M. Taufiqurrahman, Jakarta – Eight years after bringing down an authoritarian regime, the once thriving student movement is now in disarray.
No longer having a common enemy to unite their struggle, the movement is now deeply fragmented and can no longer produce a coherent platform. It is capable only of launching random attacks on the establishment.
And while eight years ago rallying students were given free lunches by sympathetic bystanders, what they get now is public scorn whenever they hit the streets and block traffic.
The absence of an authoritarian regime has prompted some student groups to join the power struggle, allowing themselves to be corrupted along the way.
The role of these student groups became clear when they took part in campaigns to topple the country's former presidents, from B.J. Habibie and Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid to Megawati Soekarnoputri.
These groups have relied on their "patrons" – former student activists who accumulated their own personal clout – for logistical support and in turn they backed whatever agenda was promoted by their patrons.
The patron-client relationship prevails and there is no critical discussion about any political agenda, which is dictated from above. "All discussion is completed at the elite level," a former student activist told The Jakarta Post.
Other groups have taken a more coordinated effort. Certain religious-leaning student movements have aligned themselves with the country's fastest growing political parties. These movements, which continue to build their networks on university campuses throughout the country through piety-oriented study clubs, have won the hearts of many students.
On the opposite side, there are also leftist-leaning student groups like City Forum (Forkot) which still earnestly attempt to channel popular demands. These groups, perennially dealing with logistical problems and dwindling membership, have been the most vocal in speaking out against the fuel price hikes, unchecked privatization and low wages.
Recently, Forkot brought dozens of residents who live near to high-voltage power lines in West Java to the capital for a hunger strike.
Formal student organizations on campuses like university student senates and student councils have fared the worst. A lack of ideological discussion within these organizations seems to have rendered them helpless in the face of ever-changing political and social issues. Complicating matters, the appeal of consumerism, especially in Jakarta, has lured many students away from activism.
Jakarta, however, is not the only city to see student movements hit the wall. "Even in Yogyakarta, the bedrock of the student movement, they are in retreat," political analyst Hermawan Soelistyo told the Post.
Hermawan, a researcher at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, is familiar with student movements as he has had a hand in organizing students in the period approaching the downfall of the New Order regime.
The only place where students are admired for their activism, Hermawan said, is in Makassar, South Sulawesi. "Students there are still united by a common enemy, Jusuf Kalla. There has been constant resentment against him, even before he was Vice President," he said.
This however does not explain last week's students'actions in Makassar. They rallied against Chinese Indonesians following the arrest of one Chinese Indonesian who was arrested and charged of torturing his maid to death.
La Ode Ridaya Ngkowe, a former Yogyakarta-based student leader, said that what was needed was a reorientation of the direction the student movement should now take.
"Such a reorientation is possible only when students seriously ponder their ideological choices. You know the 1998 student movement was born out of intense discussion that started in the early 1980s," he told the Post.