Indonesia after Suharton
..., unexpected decline of participation and very disturbing interfering power by military. Troubles that civil democratic government had to deal with while solving the economic crisis after 1997 (economic crisis in Indonesia was worse and longer than in other East Asian countries and the country still has not fully recovered from that) made this transition much harder then in other countries. For instance the Indonesia rupiah was trading at more than Rp. 10,000 to the US dollar compared with Rp. 2,400 in July 1997 (Liddle et la 2000:382). The remainders after Suharto’s era, not only the economic catastrophe but also declining and uncivilized society made the situation even worse. 3.1 Military Powers in Indonesia Democratization needed to eliminate the inclination of Indonesian military powers to pretorian political interfering that they tried whenever they felt to. Here the democrats have a hard time with building the basis of civil sovereignty that is so important in every democracy. The military in Indonesia was quite powerful in the end of 1990s (Liddle et al 1999:13). They were building political and economical basis at least from the beginning of Suharto’s era (so called „New Order“) in 1960s. But even earlier they tried to increase their political and economical influence during weak constitutional democracy in the end of 1950s. Unfortunatelly the politicians often own very diverse political interests and lack of cause-and-effect knowledge, and deficiencies in democratization theory (Liddle et al 2000:398). This fact increases a threat of military’s coming back to power and consequently this threat conflicts with Linz & Stepan’s theory of democratic consolidation as it is mentioned above. 4. Conflicts and Their Causes 4.1 Violent Conflicts The global wave of democratization, that raised in the beginning of 1970s made many parts of the world more democratic (Huntington et al 1991). However it would be easy to deny that the world is in some kind of order. That means that democracy collaterarly existed with civil wars inside states and those often ended up in a violent conflict between ethnic groups. This can be explained through a general statement: „the more people start to play a role in politics, the more probable are ethnic and other conflicts in this or that country“ (Snyder et al 2000:27). So new democracies sometimes faced the paradox between democracy and political violence. Indonesia could be a typical model for that. On one side could be Suharto’s resignation considered as an opportunity for building more democratic Indonesia. But on the other side we can say that it created conditions for escalating all violent conflicts in the country. As a multi-ethnic country Indonesia had big troubles dealing with many violent conflicts since 1997: nationalistic and separatistic movements in provinces Aceh, Irian Jaya (in January 2000 renamed to Papua), East Timor, religious conflict on Moluccan Islands, ethnic conflict on Western Kalimantan and various anti-Chinese conflicts in several cities. The desintegration of political participation typically influenced the form of violent conflicts both between horizontal (ethnic, religious) and vertical (economically stratified) groups. These conflicts represented a huge problem for the new democratic leaders and they still threaten the political stability of Indonesia. Some of the Indonesian people even started to think that the existence of democracy itself produces so many conflicts. But this of course leads only to the delegitimization of the democratic idea. 4.2 Defective Democratization Although the characteristics of these conflicts are different I think that the blow up of violence was caused by incompetent state that was not able to ensure economical balance and social equality among territorial and social groups. These factors can be traced in all decades of Suharto’s wrong political and economical governing. For example Free Aceh Movement (GAM – Gerakan Aceh Merdeka) which is a significant nationalistic movement that opposes the central Indonesian government could be seen as a political expression on bad and centralized governing that caused social and economical inequity and massive political and military oppression. Also the invasion and occupation of East Timor (former Portuguese colony) in 1975 was a wrong step that that was not solved until 2002 when East Timor with help of the United Nations became fully independent (BBC News 19/05/02). Just this conflict where Suharto used means as repression or famine cost the country hundreds of thousands human lifes. Since 1997 the democratization process is being stimulated by strengthening people’s hopes in better economical and social arrange. This is situation typical for the first steps of democratic transition and will calm down with further democratic consolidation. So in my opinion the right way for managing this situation is not to accept a return to authoritarian system but consolidation of democracy itself. In other words a violent conflict might appear during the beginning steps of transition to democracy but „democratic consolidation is the best way how to calm it down“ (Gunther et al 1995). Although as prime minister’s assistant Anwar noted: „consolidating democratic processes will be an uphill struggle“. When I say that the escalation of violence is caused by defective democratization I mean: 1) incompetence of central government to solve economic crisis and ensure some kind of economic sufficiency 2) neglecting institutional structure (constitutional reform, local autonomies) 3) lack of civil sovereignty (depolitization of military powers, elimination of military powers from economic sector) 4) lack of congrous strategy for settling conflicts Here the military factor is important, in the case of Indonesia the military powers abused this situation for gaining or retaining positions both in political and economic sector. In other words the high intensity of violence can be used by hard-line supporters for strengthening their position against democratic regime. And according to Schendler „civilian supremacy over military is one of the conditions of democratic consolidation“ (Schedler et al 1998:91). This is a clear prove of the uncompletness of democratic consolidation in Indonesia. 5. Role of Military Powers 5.1 Military’s Priveleges In the early days of transition to democracy the military forces used civil violence for supressing their political opponnents. So far the military powers actually reached some of their political objectives. To this we can count having a special representation in the House of Representatives (DPR – Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat) and in the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR – Majelis Permusyawaratan Rakyat) (Liddle et al 1999:26), enlarging their territorial system on Aceh and Molucca Islands, keeping their companies with independent funding (which takes away the possibility of direct control by the central government) and foremost retaining a significant role in settling conflicts and violence. The fact that the civil democratic government was not able to deal with conflicts and violence (which was one of the barriers for democratic transition and consolidation) was used by military powers as an argument for keeping their strong influence in the political system. In future this could be a reason for military powers to intervene or even destroy the immature Indonesian democracy. And according to the theory of Linz and Stepan where they consider consolidated democracy as a „form of government in which the right to make collective decisions is the product of fair, free, and competitive elections; in which the authority of democratically-elected leaders to make these decisions is not subject to the power of groups or institutions that are not democratically accountable; and in which elected authorities govern themselves democratically“ (Linz & Stepan in Gunther et al 1995:78) we cannot consider Indonesia as a consolidated democracy right because of the strong role of military powers. 5.2 Time for Reform The insistent resistance of military powers against further political democratization is getting more intensive through low level of civil political uniting and through diversity between leftist and rightist groups in their relation to the use of force. There is a strong consensus among the Indonesian elite about major reforms, creating effecti...