PIJAR, the Network for Information and Change, has launched a new slogan, Tritura 1998, a Triple People's Demand, which calls for:

A reduction in prices and stabilisation of the rupiah

A complete overhaul of the Cabinet

A new president

The name Tritura (Tru-Tuntutan Rakyat) is taken from the set of demands launched on the streets of Jakarta in 1966, backing Suharto's seizure of power.

In a statement issued on 9 January by PIJAR-Indonesia, the organisation recalls that in 1966, the New Order led by Suharto aimed to solve the economic crisis and set up a new government with a programme of development, oriented towards the outside world. Its political thrust was to back up its development programme with the security approach, ignoring the principles of people's welfare.

Now, thirty-two years on, the new order has become old. History is repeating itself with new actors in place. This government refuses to learn from history. In fact they are trying to write a new page in history no less disastrous than the old. Today's ruling power has become totally personalised and out of control, a recipe for bankruptcy. This is the primary cause for the mounting crisis now engulfing the country.

The monetary crisis is marked by a steep rise in prices and a sharp increase in unemployment which is causing economic stagnation. Nothing has improved despite the rescue plan offered by the IMF. International confidence in Indonesia is weakening. The problem is political as well as economic. It's not the rupiah that Indonesian people have lost confidence in but the government. Therefore, the first thing to be done is to introduce political reforms and arrange for a presidential succession.

The people are entitled to prosperity which means that nepotism, corruption, manipulations and monopolies must end. The struggle for reform has now reached a point at which it is essential to contruct new political structures which are democratic, which respect human rights and people's welfare.

In order to speed up the process and overcome the present political and economic crisis, PIJAR-Indonesia calls upon all the democratic forces to return to our historic roots and fight for TRITURA 1998.

Demonstrations

On 9 January, PIJAR-Indonesia organised a demonstration of several dozen people symbolically located at the base of the TRITURA monument in Jakarta. The demonstration proceeded without trouble although it caused major traffic jams.

The demonstrators shouting slogans calling for a New President and for TRITURA 1998.

The PIJAR statement extracted above was read out.

It was also stressed that the New Order had come into being in the wake of the murder or arrest of more than a million people accused of being communists. This was followed ten years later by the invasion of East Timor leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths, East Timorese as well as Indonesians, as well as massacres of Muslims in Aceh, Lampung, Tanjung Priok, Haur Koneng and Nipah, Madura.

There was no attempt by the security forces to halt the demonstration although dozens of agents in civvies were watching on the sidelines. This suggest either that the security forces were caught unawares or allowed it to proceed unhampered because they agreed with what was happening.

Small as it was, the demonstration was widely reported in the international press and shown on CNN.