| Home > South-East Asia >> Indonesia | |
ASIET NetNews Number 35 - September 14-20, 1998
East TimorInterview with PRD editor of Pembebasan Students, youths step up street protests The rise of a young working class Protests mount against military's dual role Police, soldiers, bar student protest
Political/economic crisis15 Timorese prisoners to be freed Prisoners end hunger strike Horta says troops reinforced in East Timor Congress calls for Gusmao's release
Human rights/lawCan Habibie hold on? People do anything to survive Hundreds attack village chiefs' house Police, governor back shoot-on-sight order Talk of capital controls hits shares Mobs burn shops and houses in Sumatra Jakarta city dump: a magnet for the hungry Looting in East Timor and East Java Rioting, looting leads to arrests
News & issuesFamilies seek missing activists Rape victim volunteers threatened
Arms/armed forcesActress summonsed over 'insult' Habibie targeted in graft inquiries Retired officers join Megawati's PDI General elections set for May 26, 1999 Official admits diverting Jakarta's rice Assets of Suharto Inc run into the billions Political laws to be submitted to parliament
Military vows to stay in legislature
| Democratic struggle |
[In July we interviewed Muhammad Ma'ruf, chief-editor of Pembebasan-Liberation, paper of the Indonesian PRD.]
What is the meaning of the May unrest in Indonesia which led to the downfall of Suharto?
The May uprising was the result of the intensification of the contradictions in Indonesian society which were directed against the power of the dictatorship. It was an anarchistic uprising, in which the people's movement lacked leadership. The bourgeois opposition could not give leadership to the people's unrest. The left-wing groups tried to organise the people but the subjective conditions for doing this were very small, for historical reasons. The anti-Chinese attacks are the result of the depoliticisation of the people for 32 years. The people have no perspective and don't know how to fight the oppression of the dictatorship and of capitalism. The IMF has a responsibility in this anarchy. Its program of cuts in subsidies for food and electricity made the people very angry. It changed the situation from bad to worse. The military also has responsibility for this, because they provoked people to attack Chinese ethnics in order to turn the anti-government uprising into a racialist riot. Rioting is actually part of the insurrection... The process of revolution is not finished. It has just started to develop. The May riots are just one of the many steps in this process. New riots can happen again at any time.
The PRD intervened in these events, how do you evaluate its role?
We started to intervene 1 year ago. For 2 years we felt the unrest amongst the urban poor and saw the potential for insurrection. Our aim was to lead the people and to develop the unrest into an insurrection. We deployed our cadres from the campuses to the slum areas. But we are still small and could not give the necessary leadership for a mass uprising. But our intervention was very important along the lines of transforming the unrest not just in rioting but into an insurrection to overthrow the dictatorship. Our demands are for the release of all political prisoners, for the nationalisation of crony capitalism, the repeal of the "double function" of the army, the withdrawal of the 5 repressive political laws and for free multi party elections. We refuse parliament and struggle for the organisation of people's councils that will be the base for a transitional government of those who participated in the liberation of the people.
Suharto has been replaced by Habibie. Does he represent any change?
Habibie is not different form Suharto. He is a loyal servant of Suharto. His appointment is a concession made because Suharto is refused by the people. Everywhere people say: "Suharto is a robber, the 3rd richest man in the world but also with the poorest people in the world". We should have no illusions in this new government. Habibie is part of Suharto's scenario to intensify the internal contradictions in the regime to win back his position and that for his family-clique. Not one member of this new government is committed to the interests of the people.
But the Habibie government and its Ministers are taking economic and social measures to alleviate the conditions of the people like the distribution of cheap rice and cooking oil. The IMF is authorising new subsidies to basic food and so on.
Not one of these figures and their measures can bring salvation. Habibie can do nothing. His stupid call to fast two days a week amidst the threat of starvation to save on rice consumption proves he has no perspective to solve that problem. The IMF can't change the economic conditions either. All faces of capitalism can bring no solution. The only government which can solve the economic catastrophe is a government that is 100% supported by the people and that puts into practice an economic programme that is 100% controlled by the people. You know, Indonesia is basically a very rich country. We have big reserves of timber, tin, nickel, rotan, rubber, oil and so on. These resources have to be controlled and managed by the people. We can rescue ourselves without IMF loans. The IMF measures will maybe strengthen the Rupiah to the Dollar, but they will not change the conditions of the workers. The IMF can not bring a democratic government either. The military are still in control in Indonesia. The IMF knows that its neo-liberal program will provoke new people's unrest and that they will need the military to suppress it. The conclusion is that we should not believe or trust any bourgeois leader to change for the better the people9s conditions.
We would agree with that, but are there no illusions amongst the students and the workers in this government?
One day after the appointment of Habibie, the students started to campaign against him. Through different Muslim organisations Habibie tries to engineer so-called "mass-action" to support him but the workers unrest in particular is increasing everywhere. These last weeks there have been four demonstrations each day in Indonesia. All of them were political and are directed against government leaders at regional and local level.
Unrest is everywhere in Indonesian society, but the military are also omnipresent. That leads to violent clashes. The government is attacked from many lines and not the least from East Timor. The masses in East Timor demand self-determination through a referendum. The government just want to give them an autonomy status. The refusal to grant a referendum on that question and to release East Timor political prisoners led to new uprisings in the capital. The same is happening in East Papua. Of course the government gives some political concessions. For instance it repealed three of the five repressive political laws, it intends to limit the political role of the military but without touching on the "double function" of the army, it promises free multiparty elections but refuses to legalise Marxist parties. Some political prisoners are released but not all of them. They refuse to nationalise crony capitalism, they just intend to "audit" it. Through all these measures the government wants to create illusions. Our role in the actual situation is to try to lead legally where this is possible despite our illegal situation. If we don't do that the movement will be led by the bourgeois democrats. We intervene to organise mass actions around the people's demands. Megawati, the ousted leader of the PDI (Democratic Party of Indonesia), daughter of the former president Sukarno and a typical bourgeois democrat, never gave leadership to the masses. During the May uprising, she said nothing and did nothing. She is stagnant. That is the real attitude of Megawati.
What is the relationship between the struggle for democracy and the struggle for socialism.
We are in favour of an uninterrupted movement, an uninterrupted revolution. The struggle for democracy means a freeway for socialism. A strategic demand for the actual situation is the building of people's councils at every level. The nationalisation of crony capitalism will have to develop to the nationalisation of the whole economy. Of course the objective conditions for socialism are difficult. The workers movement is not well organised and the workers consciousness is still low. But we need to develop anti-capitalist consciousness. In our program we are preparing for socialism. In our propaganda we can make no illusions in bourgeois democracy. We cannot separate socialism from the democratic struggle. We must propagate socialism widely. For instance with the nationalisation of crony capitalism the workers will gain experience on how to nationalise all capitalism. The people's councils will be the instrument to put a socialist program into practice.
