Indonesia: Political Drift and State Decay
Indonesia:
Political Drift and
State Decay
DONALD E. WEATHERBEE
Donald S. Russell Professor Emeritus
University of South Carolina
T
he Indonesian national motto Bhinneka Tunggal Eka—“One Out of
Many”—symbolizes ethnic and religious pluralism embraced in a single
Indonesian nation. The nationalist notion of a unified Indonesia
incorporates a pan-Indonesian golden age myth of a fourteenth century, East
Java-based Majapahit Empire. It was given administrative form in the boundaries
of a Dutch empire encompassing the sprawling archipelago. Indonesian
nationalism was ideologically captured in the Pancasila, the Five Principles of
the state: belief in God, humanitarianism, nationalism, democracy, and social
justice. These were postulated as shared values underpinning a secular, plural,
and religiously tolerant society. The abstractions of unity, however, were a veneer
over the reality of Southeast Asia’s most culturally, ethnically, and religiously
diverse country. Even where one might expect uniformity, as in the ummat—the
Community of Islam—to which 85 percent of Indonesians belong, there are
deep divisions between movements and political parties committed to explicitly
Islamist agendas and moderates who accept the secular state.
Indonesian unity has been repeatedly tested. The first challenge was the
1950 conversion, after only eleven months, of the original federal republic into
a centralized unitary state. For many ethnic minorities, the unitary state, rather
than being an expression of Indonesian nationalism, was viewed as a vehicle for
Javanese domination. Comprising nearly half the total population, the Javanese
are Indonesia’s largest single ethnic group. The Java-centric central government’s
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Donald E. Weatherbee
administrative control over the resource base of the outer islands was perceived
as Javanese imperialism. The integrity of the state was threatened in the 1950s
by political rebellions of regionalists in East Indonesia and Sumatra making
common cause with the forces of the Darul Islam, who fought for an Islamic
state. In 1957, under President Sukarno, the republic responded with martial
law and a return to the Japanese-influenced 1945 Constitution with its implicit
Führerprinzip. The strong state that emerged was to be based on firm leadership
and a coercive military imbued with the spirit of its dual function that combined
security responsibilities with a national political and social role.
State leadership and military predominance were unified in 1966. In the
wake of an abortive left-wing coup, the military under General Suharto
established a “New Order” government using the tools of the 1945 Constitution.
Suharto replaced Sukarno as president. President Suharto’s constitutional
legitimacy was ratified every five years to 1997, by noncompetitive elections
guaranteeing majorities for the government’s election machine. Indonesia’s
national priorities under the New Order were defined in terms of economic
development. The requisites for this, from the regime’s point of view, were
political stability and social order ensured by the omnipresent armed forces, the
TNI (Tentera Nasional Indonesia).
Real opposition and dissidence was not tolerated. All organizations,
regardless of functional purpose, had to accept the Pancasila as their sole
organizational principle, elevating it to a kind of civil religion. Sensitive issues
involving race, ethnicity, and religion were banned from public discourse. The
enforcement mechanism was the pervasive reach of security forces. Military
intelligence and security units paralleled the civilian administration at every
level of government—from the national, to the provincial, regency, subdistrict,
and village. However, from an instrumental point of view, there was a payoff:
real economic growth and better material welfare for the majority of Indonesians.
The tradeoff was an authoritarian regime with a record of political repression
and human rights abuses, headed by a corrupt elite with the Suharto family and
its cronies at the core.
The Suharto government collapsed in 1998 amidst the political and
economic fallout of the burst Asian economic bubble. The TNI, demonized,
demoralized, and domestically and internationally shamed, assumed a less
prominent political role. The battle cry of Suharto’s foes was reformasi (reform),
but this was more a slogan than a program of action. The succeeding governments
of Presidents B.J. Habibie, Abdurrahman Wahid, and currently Megawati
Sukarnoputri, resemble Suharto’s in many respects—but without his authoritarian
political and social controls. The TNI’s dual function has been repudiated and
the Pancasila is now a dead letter as far as political content goes. It has become
commonplace to describe Indonesia’s current sorry state of affairs as a crisis of
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Indonesia: Political Drift and State Decay
governance. A frustrated Megawati once even likened her government to a garbage
dump.
