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Restive Indonesians find little hope in vote

Source
New York Times - May 29, 1997

Seth Mydans, Jakarta – Something happened on the way to the thoroughly engineered government landslide that is widely expected on Thursday in a parliamentary election here in the world's fourth most populous country.

An often violent monthlong campaign produced an outpouring of disaffection with the 31-year rule of President Suharto, a tenure that has brought Indonesia increasing prosperity but little political openness or redress for grievances.

Although the government has sought to control every aspect of the vote – restricting campaign activities, mobilizing government workers, vetting candidates for all three parties and reviewing their speeches – a widespread restiveness and frustration have made themselves felt in rallies, riots and a broad and illegal campaign to boycott the vote. "I want to see change in Indonesia," Mohammad Feli, a 21-year-old art student, said as he eyed the soldiers guarding his alley here in the capital as the campaign ended last week.

"There is too much unemployment in Indonesia," he said. "I want justice and equality for everyone. I want human rights. I want a system like overseas, like in America."

But in an election-eve speech on Wednesday, Suharto said democratic development in Indonesia would be "a long process." He asserted that a strictly-controlled political system was necessary to assure stability and economic development.

The riots that have shaken the country since last July, when mobs rampaged through Jakarta, appear only to have strengthened the government's sense that Indonesia is too volatile to allow for greater openness.

"What we have seen in the streets is the revenge of the poor," said Juwono Sudarsono, vice governor of the Indonesian defense college.

"A lot of my colleagues argue for American-style openness," he said. "They talk of the cut and thrust of democracy. Well, you get a real cut and thrust here, with people using knives to kill each other. Openness among the poor is like giving them a lethal weapon."

Elections in this nation of 200 million people, which the government calls "festivals of democracy," are designed more as ritual than substance, offering a rare forum every five years for political expression but producing little effect on the country's leadership.

The 500-seat Parliament, made up of 425 elected representatives and 75 members of the military, is largely ceremonial. If Suharto, 75, chooses to stay on for a seventh term, as most people expect, he will be endorsed next year by a People's Consultative Assembly in which Parliament will be joined by 500 additional delegates selected by the government.

And even if Suharto, known for his surprises, chooses to retire, there is no strong opposition figure in a position to replace him. When people speculate about the future, the guessing game is over who the president might select to carry on his legacy.

Over the years, he has seen to it that no potential successor emerged. He has named a new vice president with each election, and a chief virtue of the current incumbent, Try Sutrisno, is said to be his blandness. A year ago, when the leader of one of the non-governmental parties, Megawati Sukarnoputri, showed signs of presenting a real opposition, the government engineered her ouster as party chief.

The split that resulted has in effect neutered her party, the Indonesian Democratic Party. The government's election board did not approve either Mrs. Megawati or her supporters as candidates.

Last week, Mrs. Megawati – the daughter of the nation's first president, Sukarno – announced that she would not vote on Thursday.

But despite the restlessness born of his long tenure and of the country's stunted democratic system, Suharto has stated repeatedly that "we will not change a system that has proven effective."

Some foreign and Indonesian political experts suggest that the recent violence was as least in part a result of the frustration and political immaturity bred by Suharto's closed political system.

An Indonesian election monitoring group that is not sanctioned by the government asserted this week that the campaign violence resulted from "inadequate political room and inadequate socialization of nonviolent values and the accumulation of social frustration."

With shocking suddenness, a variety of local conflicts have exploded into convulsions of vandalism, arson and looting often aimed at the Chinese and Christian minorities, who are seen as symbols of affluence in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation. Banks, shopping centers, car dealerships and government offices have been attacked, as well as churches and Buddhist temples.

In one of the worst incidents, as many as 130 people died on the last day of the campaign in the remote town of Banjermasin when they were trapped in a shopping center that was set on fire by rioters.

But although the government system has hardly changed over the last three decades, Indonesia has undergone broad transformations that are straining the social fabric.

The economy has continued to grow at 7 percent to 8 percent a year, and the inflation rate has been held to less than 7 percent. Jakarta has swollen into a vast and increasingly modern metropolis. But economic growth has brought sharp disparities in wealth, widespread unemployment and underemployment, rapid urbanization and social disruption and unredressed seizures of land for new factories, supermarkets, golf courses, housing developments and whole new towns carved out of the rice fields.

One of the main problems Suharto's government faces is an income gap. A thin layer of society has grown very wealthy very quickly. A broad underclass remains very poor. In between, only about 18 million people make up a middle class that Juwono said might form the basis of a healthy democracy.

Another crucial problem is a generation gap. The violence and the most passionate opposition rallies have mostly involved the young and the poor, a fast-growing sector that some analysts say is the greatest threat to stability.

Of the nearly 125 million eligible voters, fully 20 million have reached voting age only since the last election. Many are unemployed and angry, with some 2.1 million seeking to enter the work force each year.

More than 80 million people are too young to remember the poverty, hunger and political chaos of the 1960s, when Suharto came to power. They did not experience the purge of Communists in 1965 that led to the deaths of 500,000 people.

They take for granted the near-universal schooling, health care and basic services the government has provided over the last three decades.

Newly connected to the outside world through mass communications, they are demanding more say in local and national affairs. They are protesting widespread corruption, government abuses and an often unresponsive local government and judiciary system.

These themes distilled themselves into a generalized mood of defiance and dissatisfaction in the final days of the campaign.

"We are the party of the poor!" a demonstrator in Jakarta shouted, waving the green banner of the United Development Party.

An unemployed bus driver named Ambrosius looked on from among the soldiers who guarded the streets.

"The future is gloomy," said Ambrosius, 47, who like many Indonesians uses only one name. "So many people have no job. There has to be change."

His friend Hilarius, who is also unemployed, saw little hope of that. "Whoever is in charge, we are still going to be coolies," he said. "That's the reality. Change is going to take many years."

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