How can the international labour movement assist your struggle?
The Indonesian labour movement is part of the international labour movement. We must support each other. The May uprising and the overthrow of Suharto gave inspiration to the labour movement in other countries. The people's resistance in Indonesia means an attack on world capitalism through for instance the multinational companies who settled in our country. The workers' demonstration in your countries also support our struggle, because demonstration you made weaken the capitalism. Workers in capitalist countries' demonstration is big support for workers in our country. Maybe we can get victory, but it will be defeated by international capitalist reaction, if workers in others countries movement is not strong. The labour movement in your country should demand that your government stop supporting Habibie and the military intervention in political affairs and against continued political repression. You should organise pressure for these demands also in front of the embassies.
Jakarta -- Hundreds of protesting Indonesian students and youths tested security forces Thursday, stepping up street demonstrations despite warnings from the military.
Over 1,000 students from at least two private universities in West Jakarta marched down a busy street near their campus towards parliament some two kilometres southeast before their advance was blocked by a thick cordon of anti-riot police backed up by soldiers, witnesses said. The march, started by students from the Tarumanegara University and later joined by those from the nearby Trisakti University, was in protest against the government's inability to bring down soaring prices of essentials.
The students also questioned the government's sincerity in investigating the wealth of ex-president Suharto, and demanded a thorough investigation into past incidents of violence by security forces, including the fatal shooting of four Trisakti students during a peaceful demonstration in May.
The marching students maintained strict discipline, holding hands and forming a chain around themselves to prevent any outsiders seeking to incite violence from joining their ranks. They remained locked in a standoff for about one hour with the security cordon blocking their way. They sat on the three-lane avenue, blocking traffic, and held a free speech forum to air their grievances before they disbanded peacefully. No further incident was reported.
Another group of students and activists managed to rally at parliament to protest against regulations issued earlier this year that placed restrictions on public demonstrations. Some 100 people, from 18 student and pro-democracy organisations, picketed the main gate of parliament, shouting "fight, fight, fight," and waving posters against the ruling.
The house of representatives "has to firmly reject the validity of the government regulation number two of 1998," a statement issued by the group said. It also called on the government to ratify swiftly an international convention on civil and political rights. The disputed law was issued in July in the wake of mounting street protests and required protestors to report to the police on their numbers, their intentions and route and also placed several locations off limits for public protests, including the area near the presidential palace. The regulation, in the form of a government decree, was widely criticised when it was announced, but despite government assurances that it would be left to parliament to translate into law, nothing has been done so far. The protestors, who were prevented from entering parliament by a cordon of some 30 armed soldiers guarding the entrance gate, picketed the front of the complex for two hours before disbanding peacefully.
Some 200 other students from a banking college in South Jakarta attempted to march to the parliament to protest soaring prices, but had to turn back to their campus after a phalanx of anti-riot police blocked their way just 200 metres away.
Indonesian military chief Wiranto warned last week of stern action against protestors who were undermining a renewed sense of security that has slowly begun to return since the fall of former president Suharto in May, which followed the country's worst riots in three decades.
Wiranto pledged that the armed forces "will not hesitate to act sternly against demonstrators" who made the rest of the country "restless."
[Belgian trade union activist Mark Slane visited Indonesia in July. These are his impressions on the development of the working class movement after the May events.]
Driving late at night from the airport to the centre of Jakarta, the taxi-driver couldn't resist indicating me the place where a few weeks earlier the army shot dead several students from the elite Trisakti University. "Look at that bridge, from there they started to shoot at the demonstrators." Those killings were an indication on how the ousted dictator, Suharto, succeeded in alienating even the better off middle classes in the archipelago.
Even at one o'clock in the morning Jakarta doesn't stop being the "ever busy city." Fishermen drive to the different markets; columns of small traders push their "restaurants on wheels" back home or to a better place, little fires light up at the street corners, the urban poor don't sleep: they continue to sell papers (the best sellers are those who denounce the wealth of the Suharto family or who give an extensive list of Suharto's concubines...), handicraft or produce songs on their guitars. Suharto being ousted, the street artists have been prolific in composing songs on the dictator which they describe as "the prince of the robbers." I don't know if Jakarta ever sleeps, but in any case it gets up very early. Very rapidly it starts to compete for the noisiest and most polluted city in the world (behind Mexico-City and Bangkok). Two million cars, buses and motorbikes drive every day through this megalopolis of 10 million people.
The sudden economic recession apparently didn't stop this frenzy. Quite the opposite is happening. In a free fall economy (it already contracted by more than 10%) everybody is looking for a new field of activity. The most rapid developing sector is the so-called informal sector of small street trades. But this doesn't stop the increasing poverty: 40 percent is now living under the poverty-line (three dollars a month). By the end of the year it will reach 48% of the population. But the most important thing to remember about this figure is that all the gains of 20 years of economic growth have been wiped out in a few months time. It is only with daylight that you notice the military presence in the city.
Some 25.000 soldiers are discretely deployed in the city. They are ready to intervene. The population fears them, but they hate them even more as one military officer admitted to me. The fear is disappearing thanks to the heroic movement of the students, the urban poor and the workers during the May-events. Hunger and unemployment pushes the masses in every corner of the country to action. The student activists at Universitas Indonesia of the Committee for Peoples Struggle, confirm the politicisation of the Indonesian people. I met them in what they call the "Red House" established in the workers areas around the campus. That Red House is a centre of intense left wing student activity. A lot of them praise the role of the People's Democratic Party against the dictatorship, for being the only party which didn't compromise with the regime.
"Everybody now talks about reform; unrest is everywhere. Before the May events workers accepted unemployment and low wages, now they start to react. But it needs to be organised. If not there is a tendency to riot amongst workers which serves to legitimise of the use of violence by the military. A few days ago the military shot at a demonstration of steelworkers at Bekasi, in the industrial belt of Jabotabek"
"Don't be fooled by the democratic atmosphere, it is still an illusion. It is still the same regime, the military are still in control and are still very repressive". The difference with the period before the May events is that the military are increasingly powerless to stop land occupation, collective plunder and looting by the peasants, angry demonstrations against corrupt politicians -- local Suhartos etc.
All the people I discussed with agree on this point: Habibie, the new president represents a manoeuvre to maintain the status- quo. "Now Habibie proposes to distribute rice and cooking oil to the poor. This will not solve the real problems which remain political. The governments message is that we should all stop quarrelling and polemicising. The people are starving so they ask the students to channel their activity into charity. If we focus on that it will give a new opportunity for the regime to consolidate. Some students indeed only want to be something like a moral power, they limit their activity to the campus, this is not our strategy."