The brave vision of reform is mocked by a lack of leadership, pervasive
corruption, political gridlock, bureaucratic jealousies, and multiple contending
political agendas. Policy drift and bureaucratic stasis characterize the Megawati
administration. Her eyes seem fixed on personal political power and status
confirmed by pomp and ceremony. The political struggles in Jakarta seem
increasingly irrelevant to what is happening countrywide. The Megawati
government has demonstrated neither the political will nor the capacity to face
its fundamental challenge, which she herself acknowledges is the survival of
the state in its present configuration.
To be fair, the successive post-Suharto governments did not inherit
institutional capabilities that could replace the military as guarantors of political
and social stability. Glaringly absent from Indonesia is a societal commitment
to the rule of law. The social empowerment given by Suharto’s political demise
has been impunity. With the lifting of both normative and real constraints,
groups and individuals have felt free, and even entitled, to challenge the authority
of government—acting outside of the prescribed constitutional and statutory
order. The little moral authority the presidency and parliament may still have is
further eroded by appeals to alternative moralities—including ethnicity and
religion—ruthlessly suppressed under Suharto but now freely at play. Rather
than a single vision of a unitary Indonesian state, now ideologically transmogrified
from Pancasila to democracy, there are contending visions. The contest is
becoming increasingly violent.
All of the symptoms of state decay are present. A major indicator is the
nationwide breakdown of law and order. There is a rising tide of criminality
that a corrupt, undermanned, poorly trained, badly paid, and poorly led police
force cannot stem. This has led to vigilantism and mob justice. Village guard
groups and so-called militias have proliferated, ostensibly for self-defense but
actually preying on the public and engaging in gang warfare. Political parties and
social movements have their own armies of goons and thugs to intimidate their
opponents and violently promote their messages. Mob violence whether for
political, ethnic, or religious motives is endemic.
Emboldened Islamic radicals forced underground or into exile during
the New Order, now released from Pancasila orthodoxy and military harassment,
openly call for an Islamic state. Strong-arm tactics against non-believers and
Muslims who don’t conform to the fundamentalist creed often accompanies
their rhetoric. The most prominent representatives of the militant Islamists are
the Jema’ah Islamiah (Islamic Group) that proclaims an Islamic state taking in
all Muslims of Southeast Asia; the Majelis Mujahidin Indonesia (Indonesian
Council of Islamic Warriors), a coalition of grassroots radicals; and the
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paramilitary Laskar Jihad (Soldiers of the Holy War). These groups are networked
to like-minded groups elsewhere in Southeast Asia. It is alleged that some of
their Afghanistan-trained leaders are linked to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda.
Jakarta reacts with nationalist outrage to questions raised by its neighbors after
11 September about Indonesia perhaps being a breeding ground for future regional
terrorists.
There is no question that the political program of the resurgent radical
Islamists is a threat to the secular Indonesian state. Yet, the moderate Muslim
majority seems cowed, its voice muted, allowing the radicals to set the agenda
almost by default. In part, this is because
radicals have appropriated the antiIn some places the the
Americanism attached to U.S. support for
ethnic cleansing can Israel and the bombing of Afghanistan.
only be compared to Moreover, many Indonesians share the
repugnance so powerfully displayed by the
Bosnia or Kosovo.
militant Islamists against the worst features
of globalization manifested as cultural
Westernization. There are 40 million unemployed Indonesians available for
mobilization in a country where the poverty index has reached 50 percent. For
radical protest, this is a promising recruitment base.
A more immediately grievous manifestation of state breakdown is the
outbreak of wide-scale ethnic and sectarian warfare. The U.S. Department of
State’s Indonesia 2001 Country Report on Human Rights Practices cites the
government’s ineffectiveness in “deterring social, interethnic and inter-religious
violence that accounts for the majority of deaths by violence during the year.”
Thousands of Indonesians have died and upwards of 1.5 million have been
forcefully displaced from their homes. In some places the ethnic cleansing can
only be compared to Bosnia or Kosovo.
