BY MAX LANE
JAKARTA — Natalia Scholastika was a student activist in Bandung, West Java, when the first arrest warrant against her was issued in 2001. A member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PRD), she had helped organise a protest by thousands of workers in Bandung and there were clashes with the police. Several activists were arrested and put on trial. Natalia was not captured. A new police chief was appointed and the arrest warrant was forgotten. Scholastika kept organising. In November 2001, she was elected secretary-general of the PRD.
I met Scholastika in the PRD national office in Jakarta. It is a small house in the crowded residential area of Tebet. It serves as both the office for the Central Leadership Council, which coordinates the PRD's campaigning work, as well as being a place where activists can sleep at night.
"We have a political contradiction here", Scholastika said. "Especially on the campuses, everybody follows politics. There is no apathy. But at the same time, the student movement has declined and is in disarray."
Scholastika explained that the big student cross-campus activist alliances of the 1998 anti-Suharto movement, such as the City Forum (Forkot) and its offshoot Jarkot, have declined dramatically. "They can mobilise maybe a hundred students now. Forkot has only one significant base, the Cawang Trisakti campus."
Some groups that have been active in the past have been infiltrated by political brokers from the big parties or even the military. "One group even recently held an action in which they implied the student movement was opposed to putting the generals on trial for human rights abuses. Everybody is sure there was military money behind that", Scholastika said.
The latest issue to hit the headlines is whether Indonesia should end its relationship with the International Monetary Fund. Kwik Kian Gie, the minister in charge of the National Economic Planning Board and a member of President Megawati Sukarnoputri's Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP), opposes the IMF's instruction that Indonesia proceed quickly with the sale of several banks that the government took over after the 1997 financial crisis. They will surely fall into foreign hands.
Selling them early, Kwik argues, means selling them at very cheap prices and it also means that there would be no room for the government to reschedule the payment of the massive debts the government owes these banks. The size of these debts are nightmarish and could bankrupt the government in 2003 or 2004, according to Kwik. Megawati's other cabinet ministers have rebutted Kwik, stating that Indonesia cannot do without the IMF.
Debate
An extensive and well-resourced network of non-government organisations and other institutions has now developed, which helps maintain an ongoing debate around issues of economic and political reform.
"The political atmosphere is very good for the movement", Scholastika told Green Left Weekly. "There are so many issues that are politicising society. Most of the issues being raised are hurting the political standing of the elite and the military. The military seems to think that its safest tactic now is to keep silent — it is still on the defensive. The political elite is damaging itself. It is in an alliance in the government but each party is busy exposing the corrupt practices and unpopular policies of the other."
The PRD secretary-general said that the priority issue for the majority of Indonesians remains high prices. "This year alone the price of most basic goods has risen 10-30%. There has been no real rise in incomes. The people are being more and more squeezed.
"We have no trouble in convincing people that the problem is the Megawati-[vice-president] Hamzah Haz government itself. Its popularity is very low. There have been spontaneous actions in which local people have taken down the flags of the PDIP in their neighbourhood. Just recently, there have been demonstrations by PDIP members protesting against Megawati's decision to support an ex-general deeply for the position of governor in Jakarta. The general was involved in the deadly attack on the PDI headquarters in 1996. Illusions in Megawati are disappearing."
Alternative
Scholastika explained that the problem that the movement faces is how to present an alternative to the Megawati government that the people will see as credible. "We call for a government of the poor, but who will this government be comprised of? That is what people are asking. How will it come to power?"
She pointed out that the organised forces for a broader front that could challenge for power still had not yet emerged. "We had hoped that the May 1 Committee that organised the May 1 action could develop into such a broad front. But it has not developed beyond a trade union front taking up mainly labour issues. There is also the 'Command Post for Lowering Prices' which has gathered some youth but it is still limited. We are trying also to reinvigorate the coalition of intellectuals that formed during the anti-Golkar campaigns of Abdurrahman Wahid's presidency. But a clear alliance of forces that could be seen as an alternative to the government of the political elite is just not there yet. That is our task now."
"There is a debate taking place with other student and issue-oriented groups and NGOs", Scholastika added. "Is it time to raise the issue of replacing the Megawati government? Some groups, like Indonesian Muslim Students Action Committee (KAMMI), still view things in a moral framework — of 'cleaning up' the current government. Others have a phobia towards politics. Where they have developed a mass base of their own, they refuse to let it become involved in what they see as the 'dirty game' of politics."
It is a strange atmosphere in Indonesia at the moment. One cannot say it feels like the calm before the storm, because there are too many small squalls taking place. And it is not only the media discussion of politics, and the spontaneous anti-Megawati protests.
Every day, the newspapers report small and large local strikes and demonstrations or other grassroots actions. There are bombings in Jakarta and there is continuing unrest in Ambon and Aceh.
There are a large number of organisations that condemn the Indonesian political elite, a sentiment that is in line with the popular mood. Will they grasp the nettle, unite and put themselves forward as an alternative to the current government of the elite, as the PRD advocates?
From Green Left Weekly, June 26, 2002.
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