The regime fears most of all the activities which tend to build a student and workers alliance. A few weeks before my arrival the military cracked down at a joint rally of 10.000 students and workers in front of the university campus in the centre of town. But this didn't alter the objective of the left students. The students activists have been instrumental in the setting up of KOBAR (Workers Committee for Reform Action) in the industrial areas of the capital.
The student activists work and live in the working class areas and develop active propaganda campaigns. The difference with the students in South Korea, who in the eighties also helped in rebuilding the workers movement is "that they had only a trade- union perspective, they were economicists. We go to the workers explaining that the we also have to change the political system if we want to change our lives. The problem is the system which establishes economical, social and political power. We explain that we need a global system of the workers, we need socialism".
They do not trust all the new friends of reform and of democracy, the liberal bourgeois democrats like Rais, Megawati and others "These people only struggle for themselves" was there correct judgement. Left-wing activists are also determined to dissasociate themselves from the Stalinist policies of the old and now defunct PKI (Indonesian Communist Party). They clearly reject Stalinism in the Soviet Union and China. "These regimes exploited the workers and are in reality counter-revolutionary" was a recurrent comment. All the students I met were clearly committed to a revolutionary change of society and therefore orientate to the working class.
A few days after this conversation I could see they were engaged in serious business. KOBAR organised a successful demonstration of thousands of workers in the centre of Jakarta. There I could see this young working class uniting with the students. Most of the workers present were metalworkers, all teenagers, a lot of them young girls. They were all wearing their green, blue and yellow factory uniforms and the red scarves of KOBAR. The demonstration was in fact a rally in front of the Ministry of Manpower.
During the rally, groups of workers who had walked for 2 or 3 hours from their factories were greeted with shouts, songs and poetry. A free speech forum gave the opportunity to young workers leaders to speak and raise their demands. A student leader told me "you feel how they get braver, especially the girls". That student leader lived for a week with some of these female workers. She explained me the following anecdote which is very indicative of the growing consciousness amongst workers: "During my stay, these women who never bothered looking at the news on television before the May events, now eagerly watched them. But they could not understand all the words -- most of the factory girls come from rural areas and didn't have full education -- so every night they wrote down what they couldn't understand and asked me what it meant. We had long discussions that way." This rally was very well organised and that prevented it from becoming a riot.
It gave the workers confidence and the student leaders were personally thanked for it by literally hundreds of workers who wanted to shake hands with them. The military stayed quiet during that demonstration
This demonstration showed the rise of a new social force in Indonesian society: the working class. This is the force which if it stays politically independent will lead the whole of the Indonesian society to social and national liberation. A force which has been strengthened after the second wave of industrial expansion in the late eighties in manufacturing industry. It has very similar features with the working class in Russia in the beginning of the century: young, radical and free from reformist domination and routine
Now after the fall of Suharto, all the floodgates of suppressed discontent, frustration and poverty are open. Without illusions in the Habibie government the general attitude is still of wait and see. But increasingly peasants, workers and urban poor take their destiny in their own hands in a revolutionary manner. Those who thought that the dismissal of Suharto was the end of the matter are wrong. The process of the revolution in Indonesia and Asia just started. It will take a number of years before the masses, the best students and workers will rediscover through trial and error the program of revolutionary socialism and disentangle themselves from the Stalinist policies which led to such a bloody defeat more than 30 years ago.
[On September 18 Reuters reported that more than 2,000 workers marched on the parliament building in Surabaya to demand higher wages. The demonstration was watched by hundreds of police and troops but ended without any clashes - James Balowski.]
Jakarta -- About 100 people marched down busy streets here on Wednesday demanding that the Indonesian military give up its political role. The protesters marched from the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation towards the Ministry of Defense to protest at the military's "dual function" of the last three decades, witnesses said.
The protesters were members of the once outlawed People's Democratic Party and its affiliate labour group Kobar as well as the Woman's Voice, a women's organisation. "For democracy ABRI has to return to the barracks," read a poster referring to the military's popular acronym of ABRI.
Under Indonesian law, the military is given a role in socio- political affairs as well as defence. Active and retired military officers are numerous in almost every sectors of the political and business scene. The demonstrators also carried posters demanding that former president Suharto's son-in-law Prabowo Subianto be court-martialled over his involvement in the abduction and torture of activists earlier this year.
Armed Forces Chief General Wiranto in August honorably discharged Prabowo, a lieutenant general, from the army for his involvement in the kidnappings. "Adolf 'Prabowo' Hitler: the bloodthirsty Dracula," read a poster with Prabowo's picture depicted as a Dracula with blood-dripping fangs. "Court martial Prabowo," and "We demand Prabowo's accountability," read other posters.
Some 75 police and troops marched alongside the protesters, who were stopped halfway to the defense ministry. Police told 10 of the protestors and family members of 14 still missing activists to go by car to meet officials there. But the delegation returned, saying it was not allowed to meet officials. Police were armed with rattan sticks and soldiers carried rifles.
A brief scuffle broke out when protestors tried to push through the security barricade when they learned that their colleagues were denied entry at the defense ministry despite earlier promises. Yelling "liar, liar" at the troops, the protestors then decided to march back towards the Legal Aid Foundation office.
Protests, mostly by students, against the military's non- defence role have been mounting in the past week. A seminar held by a non-governmental organisation was discussing the ties between the military and civilians at a nearby hotel as the protest was staged.
The military has come in for increasing criticism for past abuses since Suharto stepped down from the presidency under mounting public pressure in May. In front of the parliament complex, some 150 students from three universities held a peaceful protest demanding lower prices and a clean government.
Jakarta -- Soldiers and police deployed around Jakarta's central Merdeka square Monday halted a student demonstration to protest the military's role in political life.
The security forces, involving armed soldiers, prevented two buses carrying student protestors from heading towards the national military headquarters on the western side of the huge central Merdeka Square and made them turn into the southern avenue of the square.
One bus managed to stop shortly afterwards and drop off students while another only managed to empty about half of the students as the military, beating the students and the bus with sticks ordered the bus to move. The some 80 soldiers who were later joined by about an equal number of police, set up a cordon barring the protestors from moving away from the place where they left their buses.
The students, carrying banners and posters protesting the military's role in the country's socio-political affairs, sat on the middle of the road and began to set up a free speech forum under the glare of the security.
Under Indonesian law, the military are accorded a role in socio-political affairs besides of its more traditional role in defence. There has been mounting pressure for the military to scale down its non-defence role. The non-defence role has translated into active and retired officers holding key posts in the government, the legislature, the judiciary and in socio- political organisations.
| East Timor |
Jakarta -- Indonesia will release 15 East Timorese political prisoners next week, a visiting delegation from the International Federation of Human Rights said here Thursday.
IFHR secretary general Willian Bourdon told AFP however that East Timorese rebel leader Xanana Gusmao serving a 20 year sentence for plotting against the state and illegal possession of weapons would not be among those freed.
