Indonesia: A Nation on the Brink

President seems naive, erratic as nation of islands struggles with corruption and religious conflict in a difficult transition to democracy.

by David Seago, Summer 2000 Gatekeeper
Reprinted with permission of The News Tribune (Tacoma, Washington)

JAKARTA, Indonesia July 16, 2000 -- Our taxi ground to a halt, stuck in Jakarta's infamous traffic. The cab's air conditioner barely worked, but we chose to saute in sweat rather than roll down the windows and let in the noxious fumes from the street.

To pass the time, I turned to our Indonesian interpreter, Aryanti, and asked her about her plans for the future. Now that Indonesia has finally become a democracy, I kidded, would she like to run for president someday?

"Oh, no," she laughed. "I want to be the president's masseuse. I'd make more money."

If you get the joke, you're a long way toward understanding the long road that faces Indonesia and its current president, Abdurrahman Wahid, as they struggle to make democracy work after shedding decades of autocratic rule.

If you didn't get it, it helps to know that Wahid's personal masseur and "spiritual adviser" recently managed to abscond with $ 4 million in government funds - only the most absurd in a series of scandals dogging a president who was supposed to clean up Indonesia's endemic corruption.

To say Indonesia has serious problems is a huge understatement. Yet it also holds tremendous promise. It is a nation on the brink - and no one knows yet whether it will topple into chaos or find its way to a stable and secure prosperity.

After spending a week in Jakarta with a group of American journalists interviewing key players in Indonesia's unfolding national drama, I discovered why Americans should care about this country's fate.

With a population of 212 million spread across a resource-rich, 3,100-mile-long archipelago of 17,000 islands, Indonesia is the world's fourth-most-populous country. It is home to some of the world's most diverse cultures as well, with more than 300 ethnic groups speaking 365 languages and dialects.

With a population almost 90 percent Muslim, it is also the largest Islamic nation and, for the moment, the world's third-largest democracy, after India and the United States.

At a time when radical Islamic fundamentalism has displaced communism as the world's most worrisome force, Americans, or any champions of freedom for that matter, should root for the success of Indonesia's new government.

But democracy arrived in Indonesia only last October, when Wahid, a nearly blind but revered Muslim cleric popularly known by the nickname Gus Dur, the country's first democratically elected leader.

Wahid, 59, still is a popular figure, with a penchant for telling jokes and respected for his commitment to democracy, openness and religious tolerance. He has made it clear he has no intention of turning Indonesia into a rigid Muslim state.

But high hopes for Wahid's government have waned dramatically in the past three months. As our group made the rounds of high government offices and visited with local intellectuals, journalists and American experts on Indonesia, we rarely heard a good word about Wahid's performance.

The common refrain: Wahid is naive and erratic, prone to making outrageous statements that later have to be retracted by his aides. He doesn't have a clue about the economy and doesn't much care. He has begun packing his Cabinet with political cronies, displacing capable ministers who actually understand the country's enormous economic problems.

He is failing to respond with the firm hand needed to quell bloody Muslim vs. Christian violence that has claimed thousands of lives in remote provinces such as Sulawesi and the Malakus, the former Spice Islands.

He is too dependent on what people tell him, and often the government's direction depends mainly on who talks to Wahid last.

"He's our Dan Quayle," says Jusuf Wanandi, head of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta.

Wanandi seethes with disdain for all of Indonesia's current political figures. "The problem is leadership. Leadership!" he shouts, waving his arms. He calls Wahid's Cabinet ministers "dummies."

A leading Indonesian economist, interviewed in the English-language Jakarta Post, casually refers to the president as "a fool."

"The joke is that Gus Dur is not capable of linear thinking," Stuart L. Dean, president of General Electric Indonesia, told us at a breakfast meeting.

Amien Reis, the University of Chicago-educated head of the People's Consultative Assembly and one of Wahid's main political rivals, had dropped broad hints all spring that the president might be impeached for incompetence.

But when we met with Reis, he backed off on the prospect of removal when the assembly meets in a crucial annual session in August. Wahid must by law give a national "accountability speech" at the assembly.

During former president Suharto's autocratic, 32-year rule, the assembly had only one real purpose: meeting once every five years to elect Suharto to a new five-year term.

