Patrick Guntensperger, Jakarta – If the purpose of the recent terrorist attacks in Indonesia was to undermine democracy and rattle investor confidence, the July bombings of the luxury JW Marriott and Ritz Carlton hotels present hard choices for freshly re-elected President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. How his new government responds to the heightened threat perception will go a long way in determining his reform legacy.
In his first term, Yudhoyono won international plaudits for his pursuit and prosecution of terror suspects. Hundreds of suspected Islamic militants were rounded up and his government oversaw the high-profile execution of the three principal planners of the 2002 Bali bombings that killed more than 200 people, mainly foreign tourists. That marked a stark contrast to his predecessor, Megawati Sukarnoputri, who alienated both the United States and Australia due to her inaction in combating terrorism.
On the other hand, Yudhoyono has been criticized for commuting the already brief sentence of Abu Bakar Bashir, the alleged spiritual leader of the Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist group, which envisions the creation of an Islamic caliphate across majority Muslim territories in Southeast Asia. His critics have also pointed to his unwillingness to root out terrorist indoctrination in Islamic schools, likely out of political concerns he may be portrayed by his politically opponents as an insufficiently staunch Muslim.
In the immediate aftermath of the July hotel blasts, which killed nine people, maimed at least 30 and coincided with a regular meeting of foreign business executives, Yudhoyono made a cryptic speech suggesting the bombs were politically motivated and that he was a primary target of the attack. Some interpreted his oblique comments as suggesting that his political opponents were somehow involved.
The subsequent seizure of a 500-kilogram cache of explosives, allegedly intended to be packed into a van and detonated in front of the presidential residence, has raised the possibility of more terrorist attacks. Meanwhile, Indonesian police and intelligence units are still searching for Noordin Mohamad Top, the fugitive bomb-maker thought to be the mastermind behind the July bombings and other terrorist attacks in Indonesia.
The four-year lull in terror attacks, which had previously targeted the Australian embassy, the stock exchange, the JW Marriott, and several tourist haunts on the resort island of Bali, had convinced many Indonesia watchers that Top, and by association Jemaah Islamiyah, had either changed tactics or been effectively uprooted by arrests and other counter-terrorism operations.
But the inability of security forces to apprehend Top, who may have escaped a prolonged siege at a safe house in Bogor that resulted in the deaths of three of his associates who allegedly plotted to bomb the presidential residence, raised new questions about Yudhoyono's terror-fighting credentials.
As the manhunt for Top hits one dead end after another, Yudhoyono's top security personnel have floated some controversial ideas for improving their terror-fighting capabilities, ones that if fully implemented would have serious implications for Indonesia's burgeoning democracy. For example, police recently announced that they would begin to monitor sermons delivered by certain Muslim clerics in an effort to identify any incitement to hatred or violence in the name of religion.
Police later backtracked on the announcement after a backlash from religious groups and people arguing for freedom of expression, and they denied that security officials had already instituted the surveillance scheme. However, according to reports, police in Batam, an island near Singapore, have already started watching over sermons as part of stepped-up security measures during the holy month of Ramadan.
More controversial was the announcement by Inspector General Ansyaad Mbai, head of the government's anti-terrorism desk, that he would seek legal power to increase from five days to two years the length of time for which suspected terrorists could be detained without charge.
When the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence and the Indonesian human-rights monitor, Imparsial, raised objections, Mbai said that he had only expressed his personal views and that his comments were not reflective of any government policy initiative. Although these anti-terrorism trial balloons were apparently floated without official sanction from the presidential palace, they simultaneously indicate that some of Yudhoyono's top counter-terrorism officials want tougher tools to fight back against terrorist threats.
At the same time, the immediate and vocal outcry against the proposed measures demonstrates the exceptional democratic progress Indonesia has made since the fall over a decade ago of former dictator Suharto's authoritarian regime. Many are still acutely aware that as many as a million Indonesians died in Suharto's anti-communism purges and instinctively cringe at suggestions that security personnel be given additional powers or special authority.
While a military approach to hunting terrorists might be more effective than sleuthing police work, proposed tougher anti-terror measures, including the suspension of habeas corpus, raise images among many Indonesians of the Suharto era's worst abuses, as well as the excesses and torture perpetuated by US forces against Muslim terror suspects at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
After delivering him two overwhelming electoral mandates, Indonesians are clearly looking to Yudhoyono, despite his history as a Suharto-era soldier, to entrench more deeply democratic policies and institutions. Whether the moderate Yudhoyono can maintain that momentum in the face of a revived terrorist threat and pressure from his security forces to curb certain civil liberties in the name of national security will be a key test of his second term.
How Yudhoyono finesses the balance between those competing demands will largely define the next phase of Indonesia's political transition, including his legacy as a democratic reformer or backtracker.
[Patrick Guntensperger is a Jakarta-based journalist and teacher of journalism. His blog can be found at http://pagun-view.blogspot.com.]