Jakarta – The reform movement which has the principle aim of eliminating corruption, collusion and nepotism can no longer be left to the large political parties who obtained significant votes in the 1999 general elections. After almost five years in power, not one objective of reformasi has been carried though by the big parties.
"Reformasi has only become a political commodity of the elite parties which are in power at the moment", said People's Representative Assembly (DPR) member Meliono Suwondo from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) fraction in an open discussion titled "The Democratic Movement and the 2004 Elections" at the Joang Building in Jakarta on Monday (1/9).
As a [PDI-P] party member, Meliono is absolutely certain that the agenda of reformasi will not be carried out by the large parties. "In the coming general elections, don't hold any hopes in or vote for the big political parties", he said.
Meliono explain that in the time that he has been a DPR member from the party which received the largest number of votes in the 1999 elections, policies on the implementation of the agenda of reformasi, such as the elimination of corruption, collusion and nepotism along with abolishing the dual function [social and political role] of the armed forces have never obtained support.
"In PDI-P, the elimination of corruption is only the seventh priority and is not considered important. I have seen that there is no sincerity [in dealing with corruption]", he said. Meliono hoped therefore that the new political parties which have not been proven to be "rotten" will carry out the agenda of reform.
Kleptocracy
Appearing as a speaker in the open discussion was Budiman Sudjatmiko (an activist from Movement Indonesia) and the chairperson of the management board of the Indonesian Catholic Student Association, Maria Restu Hapsari. Like Meliono, these two youth activists are also pessimistic that the 2004 elections will bring about any change in the democratic life of Indonesia.
"It does not requires a grounding in political science to become a politician in Indonesia. What is needed is a sufficient amount of money and believing that enough people think your important. There is no democracy in Indonesia. What there is, is kleptocracy, where those who are in power are busy thieving. Money politics cannot be separated from this kind of democracy", explained Budiman.
According to [Budiman], the former chairperson of the People's Democratic Party (PRD), under these kind of conditions, it is hard to create a civil society in Indonesia because political society is full of thieves. "Unfortunately, those who glorify civil society do not understand that civil society [is only] able to be created though a dialectic with a healthy political society", he said.
According to Maria, the failure of the agenda of reformasi has been caused by the political parties which won the 1999 elections and those who have emerged as leaders who do not sincerely think about the issue. "The political parties are only busy thinking about consolidation themselves and fighting for their own interests", she said.
Because there is no contribution from the political parties which can be experienced directly by the people, the popularity of these parities and their leaders has declined sharply. According to Meliono, the popularly of PDI-P has declined in the last six months. The general chairperson of PDI-P, President Megawati Sukarnoputri is not as popular as other [political] figures, for example in the special region of Yogyakarta [in Central Java] and West Java [where PDI-P has it main base of mass support]. (INU)
[Translated by James Balowski.]