But after Suharto's 1998 resignation, forced by student riots and general unrest over the economy's collapse in the Asian currency crisis, the elected assembly suddenly found it had power.

As Reis pointed out, however, no one is really sure about the limits of those powers. Perhaps the assembly could legally remove Wahid; perhaps not. Indonesia's 1945 constitution is painfully brief, well-suited for strongmen like its first president, Sukarno, and Suharto, its second, but not for the needs of a modern democracy.

Reis complained that he and other political leaders feel they have had to "baby-sit" the president. The assembly will expect corrective action from Wahid in August, something like a massive Cabinet shakeup and installation of competent ministers. Wahid probably will get another chance, Reis said, but if he does not perform, "he will have to go."

Much of Wahid's credibility and perhaps his political survival depend on the performance of another man, Attorney General Marzuki Darusman. Ironically a member of Suharto's ruling Golkar party, the cool, soft-spoken Marzuki has been charged with investigating Indonesia's many corruption scandals - and with bringing Suharto to account for abuse of power and financial misdealings.

Putting Suharto in the dock would be the most dramatic way the government could show it is addressing one of Indonesia's most glaring problems: an ingrained habit of corruption that permeates nearly every nook and cranny of Indonesia's official structures, including its courts. Even in Indonesia's Supreme Court, it is understood that decisions are for sale.

This is Suharto's legacy, because he set the example. He allowed his family, military allies and cronies to enrich themselves in all manner of shady deals, often by taking cuts of government monopolies.

Last year the Asian edition of Time magazine estimated the Suharto family has amassed at least $ 15 billion worth of land, cash, private jets and other assets. Other estimates range as high as $ 45 billion.

Corruption is such a constant that Indonesians now calling for reform routinely use "KKN" as shorthand in political conversation. That's an acronym for "corruption, collusion and nepotism." Everyone knows what it means, and most Indonesians are weary of it.

Tackling corruption cases is critical, Marzuki says, for two reasons: It is necessary to restore public confidence in Indonesia's legal and political system, and it is essential to Indonesia's economic recovery.

International lending agencies such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank insist on legal reforms as a condition for billions in economic assistance they've promised Indonesia. And desperately needed foreign investors, who have fled Indonesia since 1997, won't return until they know they can conduct business "according to the rule of law," Marzuki contends.

But Marzuki's task may be like cleaning the Augean stables. Of his staff of 60 prosecutors, only five or six are competent and completely trustworthy, he acknowledges.

"Marzuki is hopelessly out-gunned" in terms of talent and resources, says Indonesia scholar Douglas Ramage of the Asian Foundation.

Nonetheless, Marzuki vows to bring charges against Suharto before the people's assembly, known as the MPR, meets next month. Suharto, now under house arrest, has been questioned by Marzuki's investigators, which is one sign that much has changed in Indonesia.

As Marzuki suggests, the economy is much on the minds of Indonesians, from the political and business elites to the poor dockworkers who still lift planks of teak and mahogany to their shoulders to unload colorful wooden schooners at Sunda Kelapa, Jakarta's old port.

In the Asian currency crisis of 1997 and 1998, Indonesia was one of the worst hit. The rupiah lost nearly 80 percent of its value. The national economy contracted 13 percent, throwing millions out of work. Most of Indonesia's banks, holding billions of dollars in bad loans, went bankrupt.

Indonesia's small middle class, about 10 percent of the population, saw its savings devastated. Even the poor - about 60 percent lives below an official poverty line defined as $ 1.50 per day - felt the pain in higher prices and shortages of food.

One sign of hard times is an explosion of street vendors in Jakarta. The number of sidewalk vendors selling everything from fried foods to watches and small trinkets has more than doubled to 270,000 since 1997.

Another sign: Jakarta has seen a surge in "bus singers," unemployed people who ride the buses with guitars, singing plaintively in the hope of earning a few coins from passengers.

Even in Jakarta's teeming slums people talk of the economy. One day our group abandoned its air-conditioned bus and fanned out into the city to talk to ordinary Indonesians. My party headed for Senen, where housands live in a sprawling, trash-strewn collection of hovels and ramshackle buildings hard by railroad tracks.

