INDONESIA: Wahid, Sari call for 'people's congress'

BY MAX LANE

JAKARTA — On June 25, the Jakarta Media Centre was packed to overflowing.
Former Indonesian president Abdurrahman Wahid (Gus Dur) and Dita Sari,
the most prominent labour movement figure in Indonesia, were going to speak
on the same platform.

Representatives of Megawati's Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle
(PDIP) and Vice-President Hamzah Haz's United Development Party (PPP) were
also invited, but expectations were low that they would attend.

Judhilherry Rustam, representing the Vigilance Against the New Order
Committee, a watchdog group on corruption and abuse of power, was also
on the panel. I had also been invited to speak as an academic observer
of Indonesia and a sympathiser of the democratic movement in Indonesia.

Wahid's speech was a combination of criticisms of basic government policy
together with factional attacks, sometimes quite bitter, on his rivals
within the political elite — Megawati and Hamzah Haz in particular.

The next day, Rakyat Merdeka, a daily paper with a mass circulation
among Jakarta's urban poor and workers, carried the front-page headline,
“Gus Dur gives a report card”. The paper's report summarised Wahid's criticisms
of the Megawati government in point form:

 

• 
  Corruption and collusion have continued under Megawati's presidency.

• 
  The state-owned enterprises have been turned into milch cows for the political
  elite.

• 
  The livelihood of the people has been taken from them.

• 
  Many state assets have been let slip away into private hands.

• 
  The government prioritises the interests of the big corporations.

• 
  The parliament has become a place where votes are bought and sold.

The article also reported Wahid's advocacy of a five-year moratorium
on all foreign debt repayments so that the money could be used to fund
improvements in the economic welfare of the common people.

Not surprisingly, these criticisms received strong support from the
audience of mainly students, urban poor, political activists and journalists
at the June 25 meeting. There was little disagreement either from the speakers
that these were serious criticisms that needed to be made.

Dita Sari concretised some of these criticisms by raising the issues
of returning price subsidies to basic goods and protecting local industries.
She also emphasised that these criticisms indicated the Megawati government
was not capable of dealing with the current economic and political crisis
and that, therefore, it had to be replaced.

An interesting debate followed on how to achieve a new government. All
speakers, including both Wahid and Sari, agreed that there should be both
extra-parliamentary as well as parliamentary efforts to bring about a change
of government. The differences centred on the potential mechanisms for
advancing these efforts and ultimately, on what kind of government was
needed.

I had gone to the meeting wanting to pass on my impressions of the situation
during the month or so I had been in Indonesia. One of the most striking
things was the emergence of new social protest movements in the 1990s.

New trade unions and peasant groups formed, the student movement grew
and led the overthrow of General Suharto's military dictatorship, a feminist
movement started to emerge and NGOs were formed. Central to this process
also was the mushrooming of action committees on local issues.

Since the fall of Suharto and the opening up of more opportunities for
public expression of dissent, scores more trade unions, peasants', women's,
professional and other interest groups have been formed. Ad hoc action
committees have emerged everywhere. I doubt whether there is an Indonesian
anywhere who has not been involved in a street protest or who does not
have friends who have.

There are scores, probably hundreds, of radical or at least critical,
discussion groups, study groups and small publishers of radical literature.
While the student movement lacks any common focus, students' interest in
politics is deeper.

Part of the three-hour discussion at the June 25 meeting focused on
how this extremely dispersed and leaderless process of politicisation and
protest could be galvanised to provide a political alternative to the government
of the political elite. One suggestion was the formation of a “people's
congress” that could bring together all these elements to try to hammer
out an alternative political and economic program.

Dita Sari immediately supported this suggestion. Wahid responded, at
first, with a general statement that neither the Peoples Democratic Party
(PRD), of which Sari is a leading member, nor his own National Awakening
Party (PKB), could achieve political change on their own, and that they
had to work together. However, when pressed by journalists at the press
conference immediately after the debate, he stated his support for the
people's congress proposal.

“This is a good proposal”, he said. “But any steering committee or organising
committee must be representative. That will be an issue.” Later, another
journalist asked what the possible timing would be for such a gathering.
“To be frank”, Wahid answered, “The PKB has made no preparations on this
issue yet. We haven't even been able to get our internal problems fixed
yet, let alone to prepare for external issues.”

Another journalist asked: “The people need something to happen, Gus
Dur. Do they have to wait for the PKB to fix itself first?” To this Wahid
replied: “I think Dita should work on this.”

Was Wahid trying to reduce his commitment to supporting such a congress
by urging Dita Sari to take the first step? In any case, most of the mainstream
media over the next couple of days carried articles with headlines like:
“Gus Dur agrees to support pro-democracy congress” or “Gus Dur supports
people's congress”.

There is currently a discussion in the Indonesian parliament (MPR) over
whether the country's next president should be elected directly or, as
is the case now, by the MPR. The PKB supports direct elections, as do all
the other parties except the PDIP. The military-police faction in the MPR
also opposes direct elections. Wahid made it clear that he was willing
to stand again as president and said he was already campaigning in the
regions.

One frustration that I thought many people must feel with the presidential
elections is that the law forbids anyone under the age of 40 from standing
as a candidate. I raised this issue at the June 25 meeting, pointing out
that it meant that Dita Sari could not stand as a presidential candidate.

In his criticisms of the Megawati government, Wahid attacked the government's
prioritisation of the interests of the “black conglomerates” and international
capital. He said that the enterprises of the “little people” — the peddlers,
the food stalls, etc. — were suffering. He used the term “people's capitalism”
to refer to the kind of socio-economic system that he seemed to prefer.

There was no time to debate this out, although one older member of the
audience challenged the panel to state their preference for either capitalism
or socialism. Dita Sari took this opportunity to restate the PRD's critique
of the government's surrender to neo-liberal policies and to argue that
the only way to ensure an alternative program in the interests of the poor
was implemented was to struggle for socialism.

[Max Lane is a visiting fellow at the Centre for Asia Pacific Social
Transformation Studies, University of Wollongong. Lane is also national
chairperson of Action in Solidarity with Asia and the Pacific. Visit <http://www.asia-pacific-action.org>.]

From Green Left Weekly, July 10, 2002.

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From GLW issue 499