Bourdon said he had been informed of the upcoming release by Indonesian Justice Minister Muladi. "The minister," Bourdon said, told us "that as of today some 80 political prisoners remained behind bars," and eventually all of them would be released.
Jakarta -- Twenty six East Timorese political prisoners ended on Monday their two-week long hunger strike to press for the release of armed resistance leader Xanana Gusmao and other political prisoners in their occupied homeland, according to Jakarta's official news agency, Antara. The news agency based its report on information given by the warden of Dili's 'Becora' prison, Mayun Mataram.
The prisoners had launched their hunger strike on 1 September. The hunger strikers' main demand was the release of Xanana Gusmao, who has served a 20-year sentence at Cipinang prison on the outskirts of Jakarta since 1992. Mataram was quoted as saying by Antara that the prisoners' demand had meanwhile been forwarded to the Indonesian ministry of justice in Jakarta.
There are currently at least 89 political prisoners in East Timor, according to independent human rights observers.
Macau -- East Timorese Nobel Peace Prize co-laureate Jose Ramos Horta said on Tuesday that Jakarta was sending 3,000 new troops to his occupied home land.
Ramos Horta, a former foreign minister of the now defunct Democratic Republic of East Timor, described the highly publicised withdrawal of 1,000 Indonesian soldiers from East Timor in July and August as "propaganda." He said that Jakarta was acting in "bad faith." The leader of East Timor's "external" resistance also said in a CNN interview monitored by LUSA in Macau earlier the day there had been no clashes so far between the newly deployed Indonesian occupation forces and East Timorese freedom fighters.
Ramos Horta said in the interview that the half-island off nothern Australia was on the brink of a mass uprising. East Timor has been under Indonesian military occupation since December 1975. "In the last few weeks they [Indonesia's military] have again introduced in East Timor around 3,000 troops," Ramos Horta said in the interview. Adding, "if the Indonesian government continues to act in bad faith and if the army renews hostilities on the ground I am concious that there is going to be a major uprising throughout the country [East Timor]." Ramos Horta also said, "if Indonesia renews hostilities in the country [East Timor], we will have tens of thousands, hundreds of East Timorese throughout the country, East Timor, going into the streets." East Timor some 800,000 inhabitants.
Indonesia's military in Dili, capital of East Timor, has claimed it had withdrawn three companies of soldiers and mobile police brigades, allegedly totalling 300 men, as part of a "regular troop rotation" on 5 August.
The Indonesian Armed Froces (ABRI) last week denied claims that it had replaced the combat troops that it had withdrawn from East Timor last month. In a statement released by Jakarta's official news agency, Antara, ABRI claimed it had only sent a "very small" number of military personnel involved in medical and "morale-building" tasks, to support non-combat troops in East Timor. Indonesian President Jusuf Habibie has promised a "gradual" troop withdrawal from East Timor in a meeting with the apostolic administrator of Dili, Bishop Carlos Belo, in June. Disgarced former Indonesian president Suharto ordered the invasion of East Timor in December 1975 and its unilateral annexation in July 1976. East Timor had been ruled by Portugal for about four centuries.
The East Timor International Support Centre in Darwin in a press release last week quoted an armed resitance source in the eastern region of East Timor as saying that 300 fresh troops had arrived in the area on 6 August. Renan Selak, regional secretary of the eastern region of the armed wing of the East Timorese resistance movement, FALINTIL, said in a letter dated 6 September that "several thousand" troops had arrived in East Timor before the high-profile withdrawal of 1,000 Indonesian troops. Ramos Horta also said in the CNN interview the East Timorese resistance miovement categorically rejected Habibie's offer of limited autonomy for the occupied territory. "Our problem with President Habibie's offer of autonomy is that the autonomy is conditional on the United Nations recognising the annexation of East Timor. We cannot accept that," Ramos Horta said.
The East Timorese resisrtance movement demands that the territory be given the right of self-determination through an internationally supervised referendum on independence.
Washington -- More than 100 members of the US Congress have asked for the release of East Timor's jailed armed resistance leader Xanana Gusmao in messages addressed to US President Bill Clinton and Indonesian President Jusuf Habibie.
The members of the Congress state in the messages that Gusmao's release from imprisonment was "crucial" to a "lasting solution" to the conflict of East Timor, which has been occupied by Indonesia since December 1975. The messages, which appeal for a fair solution to the East Timor problem, are an initiative of member of the House of Representatives, Tony Hall. The messages also urges Indonesia to "honour" all the UN resolutions on the question of East Timor.
Partrick J. Kennedy of Rhode Island is among the members of the House of Representatives who sent messages to Clinton and Habibie.
| Political/economic crisis |
Faced with food riots and student protests, Indonesia's President is tainted by his links with the hated former regime. David Jenkins reports on a country in crisis. When President Habibie ventured out of his palace recently for a one-day trip to Surabaya, he was greeted by thousands of student protesters, one of whom carried a placard with the mocking message "Bring down the price of leaves".
Habibie has barely completed his first 100 days as President of the world's fourth most populous nation. But the honeymoon, such as it was, is well and truly over.
Food prices have risen sharply in recent months -- rice has almost doubled since Habibie came to office -- and there is no indication that the Government knows how to deal with the problem. Indonesia faces a shortfall of nearly 4.5million tonnes of rice, due to an El Nino-related drought and a collapse in the value of the rupiah. To make matters worse, the food distribution system has been in disarray since mobs turned on the ethnic Chinese minority in May, blaming them for the nation's economic ills.
The Government has tried to redress the distribution problems by inviting pribumi (indigenous) Indonesians to step into the breach, but that has not helped. It may only have made matters worse.
As a result of all this, Indonesians are increasingly hungry, increasingly angry, increasingly willing to take matters into their own hands. In the past three weeks, mobs have looted and burned in a string of cities across the country, sacking rice warehouses and carting off cooking oil and canned food.
Nor do the distortions caused by a weak currency and subsidised food prices do anything to improve matters. In Indonesia rice costs between 2,000 and 4,000 rupiah (35 and 70 cents) a kilo, depending on quality and type. In the Malaysian State of Sarawak, just across the border in Kalimantan, it sells for two ringgit a kilo, equivalent to about 8,000 rupiah.
In Tawau, Sabah, it is selling for the equivalent of 10,000- 12,000 rupiah, many times the price in Pare Pare in Sulawesi, less than a day's sailing up the Straits of Makassar.
"It is very ironic," says Lieutenant-General Zen Maulani, who has just relinquished his job as chief of staff to Habibie to become head of BAKIN, the State Intelligence Co-ordinating Board. "At a time when our farmers sell their rice abroad to Malaysia, to meet the needs of our people we have to buy rice in Vietnam and Thailand at high prices. And because nearly 100million Indonesians are now below the poverty line, we have to subsidise the prices of our rice."