Free from the controls of Suharto’s strong state and in the absence of
necessary institutional underpinnings of civil society in a weakening state, it is
not surprising that festering antagonisms should resurface. This is in part the
result of demographic realignments in the New Order as Javanese and other
migrants from overpopulated Java and Madura moved with government
encouragement into areas traditionally inhabited by minority groups, sometimes
displacing them from jobs and land. In cases where the migrants are Muslim and
the indigenous people Christian, religious conflict overlays ethnic tension.
A clear sign that transmigration would fuel violence came in 1997, when
indigenous Dayaks fought against migrant Madurese in the Sambas district of
West Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo). At least 3,000 died. In 1999 and 2000,
similar clashes occurred. In February 2001, a new round of Dayak-Madurese
fighting broke out. Fearsome Dayak warriors fell upon the Madurese in Sampit,
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Indonesia: Political Drift and State Decay
Central Kalimantan—hunting down and decapitating men, women, and children
by the hundreds. Local Malays in Pontianak, West Kalimantan, joined the Dayaks.
The Dayaks’ aim was to drive their fellow citizens from ancestral land. Over
100,000 Madurese fled Kalimantan while another 40,000 are in refugee camps.
To attempt to return to former places of residence is to risk death. Jakarta
authorities essentially stood by and let the fires of rage burn out, not willing to
waste assets in an area of low political priority.
Even more horrific in scope, intensity, and savagery have been three
years of ethnic warfare in East Indonesia. It began with a minor incident in
Ambon in January 1999. A local minivan driver had an altercation with two
Bugis migrants from Sulawesi. It was not just that the driver was native to
Ambon and his would-be assailants newcomers, or even that their ethnicity was
different. The crucial qualitative difference was that the van driver was
Christian—like the majority of people indigenous to the region—and the Bugis
were Muslim, as are most of the migrants to the region. The hiving off of North
Maluku province from Maluku in 1999 further diluted local Christian political
strength. This combination of ethnicity and religion was deadly in a region that
had historically was predominantly Christian but now has a Muslim majority.
Communal brawling turned into savage warfare that spilled over to the other
islands of Maluku province, then to North Maluku, and on to Poso in Central
Sulawesi. By the beginning of 2002, as many as 10,000 Christians and Muslims
had died and a half million were displaced from their homes. Militias were formed
and self-defense was translated into preemptive attack. Entire villages were
burned down.
The police and military were badly compromised, not only by inaction
but also by taking sides and joining the ethnic, sectarian war. They sold their
services as bodyguards and even sold their weapons. The situation was inflamed
when, in spring 2000, thousands of Laskar Jihad members began arriving from
Java to become the shock troops of what was now being called a “holy war” by
the Muslims. Their departure from East Java and landings in the Malukus were
facilitated by elements of the TNI. Laskar Jihad’s aim was to extinguish
Christianity in the provinces by killing, forced conversion, and expulsion.
As usual, various conspiracy theories were spawned. Some “democrats”
saw the hidden hand of the military instigating violence in order to destabilize
civilian government. Other Christian groups in East Indonesia worried that the
Malukus were a proving ground for a Muslim plot to transform all of East
Indonesia. This has prompted a revival of separatist sentiments. Certainly there
are multiple agendas at work. By February 2002, an uneasy peace had been
worked out at Malino, a Sulawesi resort town. The government did not impose
it. Acting as a kind of neutral third party, the government brokered a fragile
agreement between the bleeding, exhausted parties. The poison pill in the Malino
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accord was the requirement for the disarmament and banning of the
paramilitaries. Laskar Jihad, which did not participate in the peace process,
rejected disarmament, and no one seriously expects the government to enforce
it. Within weeks the violence had begun again.
