John McBeth, Jakarta – The new Democrat-dominated US Congress is not good news for Indonesia. But Washington watchers say the jury is still out on whether perennial critics of Indonesia, like Vermont senator Patrick Leahy and Samoan congressman Eni Faleomavaega, will home in again on Papua and human rights issues to pressure the Jakarta government.

Although it hardly raises a blip on most congressional radar screens, Indonesia has been used in the past as a bargaining chip in the inevitable negotiations that go on for votes on other matters that receive a great deal more American political attention.

"It's going to be very unpredictable," says the chairman of the US-Indonesia Society, former US ambassador Alphonse la Porta. "It's hard to see at this stage what issues are going to be major issues, but there is a general feeling that the situation has improved and is moving in a positive direction."

It will not, however, quieten some of Indonesia's more vocal critics. Jakarta remains vulnerable on Papua because it has failed to make the same progress in resolving outstanding grievances as it has done in Aceh, where local elections were held without incident this week.

Although armed resistance is virtually non-existent and big things are expected of newly elected Papua governor Barnabas Suebu, a lasting political solution may be far more elusive than in Aceh.

Mr Faleomavaega, who is expected to replace defeated Republican Jim Leach as the new chairman of the House International Relations Committee's sub-committee on East Asian affairs, is an unrelenting supporter of Papua independence, once describing the 2001 Special Autonomy Law for the province as "a sham... a complete farce".

The American Samoan was one of the main architects of language in the 2006-2007 Foreign Relations Authorisation Act, which criticised the failure of the Indonesian government to implement a law intended to allocate a greater share of revenues and more decision-making authority to the provincial administration.

Disturbingly for Indonesia, the legislation also called into question the legality of the 1969 Act of Free Choice, the United Nations-supervised plebiscite in which 1,025 hand- picked Papuan elders voted unanimously to join Indonesia.

Although the provision was subsequently watered down, it achieved something that had never been done before by elevating Papua to a level of institutional expression on the international stage that forced Jakarta to pay attention.

Mr Faleomavaega, as a House representative of the Territory of American Samoa, cannot vote in Congress but can cast votes in committee. He has relied on the crucial backing of Democrat Donald Payne, an influential member of the 39- strong Congressional Black Caucus that also includes prospective presidential candidate Barack Obama.

But bipartisan support also came from Mr Leach and Mr Henry Hyde, the veteran Republican chairman of the International Relations Committee. Mr Hyde is due to be replaced by Democrat Tom Lantos, a San Francisco colleague of new liberal House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Neither Mrs Pelosi nor Mr Lantos has focused on Indonesia, but Mr Lantos is familiar with the country and he has shown his tough side dealing with Myanmar and China and in his strong criticism of the US-India nuclear agreement. He is also a strong supporter of the Jewish cause – although he is not Jewish himself.

Papua may have replaced Timor Leste as the pebble in Indonesia's shoe, but perhaps even more problematic is the perception that despite all the progress that has been made towards democratic rule, impunity for the rich and powerful remains troubling baggage.

That is all encapsulated in the two-year-old mystery surrounding the bizarre poisoning murder of human-rights campaigner Munir Said Thalib, which is fast becoming the same cause celebre as the 2002 ambush slaying of two American schoolteachers in Papua.

It was the final resolution of that case that led to last year's lifting of the 14-year arms embargo against Indonesia. It could be the Munir case that conceivably leads to its reinstatement if the Indonesian government is unable to show it has the courage to get to the bottom of the crime.

Senator Leahy, whose position as head of the Senate Appropriations Committee's foreign operations sub-committee provides him with the vehicle to re-apply conditions to future US assistance, is still not convinced that Indonesia has gone beyond the mere trappings of democracy.

Pointing to the Munir case and the long list of officers who have escaped conviction or even investigation for everything from the 1999 Timor Leste bloodshed to the shootings at Jakarta's Trisakti University and the Semanggi interchange in 1997, Mr Leahy's aides plead for "one, just one case" to demonstrate that justice can prevail.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's decision to bring the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Dutch police into the Munir investigation is clearly designed to placate some of the criticism over the case, much of it stemming from the government's failure to investigate powerful former figures in the State Intelligence Agency who are suspected of being involved.

The Indonesian House of Representatives recently passed a resolution urging the Yudhoyono administration to set up a new independent team under National Police chief Sutanto to investigate the 2004 murder. Concerned that the case is gaining international traction, Mr La Porta says senior Indonesian lawmakers "see it as something that has to be cleared out of the way".

If it is not, then it could begin to attract the attention of people like Democrat Nita Lowey, head of the House Appropriations Committee's sub-committee on foreign operations, who follows human-rights and labour issues and would be important in the possible imposition of any new restrictions.

Others to watch for – all Democrats – in the House are socially conscious appropriations committee chairman-elect David Obey, and congressmen Jim McDermott, Howard Berman and Henry Waxman, all of whom have shown some interes t in Indonesian affairs.

To an extent, Indonesia has itself to blame for the nature of the attention it is attracting. The whole sad picture of faltering legal reform and an anti-corruption campaign that appears to have run out of steam has left many outsiders with the impression that little of substance has changed. More bad news arrived only days ago when a new Transparency International survey showed that public trust in anti-corruption efforts has plunged from 81 per cent last year to 29 per cent this year.

Underlying all this has been the long-held public belief that the police, prosecutors and the judiciary do not have the will to end endemic corruption, particularly where it might involve politically connected figures.

"President Yudhoyono has to prove that Indonesia is on a sound democratic track and that democracy actually means something," says Mr la Porta, who works hard at getting Indonesia a fair shake in Washington. "It's the whole question of impunity and the failure of the government to prosecute the really big fish."