APSN Banner

Tanjung consolidates his Golkar position

Source
The Nation - November 4, 1998

Andreas Harsono – While Indonesians await the People's Consultative Assembly convention next month, State Secretary Akbar Tanjung is maneuvering within the ruling party. Andreas Harsono writes.

When most media were busily covering the congress of Megawati Sukarnoputri's Indonesian Democratic Party on the resort island of Bali, her main rival, State Secretary Akbar Tanjung, who is also the chairman of the Golkar ruling party, quietly announced in Jakarta that he had decided to recall 41 Golkar legislators. "We need to regenerate our cadres. There are a lot of Golkar cadres who need to be given an opportunity," said the soft-spoken Tanjung, adding that most of the dismissed legislators are also former cabinet members during the rule of strongman Suharto.

The decision to dismiss 36 legislators from the House of Representatives and five legislators from the People's Consultative Assembly was announced in a decree issued by the Golkar executive board on Oct 9 which was signed by Tanjung and Golkar secretary general Tuswandi.

Included on the list were Sarwono Kusumaatmadja and Siswono Yudhohusodo who used to serve in the Suharto cabinet until March and turned out to be the most critical members of the ruling party and joined student protests to force Suharto to step down from power two months later. "It's the biggest recall ever made in the Golkar history," said Kusumaatmadja.

But many political analysts believed that the dismissal was basically made to consolidate Tanjung's power base in the party which is making nerve-breaking preparations to anticipate the convention of the People's Consultative Assembly next month. The Assembly, the highest state institution in Indonesia, is expected to reinstate Habibie's presidency, to amend some previous decisions and to pass Indonesia's new election law drafted by the law-making House of Representatives.

Kusumaatmadja was among a few Golkar legislators who openly opposed Tanjung's election in the Golkar congress in August during which Tanjung had out-maneuvered candidate Edi Sudrajat of the Kusumaatmadja camp. Sudrajat, Kusumaatmadja and some other Golkar figures even set up a loosely-organised National Front after the congress to oppose the administration of President BJ Habibie. They frequently met with Megawati and made no effort to hide their sympathy for her camp. "The dismissal of former cabinet members who no longer support Golkar will help reduce Golkar's difficulties in the extraordinary session of the Assembly," said political scientist Indria Samego of the Centre for Information and Development Studies.According to Samego, legislators like Kusumaatmadja and Yudhohusodo have no "selling point" for Golkar. "They will even influence people not to vote for Golkar in next year's general election."

Political scientist JB Kristiadi of the Centre for International and Strategic Studies, however, said in an interview with the Jakarta Post that the dismissal could not be looked at separately from Habibie's efforts to maintain his presidency and to win the general election next year.

Kristiadi said the dismissal will do more harm than favour to the ruling party. "The active and former cabinet members were replaced by new and unfamiliar faces who do not know Golkar well. In the end, Golkar will only be capable of securing a maximum of 10 per cent of the votes.

"The dismissal also showed serious fragmentation within the military-backed Golkar which had never found difficulties to win more than 50 per cent of the votes during the carefully-orchestrated five-yearly elections organised by the Suharto regime since 1970. Dewi Fortuna Anwar, an aide to Habibie, even said in a seminar organised by a military-related think-tank that Habibie's main competitor for president is not Megawati but from within Golkar itself, as if trying to say that the Habibie camp had become more aware of Tanjung's political power.

Despite its internal bickering, Golkar is very likely to face tough competition in next year's election against at least three other big parties which include Megawati's Indonesian Democratic Party, the liberal-left National Mandate Party of Muslim leader Amien Rais as well as the rural-based Nation Awakening Party of Muslim leader Abdurrahman Wahid.

Political observer Riswanda Himawan of the Gajah Mada University said that Golkar had been divided into five different factions. The Tanjung camp is the strongest whose supporters are mostly alumni of the influential urban-based Muslim Student Association (HMI). Tanjung himself was a student activist in the 1960s. The second strongest faction is the Habibie camp whose main supporters come from the influential Association of Indonesian Muslim Intellectuals (ICMI). According to Riswanda, active military officers tend to support the Tanjung camp rather than the Habibie one.

The third is of the Sudrajat and Kusumaatmadja camp whose supporters have been dismissed from Parliament but still gets a lot of support among retired army officers. Sudrajat himself used to head the powerful armed forces and is still widely respected among his peers. The forth and the fifth are respectively the camps of House speaker Harmoko and the Suharto family. They are relatively weak. The Suharto camp, who used to be very powerful during the rule of the old man, is now even finding difficulties to survive. Most of the Suhartos had been dismissed from Parliament weeks after his resignation.

It is still a big question mark whether the Tanjung consolidation might lead to a stronger Golkar which is going to win next year's election. Kusumaatmadja and many other heart-broken Golkar figures have vowed that they would like to fight against Golkar. Sudrajat himself still maintains his seat. He openly said that he wondered why Tanjung did not include him in the black list, as if challenging Tanjung to dismiss him.

Country