State security bill endangers civil liberties, says trade union leader Pakpahan
Indonesian trade union leader Muchtar Pakpahan called a draft state security bill "100 percent made by the New Order", referring to its allowance for a return to Suharto-era militarism. His union, the Indonesian Prosperity Trade Union (SBSI), will stage a demonstration against the bill at parliament Tuesday morning. The law, unless halted, is expected to be brought into force this week. Pakpahan, a former political prisoner and chairman of the 1 million-strong independent trade union, pledged to protest and lobby against the draft law at parliament, joining students and journalists who have led protests against the bill in the past few days.
The law grants the military (TNI) unlimited authority in a state of emergency. The criteria for imposing a state of emergency is undefined and left open to interpretation by the president and TNI. Amongst other suspended freedoms, it allows for incarceration without trial and the abolition of press freedoms. In its present form, the law closely resembles the widely criticized subversion law of 1963, revoked last year in the wake of Suharto's resignation in May 1998.
The bill, rushed through parliament at the military's behest, will be one of its last items of business. It is slated for enactment September 23, the day before parliament's final session. The military appears to be using the bill to retrench its command position in politics before the new, largely reformist parliament is seated on October 1. TNI will hold just 7% of the seats, reduced from 20% one year ago. There can be no doubt of TNI's motives. If enacted, whether or not invoked, the threat of its imposition can be used by the military to bully opposition. Unbowed by its unpopularity, the military has succeeded, through deft political maneuvers, at rising its political stock in recent weeks.
Armed forces chief Wiranto forced President Habibie to accept martial law in East Timor, after such a proposal had been rejected by the cabinet. The new Jakarta city council, to much surprise, elected a member of the military faction as council speaker, despite clear reformist majority in the council. TNI took advantage of disagreement within the reform factions to cut the deal. And past weeks have brought a return to unabashed military brutality on Jakarta's streets. Student demonstrations have been violently disrupted, and at demonstration of families of victims of violence on September 15, a human rights lawyer was shot in the neck, at point blank, by a plastic bullet.
These events suggest that the military is not voluntarily divesting itself of its political power, as most Indonesians would hope. Indeed, rumors-passively disputed by the armed forces chief-have circulated that General Wiranto, not Habibie will be proposed by Golkar to be the next president when the senate meets on November 1. The draft state security bill is a clear-and-present danger to Indonesia's fragile civil order, reversing the trend to greater civil freedoms that has followed Suharto's demise.
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