As if all this were not bad enough, students have returned to the barricades, demanding that prices come down and that Habibie step aside. The resources of the police and the army are under increasing strain. "You just wonder how much patience there is out there," said a diplomat who had just returned from a trip outside Jakarta, where he went around markets noting the price of rice, eggs and tahu (tofu).
"The situation is deteriorating rapidly," said Harry Tjan Silalahi of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank set up in the early 1970s by two of President Soeharto's army cronies which later took on an anti-Soeharto and anti-Habibie colouration.
Some Indonesians go further, saying they fear their nation is on the brink of social revolution. "I foresee a great chaos," said Rosihan Anwar, an Indonesian editor and commentator who has followed national affairs since the proclamation of independence in 1945. "The people will no longer go against the Chinese. That is the past. They will go against their own people. Here in the Mentang area [a wealthy suburb in the heart of Jakarta] they will go against their own people. They will burn down [the houses of the wealthy]."
Conversations with ordinary Indonesians suggest that those concerns may be premature. For the moment, at least, it is still the ethnic Chinese who seem to bear the weight of popular resentment. "The Chinese live in heaven in this country," said a waiter in a moderately priced restaurant. "They have so much. I think it is fine for people to rob the Chinese shops if they are starving."
Not that some members of the indigenous elite seem to be far behind in the hate list. "I would just like to punch Soeharto in the face," said the waiter, expressing a view that would not have been broadcast only four months ago. "He is a thief. I don't earn enough money to buy enough rice for my family. All of this is his fault. He should be brought to trial."
For Habibie, the priority is to bring prices down and stabilise the rupiah. But in the eyes of many Indonesians Habibie lacks legitimacy, having been left in the job by Soeharto, his long-time mentor and a man now widely spoken of with hatred. Nor, the critics feel, has Habibie done nearly enough to rein in an army that has run wild in recent years, kidnapping, torturing and killing those deemed enemies of the state.
Like Soeharto before him, Habibie has included a generous sprinkling of military officers in his Cabinet. Many have black marks against their names.
The Co-ordinating Minister for Political Affairs, General Feisal Tandjung, was the Armed Forces (ABRI) commander between 1992 and 1998, when the army began a bloody crackdown on separatists in Aceh, the staunchly Muslim province in the far north of Sumatra. He was in the same job in 1996 when the Government sent soldiers and hired thugs to seize control of the Jakarta headquarters of the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) leader, Megawati Sukarnoputri.
The important Home Affairs Minister, Lieutenant-General Syarwan Hamid, is cut from the same cloth. He was the head of the Lhokseumawe Korem (District Military Command) in Aceh during some of the worst killing in the province. Later, as the ABRI Chief of Staff for Social-Political Affairs, he applauded the takeover of the PDI headquarters.
The secretary-general of the Department of Education, Lieutenant-General Sofian Effendy, was the Korem commander in Lhokseumawe in 1989-90, immediately before Syarwan. Aceh was not an issue in 1990. It quickly become one in 1990-91, with, as one source puts it, "terrible reports of bodies showing up alongside rural roads," especially in Lhokseumawe and Pidie.
Sofian, a red beret officer, was present in October 1975 when Indonesian troops stormed the sleepy coastal town of Batugade in Portuguese East Timor, the first time that Jakarta had occupied and held a foreign town and the curtain-raiser for the brutal, full-scale invasion of East Timor two months later. The Batugade attack was led by Captain (now Major-General) Sutiyoso, the current governor of Jakarta.
Habibie's Minister for Transmigration, Lieutenant-General Hendropriyono, was the Korem commander in Lampung, South Sumatra, at the time of a notorious massacre of Muslim villagers in which scores, if not hundreds of people were killed.
The Minister for Information, Lieutenant-General Yunus Yosfiah, led Indonesia's illegal 1975 occupation of Balibo in Portuguese East Timor, an operation in which five Australia-based journalists were killed. In 1978, Yunus played a central role in killing the East Timorese President and guerilla leader Nicolau Lobato. One of his hobbies, he once told an Indonesian magazine, was to play a home video of Lobato's death.
"These are all people from the old elite," noted a diplomat in Jakarta. "You can't clean a floor with a dirty mop and essentially Habibie has set himself that challenge." Syarwan Hamid, it is true, turned against Soeharto at the 11th hour, helping to bring him down. But he and Feisal remain opposed to Megawati and her efforts to regain control of her party, which has been taken over by Government-linked figures.
"The Habibie regime has embraced the Soeharto blunder," the diplomat said. "The same unnecessary confrontation with Mega. "Why? It would have meant walking away from the 1996 policy of Feisal, and Syarwan. It would have been a loss of face for them. They funded the recent congress of the PDI rump in Palu. Syarwan went up there and read the keynote speech."
If many of the old army faces are still to be seen in the corridors of power, others have dropped from view. The most notable casualty in the post-Soeharto wash-up was Lieutenant- General Prabowo Subianto, who was cashiered after he admitted kidnapping nine political activists. But Prabowo has not been brought before a court and it is not at all clear that he ever will be.
"The Government doesn't want to bring Prabowo to trial because it would open up a Pandora's box," said a source in Jakarta. "It wasn't only Prabowo [who kidnapped people]. People say that if you were to put him on trial and he was sentenced, then those who are sympathetic to him [would call for others to be brought before the courts]."
All of this creates a painful dilemma for the Defence Minister/ABRI commander, General Wiranto. He needs to show that he is serious about burnishing ABRI's tarnished image. But he knows that it could be dangerous to push for too much too soon.
While the Government wrestles with these problems, the security situation worsens. On Monday at least 35 shops and warehouses were burned and dozens of other buildings damaged when mobs rampaged through the central Java town of Kebumen.
The next morning, five people were injured, two seriously, when police and soldiers pushed several hundred radical students out of the grounds of the national parliament in Jakarta. The day after, Habibie was jeered by thousands of students during his visit to Surabaya, Indonesia's second largest city. Widespread looting continued in Pontianak in West Kalimantan.
On Thursday, several hundred students staged a noisy protest in front of the presidential palace in Jakarta, demanding that Habibie step down and prices be reduced. There was another demonstration near the palace last Tuesday, despite warnings from the army that the area is off limits to protesters. Student rallies are now an almost daily occurrence in the great cities of Java.
Nor is the trouble confined to Java. There have been protests in South Sulawesi, a crippling bus strike in the north Sumatran city of Medan, and the looting of 1.5tonnes of rice from a government warehouse in East Timor. So far, the students from the big mainstream universities who played a key role in the downfall of Soeharto appear to be staying their hand. But there is a mounting sense that Indonesia's problems may soon get out of hand.
Indonesia may have enough food for now. But it doesn't seem to be able to get it to people in sufficient quantities and at affordable prices. That is a recipe for disaster. As Mao Zedong once said in another context, a single spark can start a prairie fire.
