[The following is excerpts from a report prepared for the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom which held a hearing on the Maluku Islands on February 13 in Washington D.C. The report is by R. William Liddle, an expert on Indonesia of The Ohio State University in the United States.]
Washington D.C. – Many of the problems that President Abdurrahman Wahid, or Gus Dur, faces are not of his making, and solutions are not readily available due to decades of authoritarian rule and other factors with deep roots in modern Indonesian, Dutch colonial, and even traditional Indonesian history.
Examples include: finding common ground with the many Acehnese and Irianese who for good historical reasons now totally reject membership in the Indonesian nation; decentralizing administrative authority to incompetent and venal regional officials; building a modern justice system after 50 years of government neglect of the police, lawyers, prosecutors, and judges; creating well-organized and accountable political parties; and asserting political control over an armed forces whose leaders have no professional control over their own junior officers or troops in the field.
Vice President Megawati Soekarnoputri may replace Gus Dur within a few months, which makes it necessary to speculate about the prospects for her presidency.
In brief, I expect that she will attempt to be a strong president who will: (1) try to reverse governmental decentralization of authority to the regions; (2) deploy the military as her chief instrument of policy implementation toward separatist movements in Aceh, Irian Jaya, and elsewhere; (3) ignore local conflicts, such as in Maluku, which do not threaten national integrity; (4) have less respect for democratic institutions at home, and rely more on the military for political support; and (5) promote a more nationalistic foreign policy which may have negative consequences for economic reform.
Megawati is similar to Gus Dur in that she feels that she is entitled, by virtue of her parentage and her party's electoral success, to be president.
She is thus likely to be similarly impatient with the need, imposed by the 1945 Constitution, to build a parliamentary system-like coalition of supporting parties in the legislature and Assembly. Neglect of her legislative base combined with vulnerability to charges of corruption, also a Gus Dur problem, may make her hold on her office similarly tenuous.
High-level corruption will continue, but may be more motivated by the desire for personal gain among individual officials of her Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan) and those of the government who cannot be controlled by Megawati or a party hierarchy than by the organizational need to build a war chest for the 2004 election campaign.
While Nahdlatul Ulama (traditionalist Muslim organization) is preparing for 2004 by planning a vast and expensive cadre and patron-client leadership, leaders of PDI Perjuangan believe that their success will depend primarily on the effective projection of Megawati's personal image, which can be achieved more cheaply through both government-controlled and private broadcast media in an election-year campaign.
The red thread that will run through Megawati's policy differences with Gus Dur is a narrower, more conservative conception of the national interest and of the primary role of the central bureaucratic and military state apparatus in achieving that interest.
In 1999 she opposed then president B.J. Habibie's offer of a referendum to East Timor, asserting that the Indonesian national territory was indivisible. In recent statements, she has opposed financial demands by regional politicians that she deems excessive and contrary to the common national interest, and reiterated her commitment to keeping Aceh and Irian Jaya within the Republic at all costs.
She has shown little interest in Maluku, where separatism is not an issue, even though Gus Dur sent her there on three occasions to help negotiate peace. She has deplored the tendency of the Jakarta press to exaggerate and sensationalize conflict among elite politicians.
This suggests that she may have a less sanguine view of the role of the press in a democracy than does Gus Dur (although Gus Dur has also been critical of the press lately). She has publicly praised and defended the military, which she claims has a special historic role in national political life.
Finally, like Gus Dur, Megawati is largely ignorant of economics and shares in the elite culture's trust in the state and distrust of markets and of the intentions of foreign economic actors.
She is thus no more likely than Gus Dur to restart the growth process in a way that will eventually benefit most Indonesians and promote democratization.
But where Gus Dur is an instinctive pluralist, as is reflected in his attempt at opening a dialogue with Israel, Megawati is an instinctive monist whose foreign policy is likely to be built on suspicion of outsiders, particularly the capitalist West that was her father's bte noire from the beginning to the end of his political life.
What are the implications for the United States policy of Abdurrahman Wahid's present and Megawati Soekarnoputri's prospective presidencies? How should the US respond to the continuing crisis in Maluku? The US should more actively engage the present democratic regime than we did Soeharto's authoritarian New Order, when our policy was influenced largely by Cold War considerations and our appreciation for Soeharto's record of economic success.
Indonesia is an important country regionally (and potentially globally) whose new leaders are committed to achieving national unity, democracy, and shared prosperity, key characteristics of modern societies.
The obstacles to their success are enormous, and the opportunities for outsiders to make a difference are also greater than ever before.
