By Max Lane
The recent struggle in Jakarta over vice-presidential, cabinet and military positions has provided a chance for liberal reformist critics of the regime also to obtain media coverage for their criticisms of authoritarianism and corruption.
Grassroots activists in worker and peasant solidarity campaigns have usually been able to force media coverage independently of debates within the elite through actions such as demonstrations, strikes and delegations. Liberal critics of the regime, based in the professions and community organisations, have found this harder.
There are many strands to the liberal opposition, but two major currents tend to dominate.
One is a loose network of liberal democrats who have a base in the human rights, legal aid and civil libertarian institutions and groups that were established in the 1970s.
The other is a social democratic current led by figures associated with the Indonesian Socialist Party (PSI), banned in 1960 but still existing as an operating political network. There is considerable ideological overlap between the two groups.
The extraordinary open discussion of the current struggle for positions has provided greater opportunity for figures from both these groups to obtain press coverage for their views.
Adnan Buyung Nasution, a lawyer who founded the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation in the 1970s, has been one of the most outspoken critics of the regime on human rights issues and corruption. A critic of the left before 1965, he recently revised his estimation of former left-leaning President Sukarno, stating that it was the army leadership, not Sukarno, who undermined democracy
in the 1950s and '60s.
Nasution is part of a loose network of more outspoken liberals who have been consistent critics of Suharto since the early 1970s. In 1973-4 and in 1978, these forces combined with the student movement to offer serious challenges to Suharto.
Since the meeting of the MPR, the body that elects the president and vice-president, Nasution has been campaigning to revive such a network.
He will also be leading a six-person delegation to the UN Human Rights Conference in Vienna next month. This will be one of the first major delegations of Indonesians to raise human rights in their own country in an international venue.
Following the formation of the cabinet, Nasution spoke to Detik magazine.
He called for support for the principle of full disclosure of the private wealth of all ministers to the parliament. This, according to Nasution, would be one step towards a clean government.
But Nasution also argued that there were two kinds of clean government. There were governments that were "clean" in the sense of being relatively free of corruption but were not at all democratic — such as Singapore and Taiwan. "Clean government", said Nasution, could not be built by relying on the integrity and honesty of individual members of the government. Clean government had to be related to constitutional democracy.
According to Nasution, power always tends to corrupt. Therefore, he argues, control is needed. "Control from within [the individual] is not enough; you also need control from outside. When you have that control then you have a constitutional democracy."
Nasution therefore rejected Singapore and Taiwan as models (they are often touted as such by figures in the regime's Golkar party and the top levels of the bureaucracy).
He was asked whether open, democratic government was compatible with Indonesian culture. "This argument is always used by those in power", said Nasution, "but never by the people".
"We have to make sure we don't end up trapped by that kind of argument. Democracy must be developed here. There must be mechanisms of control and there must be credible punishments under the law. We must be constitutional and not just a bureaucracy where everything is justified as being in accord with doings things as a family."
Nasution also attacked the concentration of power in the president. He criticised the system of ministers being selected by the president and called for an alternative, such as appointment by the parliament after public hearings.
The present system, he said, was just like the president sharing out goodies, so then everyone felt in his debt. "... if we really want to head towards democracy and not just have autocratic power, then, for example, cabinet appointments should not just be based upon the people being free of corruption but it should be checked if they are actually supported by the broad mass of people or not."
Nasution expressed qualified support for the army's involvement in politics. If the army could guarantee the kind of clean government he outlined, then he would support that, "as long as they did not confuse the language of guns with the language of politics".
Soebadio Sastrosatomo was a member of the political bureau of the PSI and its parliamentary leader when it was banned in 1960. Like Nasution, he was arrested after a wave of student protest and political opposition in 1974. He was jailed for over two years without trial. He remains influential in dissident circles today.
Soebadio also told Detik he has no in principle opposition to military people being involved in politics — even though he blames the army, along with the Communist Party, for the
banning of his party.
He said that only the armed forces (ABRI) has the capacity to keep the archipelago together. But ABRI's "Dual Function", he said, should not be institutionalised. Military people should emerge as leaders because of their abilities, not because they are backed by military power.
Soebadio, like Nasution too, was highly critical of the lack of democratic functioning of present government mechanisms. "What we call democracy shouldn't give importance to authority, but to development. And to develop, everybody should be able to participate ... So the essence of democracy is that the people can speak and join in developing the country. Now we have institutions like the [parliaments] but their functions have been killed. We have elections to put people in the institutions, but we don't give them any real content."
He also criticised the existing system of three government-dominated parties. The parties aren't there to support democracy but to prop up the governing power. "All of it is nonsense!"
As do many dissidents from a PSI background, Soebadio also gives prominence to his criticisms of Suharto's economic policies. He says he has been critical of the New Order's economic settings because it has always been oriented just to economic growth and "GNP-ism". By contrast, "I have always fought against unemployment, poverty and ignorance".
He argues that the concentration on growth has invited "neo-colonialism" because only those with money can bring in the latest technology to reach the maximum growth targets. "So Japanese develop here, not Indonesians."
Moreover, he argues, these policies don't reduce unemployment because many labour-intensive industries are destroyed by new technologies which shed labour at the same time.