To Indonesians who can afford it, reform implies political and economic change. To millions of people flung into poverty since the Crisis began, however, the rallying cry of "Reformasi!" has come to mean permission to do whatever they like -- loot, flout the law, overthrow officials. In hard-hit Central Java people are willing to do just about anything to survive. Asiaweek Contributor Dewi Loveard visited the troubled province. Her eyewitness report:
Semarang, Sept. 7
The mid-size commercial city is quiet yet tense. Many shops are closed, and demonstrations are a daily event. The rallies are not about politics; they are about the price of food. As hungry kids press their faces against the taxi windows, my driver, Sukardi, lists a litany of local woes: petty crime, street brawls, beggars who do not ask but demand. One day, he recalls, a bunch of people came by his house and cleaned out the family fish pond. Such tales are endemic now.
At Kebon Jati market, a tearful old lady is arguing with a trader over the price of chili. "Don't accuse me of trying to make too much profit," shouts the trader. "My God, I will only make 200 rupiah out of this chili." A Kian, an ethnic Chinese food merchant who has a stall nearby, confides that he dare not raise his markup beyond 150 rupiah per item. Otherwise his suspicious customers will accuse him of profiteering.
On the outskirts of the city a group of landless people has seized a chunk of vacant property reportedly owned by the Gudang Garam cigarette company. "This is the reform era," says Suwarno, a pioneering occupant. "I needed land." Calmly, he marked off a plot with rope and sticks and built a cabin. Across the street lives the mayor in a stately home. He has suggested that Suwarno move to a piece of state-owned land. But when Suwarno's lawyer mentioned compensation for the move, the mayor dropped the subject. Suwarno isn't budging. Nor are 300 or so other families who have built homes and planted cassava and corn.
Kebumen, Sept. 8
The city has just been hit hard by an anti-Chinese riot. According to local radio, the Chinese owner of an auto parts shop hit or berated a pribumi worker for spilling oil. Officials are assuring people that the worker was only cursed, but a woman running a stall insists the Chinese owners beat him "until he was bleeding." She says the youth ran out of the shop and began weeping on the side of the street. Before long a crowd had gathered; the rock-throwing and looting began. The mob was joined by high school students who were demonstrating against a supposedly embezzling principal. Soon several shops were ablaze. The crowd paid the police no mind because they rarely use live bullets. Besides, they were outnumbered. Today the town is still on edge; arsonists and looters are at work in Chinese districts, and security guards check out passersby with hard stares. Ispot a teenager taking home a bottle of soy sauce, a few cans of corned beef and a small sack of rice. He is not sure if his mother will applaud his food-gathering technique. "But who cares?" he says. "This is reformation, and this is the time to do anything."
Pekalongan, Sept. 9
I'm in batik country, and business is paralyzed. Cotton prices have tripled, raw stocks are way down, and producers are afraid their consignments will be hijacked on the way to the port. The situation is so dire people reportedly are eating rice once every two or three days. Thieving from shops is rampant -- and brazen. A woman was caught trying to steal 5 kg of rice from a supermarket. "Arrest me," she told the guards. "But let me take the rice to my children first." Her husband is an idled batik worker. The supermarket owner didn't press charges, fearing a public backlash.
Authorities feel the same way. When the mayor blocked plans to build a school on an old Chinese cemetery, a mob ransacked the graveyard. The grave-robbers divided themselves into groups of three: one to guard the gate, another to dig up the corpses, the third to grab the valuables buried alongside the dead. Coffins and marble grave stones were taken and sold; bones and skulls were scattered around like so much garbage.
The proceeds of the looting were shared around. Jumadi, a man in his late 60s, got hold of a ring taken from one of the corpses. He sold it for a bag of rice. One man traded a tiger statue for a 25-kg sack of the grain. "I don't think I did anything wrong," says Jumadi. "I didn't steal from the graves myself, and anyway, why would anyone try to take their wealth with them when they die?" Another grave-robber puts it this way: "The Chinese got a lot from us when they were alive."
Solo Sept. 10
During May the home of ruling party stalwart Harmoko was burned to the ground here. The city seems half dead. Many shops are closed and small stalls have disappeared. No one is keen to re-open. I stop to get a drink, aware that I'm untidy after three days on the road. The stall owner eyes me with suspicion, but when I pay explains she is careful with people she doesn't know; on several occasions customers have walked off without paying. She says even children taking food to their fathers in the fields are routinely ripped off.
I visit Mudrick Sangidu, a local oppositionist. "These are strange times," he agrees. "For small people, reform means burning things down. If they're unhappy with local leaders, they demand they be replaced immediately." A week ago an unpopular regent in nearby Tegal was forced from office. Now Mudrick is being asked to help push another regent from power. "These people are seen as the extension of Suharto's hand," he explains.
In Central Java the people are emboldened by the discovery that the once-potent troika of government, military and business is prepared to stand by. The poor, the disenfranchised -- even high school students -- are filling the vacuum. I return to Jakarta and find troops guarding strategic installations in the wake of a new series of student protests. I fear the situation in Indonesia can only get worse before it gets better.
May 21: Suharto resigns amidst violent unrest; Habibie is sworn in as president. Late May: Public outcries calling for the resignations of six governors in the provinces of West Kalimantan, Riau, West and Central Java, West Nusa Tenggara and South Sulawesi. The governor of Riau offers to resign and declare his wealth.
June 13: Hundreds of farmers in West Java plant vegetables on a golf course the land for which, they say, was taken from them by force.
June 15: Rioters in three towns in Java run amok following orderly protests against local leaders.
July 13: More than 2,000 people plunder shrimp ponds in both West and East Java. In Central Java, 37 village heads submit their resignations. The next day, trucks carrying onions are hijacked in Central Java on the main toll road outside Jakarta.
July 30: Protestors ransack 16 discotheques and massage parlors in the resort town of Puncak, West Java.
August 8: Over 1,000 looters clean out coffee plantations in East Java. In the same province, peasants overrun land used for coffee and cocoa to plant staple crops.
Aug. 26: People take 150 tons of rice from shops and rice mills in Bondowoso, East Java. On the same day in southern Sumatra, thousands of farmers, housewives and students attack the office of the Lampung governor.
Aug. 31: Riots flare in Aceh after locals throw stones at departing combat troops. Some shops of ethnic Chinese are looted and burned.
Sept: 3: Police in Ngawi, East Java, begin a 6-day battle with looters of teak that will lead to one death and 115 arrests. Sept: 7: A riot breaks out in the Central Java town of Kebumen as mobs attack and plunder shops and food warehouses. The riot apparently started after rumors circulated of an ethnic-Chinese spare-parts shop owner struck an employee. In West Kalimantan, mobs in the provincial capital of Pontianak loot scores of warehouses over a three-day period and grab rice, sugar, cooking oil and instant noodles.
