Muninggar Sri Saraswati, Jakarta – When reform swept across the country in 1998, forcing authoritarian ruler Soeharto to step down, everybody hoped the movement would improve the life of the nation.
Indonesia has since taken several steps, including four constitutional amendments and direct legislative and presidential elections, to build a thriving democracy.
Seven years have passed since Soeharto was forced from office, but most people believe there has been little change for the better, according to a recent survey by TNS-Indonesia of The Jakarta Post readers.
Most respondents believe the economy is worse off than it was under the authoritarian New Order regime.
The majority of survey respondents said they had seen no improvements in law enforcement, human rights protection, public service, security, social affairs or politics.
The poll involved 506 respondents, who were equally divided by gender. About 400 respondents were over the age of 25.
More than a third of respondents said the reform movement had brought no change to the country's political life, 30 percent said the situation was worse than during the New Order and 26 percent said reform had resulted in improvements.
In public service, 60 percent of respondents said they had not seen any progress, compared to 30 percent of respondents who said public service had improved in the reform era.
Corruption eradication is a battle that successive post-Soeharto governments have failed to win, according to the survey.
As many as 35 percent of respondents said current antigraft measures were insufficient, 28 percent said the anticorruption drive was a failure and 34 percent said the campaign was working.
Regarding the economy, 54 percent of respondents agreed that present conditions were worse than in the heyday of the New Order, 34 percent said there had been no change since the financial swept across the region in 1997 and 12 percent expressed satisfaction with the government's efforts to deal with the crisis.
According to the survey, the reform movement did result in significant changes for the Indonesian Military, one of the main pillars of the New Order regime that helped keep Soeharto in power for 32 years.
Forty-seven percent of respondents thanked the reform movement for turning the military into a professional force, while 37 percent said there had been no improvement in the military's performance since the reform era began.
Amendments to the Constitution ban the military from involvement in practical politics, which is evident in the exclusion of the military and the police from the legislative bodies since 2004.
Ikrar Nusa Bakti, a political analyst at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, said he was not surprised by the poll results.
"It is not surprising. Seven years is quite a long time, people deserve a better life. The poll sends a clear message to politicians, both in the legislature and in the government, as well as to the judiciary, to work harder to uphold democracy," he told the Post.
Ikrar said the ongoing transitional period from an authoritarian regime to a democracy was a critical period because if it failed, the old regime would make a comeback.
"Do not let reformasi stall. Otherwise, people may begin longing for the prosperity offered by an authoritarian regime, which was actually false. It is dangerous," he said.