Indonesian opposition leader Megawati Sukarnoputri, quietly confident of securing the presidency this year, has vowed to put up a "clean and respectable" government with the will to restore confidence to a country rocked by a financial crisis and ethnic bloodshed.
In separate speaking engagements in Singapore yesterday, she said that the June 7 polls would be a turning point, enabling Indonesia to re-establish tenets ignored by the government of former president Suharto – and which remain ignored by the Habibie government.
Speaking in Bahasa Indonesia, and occasionally in English, she told members of the Singapore Press Club that key features to restoring confidence were an honest government, transparency in policy implementation and an independent judiciary to provide certainty of recourse to justice.
Earlier, at a lecture organised by the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies – the host of her private visit to Singapore – she said there was a "complete collapse of public confidence" in the post-Suharto government because the authorities failed to implement reforms demanded by the people.
The government was also not making any serious attempt "to eliminate the New Order culture and the economic political strength of Suharto and his cronies" which, she maintained, was the "main source of all the chaos" in the country.
Ms Megawati, who often left two key advisers – economist Kwik Kian Gie and former banker Laksamana Sukardi – to elaborate on the points she was making, said corruption, cronyism and nepotism remained in place, and charged that the government continued to resort to "brutality ... purportedly to promote democracy and uphold human rights".
The daughter of Indonesia's first president Sukarno also said that her travels across Indonesia gave her the confidence to predict that her PDI-Struggle party would garner the largest share of votes at the polls.
She described the party as one that would "not tolerate a dictatorship of the majority or the tyranny of a minority" and pledged to eliminate discrimination – including that in the business arena – and create a society "in which everyone is the same in the eyes of the law".
Both Mr Kwik and Mr Laksamana also refuted criticism that Ms Megawati spoke too often in general terms and was short on economic policy details.
They said a Megawati-led administration would have the political will to implement reforms required by the International Monetary Fund, would remain open to foreign investment, and ensure a transparent and competitive business climate.
The key difference, Mr Laksamana argued, was that the government of Dr B J Habibie has been unable to restore political and economic confidence "because he is a holdover of the Suharto period ... That perception of him is important because it dictates how the people continue to behave".
Ms Megawati herself charged that Indonesia's economic problems stemmed from the fact that growth in the past was "powered by corruption"; that crony capitalism, monopolies and cartels helped distort market-economy principles and that the rights of citizens were trampled on "in the interest of ... cronies". The Indonesian experience must serve as a lesson for all, she said.