over 1987 despite an aggressive PDI campaign directed at
the urban crowd, suggested that Golkar's appeal to stability,
security, and development--the political status quo--was powerful
even without other electoral advantages of the ruling party.
Political Dynamics
Openness
In his 1990 annual National Day address to the nation,
Suharto confirmed his mandate for more openness in political
expression. "We must no longer be afraid of the multifarious
views and opinions expressed by the people," he declared. This
new tolerance was first given attention in the domestic political
dialogue that began after his inauguration for a fifth term. The
year 1989 saw an outpouring of opinion, discussion, and debate as
keterbukaan (openness) promised a breath of fresh air in what
many felt was an atmosphere of sterile platitudinism and
sloganeering. There was in 1989, according to American political
scientist Gorden R. Hein, "a dramatic expansion in public
discussion of important political and economic issues facing the
country." Officials, politicians, retired generals,
nongovernmental organizations, and student leaders expressed
their views on controversial subjects ranging from environmental
degradation to business conglomerates, from the role of the
military to party politics. Many who had previously felt excluded
from meaningful involvement hoped that keterbukaan would
encourage greater political participation, not only in the
national policy dialogue but in access to the political process.
The most serious structural manifestation of keterbukaan was the
establishment in 1991 of the Democracy Forum. The forum was
chaired by Nahdatul Ulama's secretary general, Abdurrahman Wahid,
and participated in by well-known academics, journalists, and
other intellectuals. Its goal was to loosen existing political
arrangements to assure "that the nation matures politically."
The turn toward keterbukaan was a welcome thaw after the
chill of the mid-1980s crackdown on what the government
considered "subversive" opposition. The passage of the Mass
Organizations Law in 1985 stoked the incendiary environment in
which more radical Muslim activists were prepared for direct
action against a government that resisted demands that the state
itself should express an Islamic quality. In September 1984, the
situation had deteriorated over an incident in which a soldier
allegedly defiled a mosque in Tanjung Priok (in the northern part
of Jakarta). The incident was a pretext for rioting and clashes
between the army and mobs provoked by fiery Islamic invocations.
This was followed by bomb blasts and arson that to an alarmed
ABRI presaged a call for jihad (holy war). The Tanjung Priok
affair was the most destabilizing open confrontation between the
government and opposition since the anti-Japanese riots that took
place during Japanese prime minister Tanaka Kakuei's visit to
Indonesia in January 1974. Again, the government's reaction was
swift and stern. Thirty defendants were jailed from one to three
years in the wake of the Tanjung Priok riot. Ten people were
convicted of conspiracy in the 1985 Bank Central Asia bombing
following the Tanjung Priok affair, including former cabinet
minister Haji Mohammad Sanusi. At the heart of the legal assault
on the opposition were the trials of prominent Islamic and
retired military figures who were vaguely linked by the
government to the Bank Central Asia bombing but whose real crime
was association with the Petition of Fifty group.
The Petition of Fifty was a petition by former generals,
political leaders, academicians, students, and others that was
submitted to the MPR in 1980. The petition accused Suharto of
using the Pancasila to attack political opponents and to foster
antidemocratic, one-man rule. The signers of the statement were
roundly excoriated by Suharto loyalists. The signers escaped
arrest but were put under tight surveillance and lost many of
their official perquisites.
Lieutenant General (retired) H.R. Dharsono was the most
prominent of the Petition of Fifty group. After the Tanjung Priok
affair, Dharsono was arrested because of a position paper he and
twenty-one others had signed in September 1984, challenging the
government's version of the affair. According to the prosecution,
this position paper "undermined the authority of the government."
Dharsono also was accused of "mental terrorism" for having made
statements that could cause social unrest, as well as of
associating with persons allegedly involved in the subsequent
bombings. In an extraordinarily open trial, he was found guilty
in January 1986 and sentenced to ten years' imprisonment.
Unrepentant, Dharsono was released in the looser atmosphere of
keterbukaan in September 1990. Clearly, the Dharsono trial and
others, as well as the social and economic pressures on
extraparliamentary critics of the government, such as the
Petition of Fifty group, were meant as reminders of the
acceptable boundaries of political comment. As if to drive the
point home, nine PKI prisoners who had been jailed for twenty
years were executed in October 1986. Two others were executed in
1988. These exemplary punishments were warnings against the
consequences of "left extremism."