Sept. 9: Habibie is mobbed in Surabaya by protestors demanding lower food prices.
Sept. 13: Hundreds loot chicken farms in East Java and steal 15,000 chickens, six television sets and a van. On the same day elsewhere in the province a mob of hundreds strip a teak plantation of processed lumber.
[Compiled by Metta Dharmasaputra/Jakarta]
Jakarta -- Hundreds of angry villagers in Indonesia's Central Java province went on the rampage Friday and attacked the residences of two village chiefs, burning one to the ground, the state Antara News Agency said.
The inhabitants of the first village, Kalisegoro, were angered that their village chief Sugiono had failed to honor a promise to return their land, and had sold it instead, Antara said.
The mob managed to damage Sugiono's two-storey house, which was empty but for one maid at the time of the attack, but security forces managed to prevent them from burning the house down. The maid escaped uninjured and no arrests were reported.
In Rowosari village Friday, a separate mob attacked the house of 65-year-old village chief and burned it to the ground. The village chief was accused of keeping a "buto ijo," a small elf- like spirit that obtains wealth for its human master.
Jakarta -- Looters will be shot on sight in the densely- populated Indonesian province of East Java on orders from the police chief there, press reports said Thursday.
"The order to shoot still has to follow existing procedure and only executed when warning shots were ignored," East Java Police Chief Major General M. Dayat was quoted as saying by the Kompas daily. "The bullets will not be rubber-coated bullets, but live ammunitions,' he added.
Soaring prices of essentials has sparked looting of rice mills, shops, rice fields, shrimp ponds, onion fields, teak forests and even rice trucks by mobs in several areas across the country. Such lootings have been most rampant in East Java where authorities are bringing 83 people to court for recent lootings in six districts there. "The number of the hungry is increasing as many employees were laid off. Certain group of people depend more on their muscle than brain, therefore their action tends to turn brutal," Dayat said.
Meanwhile East Java Governor Imam Utomo was quoted by Republika daily as saying: "I fully support security forces in handling (the looters) by shooting them on the spot." Utomo also said he believed the pillaging was provoked by former convicts.
Officials and economists have blamed speculators, corrupt officials, hoarders and smugglers for contributing to the shortage and high prices of essentials despite government assurances of adequate stocks.
Grainne Mccarthy, Jakarta -- Speculation that Indonesia is planning to implement capital controls roiled financial markets despite denials from the country's president and central-bank officials that such a move is in the cards.
Indonesia and the International Monetary Fund -- which is leading a bailout package for the country -- have repeatedly stated their opposition to controls on capital flows. Since taking office in May, President B.J. Habibie has said there is no possibility of limiting currency flows. On Tuesday, he reiterated that view in an interview with The Asian Wall Street Journal, saying: "No, that's for sure, as long as I'm here, no." Bank Indonesia Governor Sjahril Sabirin later echoed those sentiments in a brief interview.
Still, foreign traders said even the possibility of controls has sent many moving to clear their Indonesian stock portfolios. The Jakarta Stock Exchange composite index sank 8.9% Tuesday to a new five-year low and continued to slip Wednesday.
Rupiah climbs
The Indonesian currency strengthened to 11,150 rupiah to the dollar Tuesday on the rumors, from 11,450 rupiah on Monday, and was trading at 11,100 rupiah in late Asia trading Wednesday. Investors and traders said the rupiah surged because players believe that if Indonesia does impose controls, the government would likely peg the rupiah to the dollar at a stronger rate than now.
People close to the government say that while the issue has been discussed since Malaysia imposed its own controls on Sept. 1, a consensus had emerged not to follow suit. James T. Riady, a prominent businessman and special envoy of the president, said capital controls "would be a huge change and you would have to be ready for the consequences. Indonesia is not ready for those consequences." He added that the sprawling country would have difficulty implementing such controls without setting up a huge bureaucracy, which in turn could feed "the corruption that comes with it. If anything, there will be more outflow" of capital.
Instead, he said, the government badly needs to portray a stable political and economic climate to woo back foreign capital and investment. Any talk of controls would upset not only the market, but also the IMF and other lenders. "Support from international institutions has been very good and provided some roadmaps to get us somewhere," he said.
Growing anxiety
Winning international confidence is crucial to recovery, he said. Indonesia faced further uncertainty this week as riots over food prices flared in parts of the country. Students, too, have taken to the streets, some of them demanding Mr. Habibie step down and the military abandon its political role. Talk of capital controls has added to the anxiety. "Just this talk of currency controls has put everything back a week, two weeks," said a senior Indonesian business executive. Despite the government's denials, many analysts stuck to their view that Indonesia is planning some form of controls -- albeit nothing as stringent as those adopted in Malaysia. "It's a game of perception. The market strongly believes that you are bound to do it if you keep on denying it," said Harry Danardojo, managing director at Lippo Securities. He said the market's logic is that the government will keep on denying it and then "a few minutes later they do it -- bang -- without any announcement." Traders remain nervous about the central bank's ongoing search for ways to stabilize the currency. It has said it is considering some form of managed float for the rupiah, under which the currency would trade in a band, rather than freely as is the case now. The IMF has said it might eventually support a return to a band system. The central bank had stressed, though, that this doesn't mean Malaysia-style limits on capital flows.
'Not worth the risk'
That assurance didn't stop panic selling of shares on Tuesday, however. "Foreigners were dumping shares because they were afraid of the same fate they faced with Malaysia," said Ali Naqvi, vice president for Asian equities at Credit Suisse First Boston in Singapore. Malaysia on Sept. 1 announced that money foreigners had invested in Malaysian shares couldn't be taken out of the country for a year. "If the market's already bad and then on top of that this huge risk comes on -- whether it's a rumor or not -- it's still just not worth the risk," he said.
Bank Indonesia also is concerned about inflows of so-called hot money to take advantage of 70% interest rates on government certificates, fearing the fast-moving funds could suddenly flood out at any sign of uncertainty. But economists warn that any attempt to impose currency controls now would jeopardize sorely needed IMF funding, and deter Indonesian investors from repatriating the vast quantities of capital that left the country earlier this year. "Although there is an argument in favor of managing capital flows, across-the-board controls would be negative for the economy," said Paul Alapat, senior economist at Credit Agricole Indosuez in Singapore. "The danger of capital controls is that they cut both ways. Not only do they deter hot money flows, but they discourage the recycling of flight capital."
Jakarta -- Rioting mobs burned shops and houses in Bagansiapi-api, a fishing town on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, news reports said Wednesday. Hundreds of people took part in the rampage that began Tuesday evening and ended early Wednesday.
Police were not immediately available for comment. A navy officer in the neighboring town of Dumai confirmed the riot, but refused to provide any detail.