A commitment to defend the rights of a minority is a sine qua non of a
plural democratic society. The post-Suharto governments have not demonstrated
this commitment. Their political will did not extend to risking possible majority
political backlash on Java. It is also abundantly evident that the police—now
separated from the TNI—are institutionally incapable of enforcing law and
order. Escalating lawlessness and nationwide domestic disorder raise the question
of whether there is an appropriate domestic security role for the TNI. In the
Malukus, the role assigned was more like a peacekeeping operation than law
enforcement. At the end of a long, uncertain, logistical tail—and with defective
command, control, and discipline—degraded TNI units did not respond
professionally. An examination of TNI tactics in secessionist Aceh and Papua
(formerly Irian Jaya) provinces, still from Jakarta’s point of view a domestic
question, reveals the same pattern of civilian abuse and rights violations that
existed in East Timor.
The separation of East Timor from Indonesia was a seminal political
event. It irreparably damaged the myth of Indonesia’s territorial integrity. It
blackened the already sullied image of the TNI; there is no question that the
ruthless militia attacks on East Timorese civilians following their overwhelming
vote for independence in the 1999 referendum was planned and coordinated by
the TNI. One UN political observer wondered if this kind of savagery was
embedded in the TNI culture. If it was meant to serve as a deterrent to separatist
movements elsewhere, it failed. The thrill of East Timor’s independence
revitalized separatist sentiments in Aceh and Papua, where there are longstanding
independence movements. The political promise that East Timor seemed to
offer has been only partially fulfilled. Jakarta has sought to mollify separatist
appeals elsewhere with concessions of partial autonomy in some administrative
and fiscal areas of responsibility, but rules out self-determination. Megawati
opposed Habibie’s agreement on a referendum in East Timor and has no intention
of repeating it in Aceh or Papua.
Aceh, the westernmost end of Sumatra, is home to one of the most
thoroughly Islamized populations in Indonesia. Acehnese dissatisfaction in the
secular republic was expressed early in support for the Darul Islam revolt in the
1950s. Sensitive to this, the government tried to allay unrest in 1959 by granting
the province “special region” status in which Islam would enjoy official respect.
Religion, however, is not the only—and perhaps not the most—important issue
on the Aceh separatists’ agenda. Like other peoples of regions outside of Java,
the Acehnese resent the fact that Javanese and other migrants seem to enjoy the
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greatest benefits from prosperity brought by oil and natural gas development in
the province. Furthermore, the Acehnese are proud of the long history of the
fiercely independent Aceh sultanate. It was not until 1913, after a thirty-year
brutalizing war in which tens of thousands of Acehnese died, that resistance to
Dutch subjugation was ended.
Aceh’s contemporary long war began in 1976 when the Free Aceh
Movement (GAM) took up arms against the government. GAM’s goal is
independence for Aceh. GAM’s exiled titular leader, Hasan di Tiro, is a
descendent of the last Sultan of Aceh, symbolizing its link to the past. For more
than a quarter of a century, Aceh has experienced vicious GAM guerilla warfare
and savage TNI counter-insurgency campaigns. The indiscriminate violence has
cost more than 10,000 lives. The fighting has been interspersed with ceasefires, humanitarian pauses, and fitful negotiations. As far as Jakarta is concerned,
GAM’s bottom line—independence—is not negotiable.
The collapse of Suharto’s government and the example of East Timor
brought new urgency to both sides. GAM stepped up its attacks and was buoyed
by demonstrations of popular support. GAM significantly embarrassed the
government by targeting petrochemical infrastructure, forcing ExxonMobil to
cease operations temporarily. In November 2000, 100,000 supporters rallied in
Banda Aceh, the capital, to demand a referendum. In contrast, when President
Abdurrahman Wahid made a two-hour visit a month later—wearing a bulletproof
vest and walled off by 2,000 security guards—the people ignored him. President
Wahid pressed for limited autonomy for Aceh while the TNI warned that unless
they beefed up their strength in Aceh, the province could be lost. Under President
Megawati, both the carrot and stick are being applied.
On 1 January 2002, a form of “special autonomy” went into effect.
Although implementing details remained to be worked out, Jakarta made two
main concessions. First, Aceh will share a much higher proportion of the revenue
generated from oil and gas, up to 70 percent. Second, Islamic Syariah law will be
enforced in Aceh. Aceh now is the only political unit in Indonesia where Syariah
law is official government law. A council of religious teachers advises the
provincial government on the implementation of Syariah. Women’s groups are
wary of the outcome. It has already been decided that a religious police force
will be formed to enforce the law. A strict Muslim dress code has already been
put in place. Most concern centers on marriage and inheritance. The application
of Syariah law in Aceh will give ammunition to radical Islamists elsewhere in
the country who will see this as a model for all Indonesia.