The fact that the legal and official regulatory framework
that stifled opposition for so many years remained intact
required cautious conclusions about keterbukaan. Although the
dialogue was more open and included more "political" subjects in
the early 1990s, limits could be quickly and arbitrarily set by
the government, whose level of tolerance was unpredictable. The
limits were ambiguous because they tended to be applied
capriciously. Still, there were indicators that a more
participative political system would evolve in the mid- to late
1990s. American political scientist R. William Liddle identified
six characteristics of the Indonesian economy, society, and
politics that appeared to favor a move in that direction: growing
dependence on domestic taxes and thus taxpayer approval; wide
distribution of the benefits of economic growth with increased
resources for groups to become politically active; greater
connections to the outside world; greater education and literacy;
more interest in democratization; and an institutionalized strong
presidency. This last factor ensured that as more political
voices were heard there would be no return to the parliamentary
impotency that paralyzed Indonesia in the 1950s. Thus, it was
argued, democracy and stability could coexist.
Much, of course, would depend upon the succession scenario.
According to a less sanguine assessment, a more open political
dialogue could be manipulated by the major actors positioning
themselves for the succession--ABRI, Islam, bureaucratic
interests, and Golkar. These groups sought support among a
growing middle-class constituency which, intermittently at least,
was moved by the kinds of issues raised by socially conscious
nongovernmental organizations and students, as well as
nonestablishment political organizations like the group that
issued the Petition of Fifty. The succession issue itself, as
long as it remained unresolved, had the potential of being a
destablilizing factor. Outside the bureaucratic inner circle, the
political actors most directly affected by succession could only
imperfectly transmit their messages about democracy, equity,
corruption, the environment, and succession to the public because
the nongovernmental media was subject to the same constraints as
the other institutions in Pancasila democracy (see The Media,
this ch.).
Islam
Organized political party structures promoting Islam were
disciplined to the requirements of Pancasila democracy in the
PPP, and Islamic organizations, including the Muhammadiyah
movement and Nahdatul Ulama, were subjected to government
regulations flowing from the Mass Organizations Law. Muslim
critics of the regime in the early 1990s claimed that the
government policy toward Islam was "colonial" in that it was
putting in place in modern Indonesia the advice of the Dutch
scholar and adviser to the Netherlands Indies government,
Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje. As an adviser between 1891 and 1904,
Snouck Hurgronje advocated tolerating the spiritual aspects of
Islam but containing rigorously Islam's political expression. The
goal was the same in the colonial period and during the
presidencies of both Sukarno and Suharto: to see to it that the
business of government and administration remained a secular one.
However, Islam could not be fully "depoliticized." The
traditional structures for Islamic communication and
mobilization, pesantren and mosque, were resistant to external
control. Religious teachers, through the dakwah (the vigorous
promotion of Islam), still proselytized and propagated guidance
and values in the early 1990s that influenced all aspects of
human affairs. The "floating masses" were touched by a social and
political message couched in terms of Quranic injunctions and the
hadith.
The so-called "hard" dakwah, departing from sermons and
texts tightly confined to matters of faith and sharia, was
uncompromisingly antigovernment. The illegal texts of Abdul Qadir
Djaelani, for example, contrasted Islam, which was the revelation
of God, with the Pancasila, which was man-made of Javanese
mysticism. The Islamists (often referred to as Islamic
fundamentalists) called for the people to die as martyrs in a
"struggle until Islam rules." This call, for the government, was
incitement to "extremism of the right," subversion, and
terrorism. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, security officials
warned against the revival of Darul Islam in the guise of a
Komando Jihad (Holy War Command). Isolated acts of violence,
including, in early 1981, the hijacking of a Garuda Indonesian
Airways DC-9, gave credence to these alerts. This unrest also was
the context in which the government viewed the Tanjung Priok
affair. The government reaction to radical Islamic provocations
was unyielding: arrest and jail.
The followers of the "hard" dakwah were a minority within a
minority in 1992. Although Islamists might be disaffected with
the state, the goal of urban, middle-class Muslims, who shared in
the benefits of government economic policies and who were
relatively untouched by the preaching of rural Muslim teachers,
was not to overthrow the regime. They wanted to transform the
regime from within to make its acts conform more with Islamic
values--a focus then that was not on the state itself but on
policies and practices that were offensive. The issues that
spurred middle-class Muslims on included not just the persistent
Muslim complaints about secularization, Christianization, and
moral decline, but also contemporary political grievances about
the inequitable distribution of income, concentration of wealth
and power in the hands of Chinese Indonesians to the detriment of
indigenous (pribumi--see Glossary) entrepreneurship, corruption,
and the role of the president's immediate family. These kinds of
issues cut across religious boundaries and united moderate
middle-class Muslims with more secular middle-class critics, both
civilian and military.
The president had indirectly addressed complaints about a
skewing of economic rewards to Chinese Indonesian enterprises by
backing deregulation, warning against flaunting wealth, and
appealing for companies to allow worker cooperatives to purchase
up to 25 percent of equity shares. This last proposal, made in
1990, despite questions about its economic soundness, had a firm
basis in the 1945 constitution, Indonesian economic history, and
populist rhetoric.
