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Indonesia: The ferment is everywhere

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Green Left Weekly - November 29, 2000

Max Lane, Jakarta – Demonstrations and protests are a daily feature of life in Indonesia today. "Traffic jam, pak, two demos today" is a common refrain from taxi drivers.

The TV news and newspapers are also peppered with reports of different "showings of feelings" from all around the country.

Thousands of nightclub workers rally to protest impending raids by Moslem puritans; workers strikes; urban poor wanting water or demanding an end to "wild tributes"; farmers protesting manipulation of their land certifications. The ferment is everywhere.

Everything is being thrown into question as the Indonesian government, backed by all the major parties in the parliament, proceeds with opening the economy up to an almost completely unhindered penetration by imports and foreign capital.

The rupiah continues to sink in relation to the US dollar. Its current rate of Rp 9500 to the US dollar is more than 30% below what it was a few months ago.

Meanwhile, every new IMF Letter of Intent (LoI) signed by the Indonesian government promises to lift more hindrances to foreign capital. Almost every sector is now open to 100% foreign ownership. US capitalists are licking their lips, as are some Suharto cronies who still have US dollars outside the country.

Free trade

But what's now hitting people most is the government free trade agenda – ending protection for almost every sector of industry and agriculture. Prices sneak or jump up. Last week taxi fares went up by 46% and other transport costs will follow. Of course, the fee taxi drivers have to pay their owners also increased, so there's no relief for them. Electricity sneaks up here and there with unofficial increases.

Overall, the price rises hit very unevenly, devastating some sectors more than others.

In the rice paddies, fertiliser and pesticides have lost their 70% subsidy forcing up production costs for the already squeezed peasant farmer. Today a farmer with even 1 hectare of paddy, far more than the average 0.25 ha, producing 10 tonnes of rice a year ends up with hardly more than A$1000 a year – and for the country's basic staple!

Prices paid to farmers for their rice are collapsing following the last IMF LoI which declared that all barriers to the export and import of rice were being ended. Rice rots in warehouses because local government agents don't want to buy at current government prices, or because the government hasn't sent out the money yet or because the agents say the rice has too high a water content (with the result that the rice can't be stored). But where does a peasant earning $1000 a year get the money to hire driers to dry out the rice?

Prices drop as rice from Pakistan, Canada, US and Thailand piles up in warehouses. Even after a tariff is imposed on imported rice, it is still cheaper. The middlemen, who eventually end up buying the rice, squeeze down the prices.

Caught between falling price of rice and the rising costs of fertiliser, some farmers have abandoned their paddies. Others delay planting or skimp on fertiliser. Everybody goes into debt, with the government banks now charging 90% p.a. interest rates. The latest IMF LoI also promises to end any remaining cheap credit schemes for farmers. Everybody everywhere will have to go through the normal commercial bank credit systems.

The last remaining source of security a farmer has, a house and land, is now being threatened as scheming speculators bribe officials to rob them of their land through land certification scams. Or they end up selling their land to pay debts.

Everywhere the pressure is bearing down on workers and farmers as the Indonesian economy is "freed".

Power struggle

While the scattered, fragmented social struggles proliferate, the struggle for power among the political elite intensifies. In the wake of the overthrow of Suharto, no one faction dominates. Power sharing is the name of the game. But who is to get the biggest share? The parties squabble and fight for their portion.

Sometimes the fight is among themselves.

In one district I visited, five candidates from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) were struggling for the position of district head. The day before, one PDI faction had burned down the house of the candidate of another faction. The machetes were brought out.

The story is the same everywhere. Now, there are new kinds of demonstrations where it isn't simply workers and peasants protesting the violation of their rights.

Some demos are financed by one clique against another.

Sitting pretty among these squabbling groups is the party of the Suharto order, Golkar. It controls the position of chair of the House of Representatives, Akbar Tanjung. This is a key position for media profile. Most of the crony-owned media still support Golkar, presenting it in the best light.

Golkar remains the only party with a nation-wide structure and it still has the backing of the military. More than 40% of governors nationwide are still members of Golkar and in Java, the figure is 60%. When the new law giving enhanced financial authority to the provinces, including the right to borrow from abroad, comes into effect Golkar's coffers will be doing very nicely.

Golkar, the army and the corrupt officials that infect all levels of bureaucracy are what the People's Democratic Party (PRD) call the "Remnants of the Old Order". They still cling to power at many levels.

"Nothing has changed", the novelist Pramoedya Ananta Toer told me. "It's still them, the Suharto Order. The same people are still there in the bureaucracy. The elite is rotten, corrupt. Social revolution is the only answer."

The PRD's slogan "Smash the remnants of the Old Order, leave behind the fake reformers" has been taken up by almost all politicised society. There are the old Suharto forces and there are the fake reformers. Everybody knows this now.

Under pressure from student demonstrations key fake reformers, like President Wahid, squirm around trying to find a way to satisfy the demands for action against the Old Order. First Suharto is charged, but that fails as the court declares he is too sick. Now the bizarre "non-hunt" for Tommy Suharto is underway. Found guilty of corruption and sentenced to 18 months, he still eludes the government. Society laughs. Will Wahid have to sack the so-called "Mr Clean", Attorney-General Marzuki Darusman, former head of Golkar in the parliament?

Meanwhile, the Islamic conservatives do Golkar's dirty work. Every few days there is another demonstration of hundreds – sometimes more – of fanatical Moslem poor demanding Wahid's resignation or impeachment. They are responding to the attacks on Wahid by Amien Rais, who has more clearly aligned himself with the Moslem right, and who never stops scheming to win the presidency. In response Wahid's Moslem supporters rally in their para-military uniforms, mainly based in East Java, and declare Rais banned from East Java.

Fake reformers

The revolutionary movement faces enemies from all directions. Golkar and the army are preparing for a comeback at the first sign that the new parties – the squabbling fake reformers – lose their legitimacy.

The fake reformers – the current agents of the neo-liberal offensive – are weak, fractured and squabbling internally. At least some of them are willing to do deals with Golkar when it comes to crunch time. They are all afraid of the people, even the most liberal minded of them all, Wahid himself.

"Smash the remnants of the old order and their supporters!" "To refuse to fight the old order means you are an enemy of the people!" These are the slogans guiding the PRD's approach to the struggle to break the power of Golkar, the force that can bring the army back into power.

Meanwhile the PRD's campaigns for immediate demands continue: wage rises, payment of the fasting month wage bonus, tractors and capital for the farmers, return land to the farmers, cheap housing and free education.

The challenge for the PRD is how to bring all these struggles together: the fight to eliminate the space for Golkar and the army to make a comeback; the campaign to show it is the PRD and not the fake reformers who can lead this fight; the campaigns for immediate improvements to conditions for workers, farmers and the urban poor; and the fight against the IMF's neo-liberal offensive.

In the 1930s, when the anti-colonial movement swelled, a huge campaign of public meetings spread as workers and farmers came together to discuss the way forward, to demand change. They were called vergadering, which means gathering in Dutch. It later entered Jakarta slang as begandring, meaning to get together and discuss. Can this work again?

This is a question the PRD is asking itself now. Can people be gathered at village, town and province level to discuss what to do next. "Street protests alone are no longer enough", is a refrain I hear more and more. "We must raise the political level. We will try what they tried in the '30s again. Try to combine protest and discussion and mobilisation in the one event. As soon as we can next year." Another arena is opened. More to do.

[Max Lane is national chairperson of Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor.]

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