(An edited version of this article appeared in the Courier Mail, 17 January 1998)
Indonesia now faces the most difficult months since the birth of the New Order in 1966. Indonesia's government is authoritarian. It has resisted change for over thirty years, and does not know how to make it happen now.
President Suharto has already exceeded the average life span for Indonesian men. Now he has to deal with an extended drought, a financial crisis that has turned into an economic nightmare, heightened sensitivies during the Islamic fasting month, and the usual intrigues before his re-election mid-March. Just when the nation most desperately needs leadership, his outgoing cabinet is paralysed by inertia.
But Suharto is by no means out of options. He is still the maestro of palace politics, and he remains untroubled by serious opposition. As a result, Indonesian politics could face an extended period of uncertainty.
The global economy has always presented Third World leaders with a Faustian bargain. Open up to it and you will have plenty of money to grease the wheels of politics. Provided you are ready to sacrifice your sovereignty to the greed of foreign speculators.
For years, the bargain paid off. Spiralling debt made Indonesia technically bankrupt, but it didn't matter so long as growth was high and the currency stable. After the August currency crash, the global economy came knocking at Indonesia's door in the shape of the IMF. Suharto held back at first, then signed a rescue package totalling US$40 billion, on condition he dismantle the corruption in which his own family plays such an important part.
The test of his sincerity to comply with IMF demands came on budget night, 6 January. The budget confirmed IMF fears that Suharto had no intention of swallowing its austerity medicine. It was expansionary and offered no new reforms. Financial markets reacted by dropping the rupiah to unheard-of lows: Rp 11,000 to the US dollar, four times the normal rate.
Then Suharto's phone began to ring. Clinton, Hashimoto (twice), Howard, Kohl. Big delegations flew in from the IMF, the World Bank, the US Treasury, even the US Defence Secretary.
What had till then been a matter for the Finance Minister was now a question mark over Suharto's national leadership. Two elderly statesmen of the New Order, Professor Sumitro Djojohadikusumo and Mohammad Sadli, said the crisis was no longer economic but political, and Indonesia needed a new president.
Suharto, ever the pragmatist, has been respected, but remote. Now, that remoteness means he lacks the moral authority to ask for sacrifices. As the people of South Korea and Thailand responded to the appeals of their newly elected leaders to strengthen their country's currency, Indonesians lost so much faith in their rupiah they rushed the banks to buy US dollars last week. A government campaign to Love the Rupiah has so far fallen flat.
On Thursday he launched on the high risk strategy of bypassing his cabinet and personally heading up a council to deal with the IMF demands. The markets dropped immediately, fearing he would fail.
Does all this add up to a lame duck government ready to fall? By no means. Predictions of Suharto's imminent fall are premature. Many Indonesian intellectuals do hope for wholesale renewal. They talk about the people's power that brought down the corrupt Marcos regime in the Philippines in 1986. But as yet there are no signs of organised protest on that scale in Indonesia.
Instead, Suharto could well emerge from the present crisis weakened but still able to call the shots on his own succession. One of the most important reasons: the opposition both within his own regime and outside it is weak.
Outside the system three names have come to symbolise hopes for renewal. Mrs Megawati Sukarnoputri is the daughter of Indonesia's first president, Sukarno. She briefly headed the minor party PDI from 1993, but was ousted in a military-backed party-room coup in mid-1996. On 10 January she announced to an enthusiastic crowd in her garden she was ready to stand for the presidency. However, the road from there to a Cory Aquino-like sweep into power seems impossibly long.
The second name on many lips is Amien Rais, president of the large urban Islamic organisation Muhammadiyah, which has a noble history of nationalism. Until recently Amien has stood for a somewhat conservative Islamicisation of Indonesian society. But last year he spoke out against foreign ownership of Indonesia's mineral resources. This broadened his popular appeal. He too has announced he is ready to stand for president. But like Megawati, with whom he is in contact, he has no easy way of turning his popularity into real power.
The third name is that of Abdurrahman Wahid, affectionately known as Gus Dur, chairman of the other major Islamic organisation, NU. Gus Dur's gentle brand of Islam extends the hand of friendship to Buddhists, Christians and even Jews. However, when Islamic intellectual Adi Sasono last week proposed a 'national dialogue' involving these three popular figures, Gus Dur refused to be part of it. He thinks the government is still strong enough to repress any organised popular opposition.
Even without Gus Dur, an alliance between Amien Rais and Megawati would be an exciting move towards renewal. It would restore the confidence that could do so much for the economy. It would give Indonesians the kind of popular leadership they have been looking for for three decades.
However, the embryonic partnership faces a hard road. It would need to overcome a long history of tension between two approaches to Islam: Amien is orthodox, Megawati is more secular. Differences on the IMF package could also emerge. Megawati supports the IMF, whereas Amien may be more ambivalent about it.
More likely than wholesale renewal on the Philippine model is the Chinese scenario, where the departure of Deng Xiaoping did not lead directly to democracy. Over thirty years Suharto has built a formidable bureaucratic machine that quickly eliminates dissidents. Even at this late hour, there are few signs of a Ramos, Marcos' general who defected to Cory Aquino, emerging in Indonesia. Indeed, the armed forces have plenty of reasons to hold Suharto's memory in perpetual reverence. He made military power in Indonesia almost unassailable.
Golkar chief Harmoko, a devoted Suharto loyalist, this week announced that Suharto was still their man. Few within the government dare oppose him openly.
No doubt establishment figures with a lot to lose are not blind to Suharto's age. They are quietly building new alliances to prepare for his demise. Money will play a big role. Factionalism within the bureaucracy is growing. Some rich businessmen who have thus far enjoyed the cozy business-government relationship are openly calling for 'political reform', code for the removal of Suharto. But all this is embryonic and hardly exceeds the bargaining that occurs every five years before Suharto's reelection.
The system Suharto built is so rigid it may be impossible to reform without a big upheaval. In the meantime, foreigners are astonished at the government drift and the absence of a sense of crisis. Indonesia has a great capacity to muddle through. Nor, so far, are the poor blaming Suharto for their troubles.
We may see some months of confusion. Most of the horsetrading
will be invisible. We will see demonstrations, but not speaking
with one voice. Some will be 'sponsored' by one faction against
another. Suharto's power will be clipped. If no new 'Suharto'
emerges to gather the reins of power into one pair of hands, the
rivalry may become semi-permanent. This could introduce some
healthy competition into an inflexible system. But if it is not
accompanied by moral leadership, Indonesia's transition to renewal
will be slow.
Gerry van Klinken, editor, 'Inside
Indonesia' magazine.
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