A more complicated problem was the political access the
president's six children had to state contracting agencies. Their
monopoly enterprises, influence brokering, and linkages to
Chinese Indonesian entrepreneurs made the children major players
in the Indonesian economy. Leaving aside the question of whether
their activities facilitated development or hindered it, their
highly visible role with the underlying suspicion of favoritism,
political extortion, and corruption, had a corrosive impact on
Suharto's own image. The father defended the children. Domestic
criticism was banned in the media, and foreign discussions
resulted in periodic censorship of certain editions of the Sydney
Morning Herald, the International Herald Tribune, and the Far
Eastern Economic Review. It was even suggested by some local
observers that the president's desire to protect his children
from a future government's reprisals energized his succession
agenda.
Through reward and cooptation, the government won the
allegiance of a broad sector of the Muslim elite, the most
general indicator of which was election results showing no
increase in the appeal of Muslim political parties. At the same
time, thoughtful Islamic strategists, such as Nahdatul Ulama's
Abdurrahman Wahid, felt that Islamization would come from inside
the New Order rather than from external confrontation. The
Association of Muslim Intellectuals (ICMI) was formed in December
1990, uniting a broad spectrum of leading Muslim academics and
government figures (but with the noticeable absence of
Abdurrahman Wahid). ICMI's founding had the overt support of
Suharto and suggested that the president wished to deepen his
political links to the Muslim constituency independently of the
PPP and Nahdatul Ulama. This organizational development also
raised the question of where ABRI stood in a constellation of
forces that saw the president apparently seeking balance among
Golkar, Islam, and ABRI.
ABRI
The considerable policy achievements of the New Order
government cannot be overstated. Whether compared with the Old
Order or with other large and culturally plural Third World
nations, Indonesia's record of political stability and economic
growth since 1966 was viewed by its leaders as the empirical
justification of the system of government put in place by the
military in 1966-67. Despite keterbukaan, there was no retreat
from dwifungsi. Suharto and the military elite seemed united in
their belief that there would be no turning back from the
principle of dual function which ABRI considered a historical
necessity. The spectacle of the ethnic disintegration of the
Soviet Union and Eastern Europe was a sobering example of what
can happen when authority is lifted in ethnically plural states.
Beyond the agreement on dwifungsi, however, the relationship
between the president and ABRI became one of the problematic
issues of politics in the 1990s. Ultimately, the president
depended on ABRI as the bulwark of his authority. In part, the
legitimacy of ABRI's role in society was a reflection of the
Suharto performance in office. As Suharto seemed to become
increasingly distanced institutionally from ABRI and issues of
corruption and favoritism brought the regime into disrepute,
observers questioned how ABRI would position itself with respect
to succession.
ABRI dissatisfaction with the course of events rarely
surfaced publicly. The demonstration against Sudharmono's
nomination to the vice presidency was an exception. Yet, in the
subtle and indirect fashion seemingly inherent in Javanese
political culture, signs abounded that some senior ABRI leaders
had reservations about a sixth term for Suharto. Steeped in
distrust of Islamic politics, ABRI looked askance at Suharto's
overtures to the santri, taking particular note of the military's
exclusion from the ICMI. Moreover, it was no secret that ABRI
leaders were disturbed by what some saw as the unbridled greed of
the president's family members and his obvious reluctance to
restrain them. The cult of personality, which presidential palace
functionaries fostered, also offended ABRI's leaders. ABRI's
commitment to its own revolutionary values and the Pancasila
seemed, in a sense, to be mocked at the end of Suharto's fifth
term. On the other hand, ABRI's command repeatedly assured the
leadership of their commitment to constitutional processes.
ABRI's focus was on regime continuity rather than provoking a
leadership crisis that might resonate negatively in the wider
society. If the common wisdom that Suharto's successor had to be
a Muslim Javanese general was correct, ABRI wanted to be sure
that it controlled the designation.
As a practical matter, ABRI's desire to control the
succession scenario meant it had to play a leading role in the
selection of the vice presidential candidate for Suharto's sixth
term (1993-98). The list of potential nominees started with the
ABRI commander General Try Sutrisno, followed by army commander
General Edi Sudrajat. Even this careful ABRI selection process
would not guarantee succession in 1998. Suharto was likely to
have had a different scenario. Seemingly waiting in the wings was
Major General Wismoyo Arismunandar, who in July 1992 was advanced
to deputy commander of the Army from commander of the Army
Strategic Reserve Command (Kostrad), the post Suharto himself
held in 1965. Wismoyo, Suharto's brother-in-law, was widely
expected to become army chief of staff and even ABRI commander.