GAM’s struggle is not religious. Vice President Hamzah Haz visited
Banda Aceh shortly after “special autonomy” was proclaimed. He was welcomed
by a general strike. He warned the Acehnese to give up their futile dream of
independence. To back this up, a new TNI command has been formed for Aceh
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and thousands of reinforcements have poured in. New deaths and casualties
are reported almost daily. In the first quarter of 2002, there are already 300
dead. A renewed TNI effort to crush GAM raises the specter of East Timor and
the international opprobrium associated with it.
The issue of separatism in Papua—although it has the same political
significance in terms of the territorial integrity of the state—is qualitatively
different from that of Aceh. Papua (until 1 January 2002, officially named Irian
Jaya) comprises the western half of the island of New Guinea and is Indonesia’s
largest province. It covers nearly 22 percent of the island—an area larger than
Malaysia or Vietnam. Home to the largest rain forest in Southeast Asia, its
biodiversity is immense. It is rich in minerals and it has abundant fisheries. Its
relatively small population was estimated in 2000 to be 2.13 million, roughly
divided in half between the indigenous Melanesians, scattered in up to 100
tribal groups, and immigrant Indonesians.
The UN transferred the former Dutch New Guinea to Indonesia in 1962
as the result of a U.S.-brokered ending of an Indonesian military campaign. In
1967, after what has derisively been termed an “act of no choice,” the territory
was integrated into the republic as a province. Indonesian efforts to exploit the
resources and assimilate the Melanesian population into the national
administration and culture met stubborn but sporadic armed resistance from
the Free Papua Movement (OPM). The existence of the OPM justified a large
TNI presence in Papua and an abusive civil-military relationship.
An aggressive transmigration policy relegated the indigenous population
to the economic and social margins of the society. The ruthless and
environmentally destructive exploitation of Papua’s forest and mineral resources
makes Papuan activists believe Jakarta is turning their patrimony into an internal
colony. In November 1999, thousands of Papuans rallied for independence in
Jayapura, the provincial capital, in support of the OPM. In an act of symbolic
defiance they hoisted the Papua flag in towns throughout the province. President
Wahid visited Papua in January 2000 to apologize for past human rights violations
but categorically rejected independence as an option.
In 2001, the government began drawing up a framework for Papuan
“special autonomy.” The Papuan Presidium Council, the separatists’ legal political
forum, called instead for a self-determination referendum. This was rejected
out of hand: “Irian Jaya [Papua] will remain part of the country forever.” The
TNI continued its pattern of intimidation of pro-independence activists by
abduction and killing. The most egregious example was the kidnapping and
murder in November 2001 of Presidium leader Theys Hijo Eluay. Despite
mounting insecurity after the Theys killing and popular Papuan rejection of
“special autonomy,” the autonomy law went into effect 1 January 2002, but
without implementing legislation and regulations. The government’s unease with
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the situation in Papua was underlined by the cancellation of the scheduled 22
December 2001 trip to the province by President Megawati to officially hand
over the new status.
Papua’s “special autonomy” does not solve the underlying problem and,
in fact, aggravates it. As in Aceh, it provides for a greater share of resource
revenue to be retained in the province. The beneficiaries of this will be the
immigrant Indonesian population who monopolize political and economic life.
The drive for separatism originates in the indigenous Melanesian population
that does not even get half-a-loaf from autonomy. To make it more politically
difficult for the separatists to operate, the government, without reference to the
people, plans to split Papua into three provinces. The tactic that is being adopted
is direct physical attack on Indonesians. Of course, this could lead to reprisal
and ethnic slaughter that would make the Malukus look peaceful. It is reported
that Laskar Jihad is already training Muslims in Papua in “self-defense.” The
TNI will be hard pressed not to resort to the kind of organized violence against
civilians that it carried out in Timor.
