Indonesia Is President Waheed another Gorbachev

[Ulhas Joglekar]

14 November 1999
Is President Waheed another Gorbachev?
By Harvey Stockwin
HONG KONG: As the tenth anniversary of the destruction of the Berlin Wall
was commemorated last week, the crucial role of one key personality was
completely forgotten. Of course, the then US President George Bush was
honoured -- even though at one stage he made that famous ``Chicken Kiev''
speech in which he advised the soon-to-be-independent Ukrainians to stay
part of the collapsing Soviet Union. Of course, the then Soviet leader
Mikhail Gorbachev was warmly remembered for agreeing to a reunited Germany,
even though his glasnost and perestroika reforms were intended to save the
Soviet Union, rather than create a democratic Russia shorn of its Empires.
But amidst all the celebrations no one recalled the leader who, more than
any other, brought the Cold War to a conclusion and the Soviet Union to its
knees: Leonid Brezhnev.
Nikita Khrushchev had at least tried to politically reform the Soviet Union.
Brezhnev saw reform as too risky. Avoidance of risk plus the endless pursuit
of stability were the name of the game in Brezhnev's Kremlin. It remained so
for nearly two decades as Brezhnev and his surrounding gerontocracy stayed
in power far too long. As the Brezhnev Era endured, the internal Soviet
problems simply accrued faster than any ability to solve them. By the time
Gorbachev had a chance to take charge, Brezhnev's endless pursuit of the
status quo had created a wholly intractable problem. Whatever Gorbachev did
it was bound to be too little, too late.
These memories of people power came to mind this week in Aceh, the province
of 4.3 million people in the northernmost part of the Indonesian island of
Sumatra. As a huge crowds gathered in Bandar Aceh last Sunday and Monday,
one old technique of people power was much in evidence -- exaggerating the
number of people demonstrating. The organizers of the rally, seeking a
referendum on independence, first suggested half a million. Reporters (some
of whom never left Jakarta) quickly escalated to a million, some Hong Kong
newspapers went for 1.5 million, and local Aceh papers said two million, or
half the local population. Two level-headed reporters in the thick of it
maintained that the crowd was between one and 2,00,000. But their careful
reporting was drowned out as the would-be secessionists played the numbers
game with the media, and clearly won. The precise numbers matter less than
the reality of a massive outpouring of popular Acehnese feeling sending a
very plain message: The people were utterly fed up with Jakarta's promises
and performance. Any Javanese government in Jakarta was suspect.
Time and again, in response to reporter's questions, ordinary Acehnese said
they didn't care if Indonesia broke up. They wanted a referendum in order to
vote for independence. The basic political message for President Abdurrahman
Waheed is equally plain. He will not enjoy the usual political honeymoon for
newly-installed leaders. He is face-to-face with Aceh's longstanding
historical urge for separation, for being its own independent self. He has
very little time to play with. If he talks about the principle of an Aceh
referendum -- and does not deliver, then that will be one more Javanese
broken promise, making the Acehnese even more intransigent. This means that
the future of Indonesia is on the line.
Giving in to the Acehnese demands, let alone allowing them to become
independent, conjures up the very real threat that other parts of the
archipelago will insist upon equal treatment -- and that Indonesia could
break apart. Trying for a militarily-imposed solution is not an option. It
is precisely the use and abuse of military attempts at imposing a solution
upon Aceh over the last two decades, that has created the present impasse.
Like Mikhail Gorbachev and former Soviet foreign minister Eduard
Shevardnadze faced with the dissolution of the Soviet Empire, Waheed can
only take the difficult but essential decision that military force is not an
answer. Also like Gorbachev, Waheed faces an utterly intractable problem
born of the fact that two Empires are in dissolution. On the one hand, there
is the dissolution of the Suharto family's business empire -- the tentacles
of which extended to, and infuriated, the Acehnese. On the other hand, there
is the vision, beloved of Suharto, of Indonesia as a Javanese Empire. Seem
from Aceh, Waheed and Vice President Megawati sustain this image because
they are both Javanese -- replacing Habibie, the first Indonesian President
to come from the outlying islands.
Indonesia faces the danger of dissolution because Suharto, who came to see
himself as a Javanese King, was to Indonesia what Brezhnev was to Russia. He
stayed in power far too long. The longer Suharto stayed in power, the more
easily he believed that he was beginning a Javanese dynasty. and the more
frequently he ordered violence as the natural military means for keeping the
Empire stable. It is that longstanding pattern of violence and brutality
which makes Aceh so unwilling to compromise today.
Other parts of Indonesia feel the same way. There is nothing so
destabilising as leaders who stay in power too long, pursuing stability. So
will President Waheed come to be seen, like Gorbachev, as a man who climbed
to the top of the greasy political pole too late, who tried to reform things
but was fatally handicapped by the long years in which there had been
absolutely no reform? Not necessarily. While the situation is very
definitely precarious, it remains relevant to expect the unexpected. Waheed
might yet manage to re-arouse faith in a New Indonesia, to persuade the
Acehness that his promises of real autonomy and real revenue sharing will be
kept. Perhaps Megawati can generate some renewed passion, in the manner of
her father Sukarno in the struggle against the Dutch, for a nation that
stretches from Sabang to Merauke. (That is from Aceh to West Irian, the two
areas now most prone to depart.) Perhaps Indonesia's shift towards democracy
has not come too late but just in the nick of time to release the Indonesian
political imagination in an atmosphere of freedom, and to bring about
overdue change.
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Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. 1999.