James Balowski, Jakarta – On October 20, former general Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono – popularly known as SBY – and business tycoon Jusuf Kalla were sworn in as Indonesia's first directly elected president and vice-president.
The Yudhoyono-Kalla duet garnered 61% of the vote in the second-round of the presidential elections on September 20, decisively defeating incumbent President Megawati Sukarnoputri. Megawati's three-year administration was punished by voters for failing to deal with rampant corruption, human rights abuses by the military, massive unemployment, rising prices and for forcing through unpopular neoliberal policies such as privatisation, mass dismissals and cuts to health and education.
Yudhoyono's election campaign played on the popular sentiment for change by promising to create a functioning bureaucracy, legal certainty and the rebuilding the nation's crumbling infrastructure. In was a campaign dominated by large doses of rhetoric about solving problems but no discussion of how this would be done.
Despite Yudhoyono's apparent landslide victory and popular mandate for change, even his most ardent supporters are not expecting any substantial policy changes, with many predicting a very short honeymoon as a prelude to a popular revolt as the illusions of an increasingly impatient and angry public start to evaporate.
In fact, Yudhoyono's only definite policy proposal to date has been a promise not to go overseas during the first 100 days of his presidency – a dig at Megawati who earned the public's ire by going on frequent overseas shopping trips.
Under the headline, "Man of promise may need his nation's patience", the Sydney Morning Herald's Jakarta correspondent Matthew Moore argued in its October 21 edition that Yudhoyono "had not even been sworn in as Indonesia's sixth president when the first demonstrators arrived at the parliament's gates. They carried placards demanding corrupt businessmen be jailed, and while there was no venom in their demands for justice, their presence was another reminder that the people are growing impatient."
On October 18, the recently formed United People for Genuine Change (PRPS) alliance held a press conference in Jakarta to announce that hundreds of protesters would attend Yudhoyono's inauguration to call on the new government to "uphold the promises which have been made" and that the PRPS would be organising a campaign to maintain pressure on the government.
The PRPS is made up of some 25 non-government, student and worker organisations including the Democratic Student Network (JMD), the People's Cultural Network (Jaker), the Action Study Circle for Indonesian Democracy (LS-ADI), the People's Democratic Party (PRD), the National Student League for Democracy (LMND), the Jakarta Student Consortium (KMJ), the Alliance of Papuan Students (AMP), Senjata Kartini (a women's NGO), the Jakarta Student Network (JMJ), the Families of Missing Persons in Indonesia (Ikohi), the Indonesian National Front for Labour Struggle (FNPBI) and the Association of Independent Trade Unions (GSBI).
True to its word, the PRPS organised simultaneous demonstrations across the country on October 20 – from the West Java capital city of Bandung to Bali. Demonstrations were even held on the isolated East Java island of Madura.
In Jakarta, hundreds of protesters from the PRPS, the Indonesian Muslim Student Front, the Greater Jakarta Student Executive Council and the People's Movement for Law Supremacy rallied outside the national parliament calling on Yudhoyono to implement genuine change.
Demonstrations calling for an end to the state of civil emergency in Aceh and the withdrawal of troops were also held by the Acehnese Democratic Women's Organisation (ORPAD) and the Acehnese Popular Democratic Resistance Front (FPDRA).
In a media statement, PRPS called for a "clean" government that would bring corrupt officials to trial, create employment, end mass dismissals, increase wages and initiate a program of industrialisation. It also called for Indonesian troops to be withdrawn from Aceh and West Papua, abolition of the Indonesia Armed Forces' territorial commands which allow the military to act as a political security force at all levels of society.
Following the rally, PRPS spokesperson Lukman Hakim told Green Left Weekly that the activist coalition was formed in response to the democracy movement's need to build an alternative political force to address the needs of ordinary people.
"SBY's inauguration provides us with a 'momentum' to pressure the government to implement genuine change. One-hundred days is enough time for the new government to demonstrate if it really has such a commitment", Hakim said. "Although it will be difficult to mobilise people over the fasting month [Ramadan] we are planning a series of public seminars and press conferences to maintain public pressure on the government."
He added that Yudhoyono's new cabinet line-up is already a cause for concern with key posts such economics minister going to business tycoon Aburizal Bakrie, a strong supporter of the International Monetary Fund's neoliberal prescriptions. Planning minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati and trade minister Mari Pangestu are also widely regarded as being pro-IMF.