John McBeth, Jakarta – Ever since then-President Suharto dumped him from the cabinet six years ago, former Defence Minister Benny Murdani has clung to the shadows of Indonesian politics. Some of his critics have refused to believe he had ceased to be a player, seeing his hand in all manner of backroom machinations. But until recently there was little evidence that Murdani retained any real influence.
In the past few months, however, Indonesia's former military hard man has come in from the cold. He has met quietly with both Suharto – to whom, despite everything, he remains intensely loyal – and armed-forces commander Gen. Wiranto. And to show how times have changed, he has been providing advice to the new head of military intelligence, the apparatus he made his own power base in the 1980s.
Even now, Murdani remains on the sidelines of Indonesia's power drama. Yet the fact he's involved at all casts light on two key themes: the rise of Islamic influence in the army and the delicate dance among leading players over calls for an accounting of Suharto-era corruption.
Wiranto's meetings with Murdani – a Christian and staunch proponent of a secular military – show that the armed-forces chief feels more secure in curbing the rise of Islamic influence within the ranks, an aim evident in an army reshuffle on January 4. The army's direction is important because it is still the most powerful national institution. With religious and ethnic friction on the rise before June's parliamentary elections, the neutrality of ABRI, as the military is known, is seen as vital to keeping violence at bay. "If ABRI gets divided on the religious question, then we're lost," says Jan Van de Made, a Catholic priest in Jakarta.
Few other officers have left such a stamp on the military as the bluff Murdani, a tough, Java-born Roman Catholic. He became armed-forces commander in 1982, having been recalled to Jakarta in the mid-1970s after serving in Bangkok as an undercover intelligence officer and in Seoul as military attache. He was appointed defence minister in 1988 but fell from grace five years later.
Tapping general bitterness over Murdani's perceived favouring of Christians for key posts, new armed-forces chief Gen. Feisal Tanjung and army commander Gen. Hartono spent the next five years ensuring Muslims regained the ascendancy – a process Wiranto now appears to have halted.
What initially opened the way for Murdani's rehabilitation was the removal last year of Lt.-Gen. Prabowo Subianto, the former special-forces chief who was his most vocal critic. Suharto's ambitious son-in-law displayed an almost pathological hatred of his former mentor.
However, it was the future of Suharto, rather than Prabowo or Islamic influence, which underlay Murdani's re-emergence on the political stage. Sources say the first step occurred in October, when three of Murdani's former aides paid a call on President B.J. Habibie – another person with whom Murdani has had strained relations. The three emissaries, the sources say, were Maj.-Gen. Sukarno, Murdani's one-time adjutant and former deputy attorney-general for intelligence; Maj.-Gen. Nugroho, a retired home-affairs secretary-general; and Maj.-Gen. Arie Sudewo, an ex-military intelligence chief. The sources say they carried an olive branch to Habibie and a message: Go easy on Suharto. Despite his sacking, says one insider, "Benny has this absolute soft spot for Suharto."
As with Prabowo, Murdani was once close to Habibie. When Habibie was research and technology minister, Murdani even assigned him a special-forces major as a personal bodyguard. But their relationship soured in the late 1980s as they became rivals for Suharto's ear.
In his only public comment so far, Murdani has rejected speculation that he's an active participant in attempts at national reconciliation between Suharto, other key players of his era, and the forces now calling for reforms and investigations. (Murdani didn't respond to requests for an interview.) But he clearly shares with Habibie, a long-time Suharto protege, and Wiranto, a former Suharto adjutant, a concern over the consequences of a witch-hunt against the deposed leader.
Several sources say Murdani met Suharto for 90 minutes in mid-December after receiving an invitation via the ex-president's elder daughter, Siti Hardijanti Rukmana. It was only the second time the two had met since Suharto sacked Murdani for questioning the business activities of his children and broaching the subject of his retirement; the other was the 1996 funeral of Suharto's wife.
Murdani has also met Wiranto on several occasions, including a one-on-one session in early December when the armed-forces chief sounded him out on how he would react to a series of hypothetical political situations. The meeting was apparently at Wiranto's invitation.
"Benny should be back because he's both a soldier and a statesman," says a Western military analyst. "He is now where he would have been – a tribal elder – if Suharto and Prabowo hadn't exploited the whole process."
Clearly, Wiranto's January reshuffle would have earned Murdani's approval. Wiranto named either non-Muslims or officers with strong secular credentials to several crucial positions. In the process, he shunted aside a potential rival, left two former Suharto aides in key posts and removed the last vestiges of Prabowo's influence.
Among the secularist Muslims to be promoted was Maj.-Gen. Tyasno Sudarto, an intelligence officer under Murdani in the late 1980s, who was named head of Badan Intelijen ABRI, the military intelligence agency. Significantly, Murdani met Sudarto on January 9 and 10 near Bogor, south of Jakarta, to offer solicited advice on the agency's planned restructuring. Such a rendezvous would have been unthinkable even months before, given the way Suharto had purged Murdani's people from the agency.
The January 4 military reshuffle didn't sit well with many of the Islamic officials who form Habibie's inner circle and who in many ways represent his only real base of support. One senior presidential aide says he was so surprised at the free hand Wiranto was given that he asked Habibie whether he had approved all the changes.
Most analysts see the changes as a measure of Wiranto and Habibie's mutual dependence. The two share a belief that dragging Suharto to court risks bringing down vast segments of Indonesia's elite and possibly creating widespread instability in the months prior to the elections.
Wiranto's backing of Habibie explains why the president resisted what Indonesian and diplomatic sources say were efforts by Muslim cabinet officials to remove Wiranto after the shooting deaths of eight students in mid-November. Several weeks later, the president again demonstrated his independence from his Muslim circle when he formed the 27-man Council for Uplifting Society and the System of Law, which now oversees national-security policy. Although Feisal was made a council member, Habibie appointed himself chairman and pointedly chose Wiranto to head the council's day-to-day operations.
Habibie's dilemma, however, is that in trying to please both sides he has pleased no one. More recent developments point to strains between him and Wiranto that may increase with time. One of these was the leaking of phone conversations between Habibie and Attorney-General Andi Ghalib that many suspect were made by military intelligence agents. Another was Habibie's claim that he had been the target of a Prabowo coup attempt in May, which implies Wiranto wasn't in full control of some troops.