With regard to separatist movements and other regional demands, we should support peaceful efforts by the Indonesian government to negotiate differences in regions such as Aceh and Irian Jaya.
We should also provide technical assistance to help the government create viable provincial and district/municipality governments. We should oppose military or police action – currently being contemplated by the Abdurrahman, or Gus Dur, government and strongly supported within the Megawati camp – which is almost certain to be counterproductive, increasing the hostility of the people of Aceh and Irian Jaya to Jakarta and to Indonesia.
We should work toward restoration of programs of assistance to the Indonesian armed forces to help them become a professional force whose basic mission is national defense.
While the police must eventually take over the responsibility for maintaining public order, the military will for many years still be called upon in emergency situations – such as the current Maluku crisis – and must be able to intervene as a neutral, unbiased force to restore order.
Our assistance should be predicated on a clear understanding that the armed forces have given up their pretension to being an autonomous political actor. Accordingly, the territorial system should be dismantled.
Implementation of this recommendation may be more difficult to achieve under a Megawati government, which may be less sensitive to the requirements of civilian supremacy than is Gus Dur.
We should support a massive program to rebuild the justice system, including assistance in training and developing police, lawyers, prosecutors, and judges to a high performance standard.
The new Indonesian democracy cannot succeed in meeting the basic needs of its citizens, and will probably not even be stable, if it is not undergirded with a modern system of justice.
Because the roots of the Indonesian legal system are in continental Europe, this should be a multi-national program. This recommendation may also be harder to implement under a Megawati government more protective of the privileges of the state over society.
We should support the development of a modern party system, responsive and accountable to citizen demands and as free as possible of corruption, which delegitimizes democracy.
The core institutions of modern democracy, parties are especially weak in Indonesia because of the legacy of four decades of anti-party authoritarian rule.
International non government organizations, like the US-based National Democratic Institute and International Republican Institute and the German party foundations are probably best equipped to help in this area. We should continue to press the Indonesian government to adhere to its agreements with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and other international creditors and donors and in general to keep the economy open domestically and internationally.
Market-oriented economic growth, with appropriate government intervention, produces prosperity, as has been amply proved by the East Asian, including Indonesian, experience of the last half-century.
It also creates the social and cultural basis for a stable and effective modern democracy. Unfortunately, Megawati and Gus Dur are probably equally reluctant supporters of free markets.
Strict enforcement of the rule of law by a neutral police and an impartial judiciary is the ideal resolution of the Maluku crisis, according to most outside observers. Unfortunately, this approach does not work in much of Indonesia, for reasons already discussed, and has been particularly problematic in Maluku since the initial outbreak of violence in January 1999.
Nonetheless, it needs to be stated at the outset, and in conjunction with the general recommendations above, that it is the goal toward which the Indonesian government and interested outside parties should be working.
In the short run, two approaches seem most promising. One is to keep US and international pressure on the Indonesian government to find and prosecute the militia leaders most responsible for the violence.
International human rights groups can help by identifying those leaders and documenting their actions. Sanctions against the Indonesian government for failing to take action can include continued embargoes on arms sales and isolation of the Indonesian military, accompanied by reminders that the long term goal is restoration of military-to-military assistance under the terms laid out in the general recommendations.
The second approach is to maximize the international presence in Maluku, as a means of keeping a spotlight on the militias and providing a continuing flow of information about their activities to the outside world. This can be accomplished by programs such as those currently being carried out by the UNDP and USAID, most of which provide humanitarian assistance or sponsor Christian-Muslim mediation activities.
When the need is for justice, mediation is not likely to be effective, but at least the participants are continuously made aware of the presence of foreigners. These programs also help to encourage the "moderate middle" leadership strata to take control of local society back from the militia.
Finally, while it is true that the Indonesian police and military have proved themselves completely incapable of restoring order in Maluku, an international peacekeeping force does not seem to be a feasible alternative.
There is too little backing outside Indonesia and too much hostility in the country to the idea. The domestic hostility has two sources: the extreme sensitivity concerning Christian-Muslim conflict at the center and in many regions of the country; and the 1999 traumatic experience with foreign troops in East Timor.
To quote the careful and balanced report of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, Indonesia: Overcoming Murder and Chaos in Maluku, published in December 2000, "Foreign military intervention in Maluku would be counter-productive, could easily lead to further destabilization in Indonesia, and should not be sought." The report also suggests offering foreign observers, however, and recommends maintaining and increasing sanctions on the Indonesian military and police.