There we met Hamasuddin Sukarno, a cheerful, shirtless, chain-smoking fellow sitting amid stacks of red wooden coffins. At his feet, small boys played a game with cards portraying the muscled hunks of the World Wrestling Federation.

Hamasuddin, we learned, runs a small coffin-making enterprise to support a shelter for homeless children. More than two dozen children, ranging from infants to 16-year-olds, live on the premises. Many have parents who recently came to Jakarta seeking work but have no place to live.

We asked Hamasuddin: Does he feel people like him are any better off since Suharto fell?

"No difference at all," he snapped, suddenly serious.

A day later, on the quay at Sunda Kelapa, a dock supervisor named Tobing invited us aboard a schooner being loaded with teak. Tobing lost half his income when the rupiah crashed, making it harder for him to send his children to school. But at least he has a job.

The economy seems to be getting a little better, Tobing told us. He's optimistic. He thinks Gus Dur is a good man. His main concern is cleaning up corruption, but he knows it will take time.

"It's not like 'open your hand,'" he said in English. The crooks aren't going to make it easy.

Hamasuddin and Tobing hardly make for a representative sample, but they likely are typical of ordinary Indonesians who want both a better life and a fairer society.

Near the end of our stay in Jakarta, we finally met the man whose job it is to try to produce both of those results: Wahid.

Ushered into a well-appointed meeting room lined with high-backed chairs, we found the president dressed in a traditional Indonesian formal batik shirt and peci, the elongated black cap many Indonesian men wear. Standing, he greeted each of us with an unseeing nod and a soft handshake.

We unloaded with a hard one right away: We've heard many complaints this week about your leadership as president. Do you expect an effort to remove you at the assembly in August?

Unperturbed, Wahid replied in soft, heavily accented English: "I do not expect a vote of no-confidence to be taken, because people would not accept such an action."

During the rest of the 15-minute interview, Wahid gave the sort of rambling, imprecise answers we had been led to expect. Regarding the religious violence in the Malukus, "We have taken the policy of waiting, because we are so outnumbered. There are so many islands...."

Then Wahid dropped the sort of bombshell for which is he is known. By July 15, he said, the government would arrest "thousands" of people in Jakarta he blames for fomenting violence in the Malukas. They are "hooligans acting on behalf of Islam," being used as "tools of provocateurs and people against change" to undermine his government.

"We have a list," Wahid said.

Afterward, our group, which included several veteran foreign correspondents, broke into confusion, trying to decide whether this was a real story. Did he really mean the government would arrest thousands, or was this just another "Gus Durism" that would be officially retracted or softened the next day?

Wahid's statement was dutifully reported to news services, but the implausible story initially didn't get much play. In the weeks after we left Jakarta, the story picked up steam and took twists and turns.

Early in July, Wahid declared up to 10 legislators would be arrested on suspicion of fomenting violence and unrest. A couple of days later, he said his statements had been "twisted for political purposes." At this writing, political Jakarta remains in an uproar.

Wahid's biographer, Australian scholar Greg Barton, told The New York Times that this is Wahid's way; those unpredictable zigzags are part of a brilliant political strategy. Barton likens Wahid to a kung-fu expert who skillfully keeps his foes off-balance with feints and thrusts.

"He doesn't always land on his feet," Barton told The Times, "but don't underestimate him."

Barton may be right. With communal violence continuing in the provinces and emerging even on the main island of Java itself, the combination of internal unrest and political instability sent the rupiah so low, two weeks ago it ranked as the world's worst-performing currency.

Wahid's political rivals, recognizing the danger, met privately with Wahid to dampen talk of removing the president. They pledged to issue a public statement asserting their support for "nondestructive" politics and a united attack on the nation's problems.

In a typical Third World scenario, military leaders could be expected to step in if national instability grew too great. But Indonesia's military is considered too discredited and demoralized to be a threat. Its leaders fear being prosecuted for human-rights abuses if they intervene forcefully in sectarian conflicts.

Will Wahid weather the storm? More importantly, will Indonesia?

It is impossible to tell. As GE Indonesia's Dean observed, it will take several years to know the answer.

"This," he said, "is the most difficult democratic transition the world has ever dreamed up."

Copyright © 2007 International Reporting Project. All Rights Reserved.