The autonomy granted to Acheh and Papua has been extended in a
more limited fashion to local governments nationwide. Even before the collapse
of the Suharto regime, there were calls for decentralization and loosening Jakarta’s
tight administrative and fiscal control. In the spirit of reformasi, Laws 22 and 25
of 1999 were passed and went into effect on 1 January 2001. Loosely and
carelessly drawn, the laws provide a framework for administrative autonomy
and revenue sharing for Indonesia’s more than 360 regencies (kabupaten) and
cities. In the hierarchical pattern of national administration, these units of
government are below the provincial governments. Jakarta bypassed the provinces
in part because it believes granting greater autonomy might create new separatist
demands. If Jakarta thought that it could better control autonomy at the local
rather than provincial level, the experience in the first year was sobering.
Local governments have zealously expanded the boundaries of the
ambiguously defined limits of permitted areas of activity. Despite weak
infrastructure and poor human resources, they are competing with the central
government in raising revenue through creative taxation, licensing, and whole
new fields for corruption. Thousands of contradictory regulations have been
made at the local level leaving business enterprises wondering who is in charge.
Some local administrative bureaucracies have been ethnically purged. The
Minister of Home Affairs complains that many kabupatens consider themselves
sovereign.
President Megawati never favored local autonomy. She argues that it is
contrary to the 1945 Constitution’s principle of a unitary state in that it breaks
the hierarchical relations between Jakarta, the provinces, kabupatens and cities.
She declares some kabupatens are in “rebellion” against provincial authority.
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She would like to put the genie of decentralization back in the bottle, and
return to centralized government. Early in 2002, she put before the parliament
draft amendments to Laws 22 and 25 designed to curtail autonomy. This has
been strongly resisted at the local level as proof of Jakarta’s reluctance to really
share power. It is also charged that Jakarta bureaucrats and political leaders
want to protect sources of private revenue jeopardized by autonomy. In the
parliament, it appears that the major political parties are unwilling to turn the
autonomy clock back.
President Megawati’s staunch opposition to any diminution of Jakarta’s
political power in a unitary state is Churchillian in tone. In 1945, British Prime
Minister Winston Churchill exclaimed that he had not become the king’s first
minister to preside over the dissolution of the British Empire. History shows
that economic weakness, social distress,
diminished relative power, and political
Decisions in Jakarta are choices all contributed to the end of
increasingly irrelevant to empire. The dynamics of dissolution
the rest of the country. originated, however, in nationalist and
resistance movements in the far-flung
colonial units of empire. Megawati—
perhaps loyal to the vision of her father Sukarno, one of the towering founders
of the republic—does not want to preside over the dissolution of the unitary
state of the 1945 Constitution. The dynamics of dissolution are clearly present
as decisions in Jakarta become increasingly irrelevant to the rest of the country.
Can the downward spiral of drift and decay be slowed, halted, or even
reversed? President Megawati and parliamentary leadership have choices. So
far their decision seems to be to try to muddle through. This will only accelerate
state decay. More ominously, she may try to bring the TNI back into political
play and use it as an instrument of control—or vice versa. Chillingly, she told
the TNI in January 2002, to do their duty and not worry about human rights. A
return to military rule, overtly or behind a civilian front, will cut Indonesia off
from the West and put an end to hopes for economic recovery.
Another option would be not to block the gradual evolution of a kind
of de facto federalism, but to try to control it. In a democracy, governments
should not freeze out particularistic or regional interests; they should try to
accommodate them peacefully in a representative political framework. A first
step would not require constitutional change, but rather a change in the electoral
laws. Indonesian parliamentarians are elected from party lists by proportional
representation with no accountability to the voters in the electoral districts.
Single member districts with representation by MPs voted in by the
constituencies—not picked from party lists—would give citizens a greater voice
and political responsibility. It would also provide the stimulus for building, at
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the local level, structures of civil society necessary to support democracy. To
move in this direction would require the Jakarta political elite to act in the
public interest as opposed to self-interest, a quality absent from the era of reformasi
W
as it was in Suharto’s New Order.
A
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