Also rapidly moving up in the ranks was Lieutenant Colonel
Prabowo Subianto, a Suharto son-in-law. Prabowo, who, according
to many observers, was a highly capable officer, served as the
chief of staff of the Seventeenth Airborne Brigade. By 1998,
then, the succession issue was likely to be couched in dynastic
terms, and the family's interests would be well protected.
Nongovernment Organizations (NGOs)
The central concerns of establishment politics under the New
Order in the early 1990s were stability and development. A broad
array of other issues, reflecting both the changes brought about
in the society by development and the penetration of the
political culture by issues of global concern, set the agenda of
a growing number of Indonesian private voluntary associations.
These associations articulated interests ranging from human
rights and the rule of law to issues of corruption and
environmental degradation. The proliferation of nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) in the late 1970s and 1980s was an indicator
of both the increased diversity of society and the growth of a
modern middle class. It was precisely these middle-class-inspired
groups that represented most vocally the grievances of
Indonesia's "floating masses." NGOs were independent of
government and political parties. Within the framework of
Pancasila democracy, the NGOs had to be nonpolitical, but their
activities had political impact. To avoid the issue of confusing
nongovernment with antigovernment organizations and
repoliticization of the depoliticized masses, the term NGO was
replaced by other rubrics, such as community Self-Reliance Groups
(LSM).
The government's attitude toward the NGOs in the early 1990s
was ambivalent. The government welcomed the work of NGOs involved
in community self-help projects, rice-roots mobilization for
socially or economically useful purposes, and as alternative
structures for small development programs. However, the
independence of NGOs from the government had the potential for
opposition, especially where the NGOs were aggressively
intervening in areas of agrarian rights or fundamental human
rights. For example, there was a marked increase in the number of
conflicts between settled communities and state developmental or
commercial ventures. Many of these conflicts involved land use
that would alter established proprietary or utilization rights
without reference to the community's wishes and without adequate
compensation. In circumstances where government agencies acted to
support land seizures opposed by local communities, rights
questions were taken up by activist groups, students, the press,
and networks of interested NGOs. That well-publicized actions at
the local level could be translated into national issues was
demonstrated in 1989, when protests over the forced relocation of
villagers for a World Bank (see Glossary) -assisted dam project
at Kedung Ombo, Jawa Tengah Province, forced the government to
modify its plans. The Kedung Ombo case and other agrarian and
ecologically related protests also rekindled student activism,
confined since the 1970s to nonpolitical behavior. University
students found both a cause and a vehicle for renewed social
involvement in the defense of the "little people."
Not only were the Indonesian NGOs/LSMs networked internally,
they were networked through the International Nongovernmental
Group on Indonesia (INGI) with corresponding groups abroad and
were, to the discomfiture of the government, able to bring
pressure on foreign-aid donors. The Kedung Ombo affair united the
LSMs with human rights and legal groups such as the Indonesia
Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI), perhaps the best known of the NGOs
and a constant thorn in the state's legal flesh through its
interventions in defense of the rule of law. The government's
tolerance for the activities of NGOs became increasingly limited
as the NGOs' activities moved into areas of sensitive state
concerns and reached out to influence external aid givers. After
the passage of the Mass Organizations Law in 1985, NGOs were
required to file reports to allow the government to monitor their
activities. According to Coordinating Minister of Political
Affairs and Security Admiral (retired) Sudomo, there were three
justifications for disbanding an organization: disturbing
national stability, receiving unreported foreign funds, or being
directed by a foreigner. The first criterion was very subjective.
Criticism of government policy by a domestic NGO could lead to
the charge of subversion. At least three human rights NGOs were
banned as a result of their unauthorized activities in supplying
information to the international community in the wake of the
November 1991 Dili incident.
The challenge for the NGOs in the early 1990s was not only
their taking up real issues in the political economy, but having
to do so when more traditional organizations, such as the
established bureaucratic and party institutions, seemed unable or
unwilling to perform this function. Keterbukaan was a promise of
a more liberal climate for dialogue. Keterbukaan was yet to be
accompanied by structural change, however. In 1990 the Institute
for the Defense of Human Rights (LPHAM, which itself was banned
after the Dili affair) attempted to set up a free trade union
that was immediately declared illegal. Working outside the system
became almost part of the system. This seeming paradox may have
been partly explained by the fact that in this aspect of
Indonesian politics, as in so many others, overt change,
adaptation, and accommodation awaited the settlement of the
succession issue.
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This file extracted from Dept. of Commerce, Economics & Statistic's Division's
Apr. 1994 NATIONAL TRADE DATA BANK (NDTB) CD-ROM, SuDoc C1.88:994/4/V.2
Processed 5/11/1994 by RCM (UM-St. Louis Libraries/ AAH80039