Bagansiapi-api in the province of Riau, is about 1,125 kilometers northwest of Jakarta. According to Kompas, a daily newspaper, the riot was believed to be incited by a brawl Sunday between two groups that led to the damage of some houses. So far, there are no reports of arrests or injuries.
A similar incident occurred Saturday in Palopo and Luwu, two neighboring towns in South Sulawesi, about 1,250 kilometers northeast of Jakarta, where two people were killed and 118 houses were damaged after a mass brawl. Sporadic rioting has erupted in other parts of Indonesia recently over rising prices of basic foods.
The official Antara news agency said about 300 houses and shops, two hotels, mostly owned by ethnic Chinese, were set ablaze. The local customs house was also burned. Thousands of people took part in the rampage that began Tuesday evening and ended early Wednesday, police said.
A police officer in the neighboring town of Bengkalis, said hundreds of soldiers and police were deployed from nearby towns to quell the violence. "Dozens have been arrested and are being interrogated," the officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said in a telephone interview.
He said some rioters set fire to plastic bags containing gasoline and hurled them onto the roofs of shops and buildings. Antara quoted local residents as saying many of the rioters were not from Bagansiapi-api, about 1,125 kilometers northwest of Jakarta.
The residents said mobs gathered in the town's streets amid rumors that a local man had been killed in fight with an ethnic Chinese man, Antara reported.
[On September 17 the state news agency Antara said that 300 troops from neighbouring Pekanbaru and Dumai had been deployed in Bagansiapi-api. The Jakarta Post quoted Bengkalis Police Chief Lieutenant Colonel Luther Harefa as saying 31 looters and agitators had been arrested - James Balowski.]
Bekasi -- Idris strokes his grey, straggly moustache apologetically and says he would like to offer the three small pink cakes that have seen better days -- but they came from the rubbish. Agus, his seven-year-old son, eyes the cakes jealously. They are for supper.
The rubbish the meal comes from is a huge landfill about 50 kilometres (30 miles) southeast of Jakarta and stretching as far as the eye can see. It is a grey, steaming repository of garbage from the Indonesian capital's 11 million people and home to Idris and a swelling number -- some 15,000, but no one is quite sure -- refugees from poverty.
"They come from everywhere, from Sumatra, from Jakarta, from Java. I am one of them," laughs 25-year-old Narman, who invites a reporter to sit on a strip of cardboard covering the sludge underfoot and its buzzing carpet of black, lazy flies.
Narman, his wife Watni, their five-year-old daughter Narwati and Watni's mother came to Bekasi with four other families from a village in Karawang 60 kilometers (40 miles) further east a month ago. They were farmers. But there was no money for pesticide and the rice crop was eaten by insects. There was no money for food either, and someone told them of the Bekasi dump.
Here, Watni says, fanning the flies from her daugher's face, a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of paper will fetch 300 rupiah, (2.7 cents), plastic or plastic bottles 300 rupiah, and cardboard boxes 400 rupiah. If the whole family works, they can make 7,000 rupiah (63 cents) a day.
Narman works without a "boss", meaning he can get the full pay from the travelling recyclers who turn up every four days to buy the trash, which is painfully separated by the pickers with a hook-ended spike called a "ganchuk". But it is never enough, they say. Rice prices have doubled, while trash prices stay almost the same, fluctuating only slightly with demand.
"We need 10,000 (rupiah) a day but we can never make more than 7,000," Watni says, adding that they pay 10,000 a month for a small patch of land on which they have built a two-by-eight meter (6.6 foot-by-26.4 foot) house out of scrap for three families. Narman holds up a "trash-trophy", a one-liter can that once held baby formula and points to it. "One liter of rice -- 2,700 rupiah," he says ruefully. "It used to be half the price, but now, we eat rice only once a day."
"Beras", mening rice -- the word is taken up by small boys and old women sorting the muck from tattered plastic bags nearby, as pickers 100 meters (yards) away swarm aboard a new convoy of dump trucks dropping their putrid loads on the grey mountain. "That's what it's all about. Beras," chimes in Nyonya Upiah from a pit full of slimy plastic delineated as her "spot" by old chicken crates.
"I have a 13-year-old boy. This is for him. I am alone. I can make 20,000 or 30,000 a week if I work seven days, but he is in school." Upiah says she eats mostly Singkong (cassava) so that she can make her son's school fees.
She has no shoes, and nails, glass and sharp tin cans are a problem, as are the flash fires from the gas in the dump. But the rubber boots that some have managed to buy cost 15,000 rupiah.
A six-year-old boy, too shy to give his name, says his family is sending him back to his hometown in Banten where he will live with his grandfather and attend a pesantren, a Moslem boarding school. But until he is seven he will work the dump with his parents. Narman says he too will send Narwati and Wanti back to Karawang if he can so that his daughter can go to school. If things get better he might be able to join them, he adds.
Idris, who once worked for the Red Cross, makes a speciality out of the hospital dumpsters, cleaning old blood off IV bags. He says he nets quite a few nice white doctors' coats, and suggests the journalist might take Agus back to Jakarta where he could go to school. He works for a boss -- meaning he doesn't pay for the patch of landfill where he built his shack, but earns 100 rupiah less per kilogram of trash.
"We live like animals, like dogs here -- this bread, those vegetables are all from the dump. The doctors in Jakarta would have a fit," Idris says. "I cry sometimes when I think of what would happen to Agus if I die here, like some of the people run over by the bulldozer, the others who get sick," he says. "But I looked and looked in Jakarta for work -- at the port, selling brooms, selling vegetables, but there was no work, and someone told me about Bekasi."
More and more people arrive daily, he says, but adds philosophically: "I hear things are very bad in Russia too."
Jakarta -- Hundreds of people have looted rice from a government-owned warehouse in East Timor, while police arrested 54 people for looting teakwood in Central Java, a report said Tuesday.
The official Antara news agency quoted Maj. Magatas Tambunan of the local police as saying his office was investigating the looting Monday night in Dili, East Timor capital, about 2,000 kilometers southeast of Jakarta.
Citing witnesses, he said the looters raided the warehouse because they could no longer afford to buy rice. They forced the warehouse's gate and were able to cart away with about 1.5 tons of rice before policemen arrived to disperse them, he said.
In another report from East Java capital of Surabaya, Antara said police arrested 54 people accused of looting teakwood from a state-owned plantation in the regency of Ngawi.
Jakarta -- Hundreds rioted and looted in Indonesia's third- largest city [Medan] today when a strike by public transport drivers turned violent. And in Jakarta, Indonesia's capital, soldiers blocked 300 students who tried to demonstrate outside military headquarters to demand that the armed forces get out of politics.
Discontent has been mounting in Indonesia over the worst economic crisis in 30 years, as well as past human rights abuses by the military. The government fears more unrest as more than 17 million families face severe food shortages.
The students who tried to demonstrate in Jakarta oppose a policy that gives the military two roles: acting as legislators and guarding national security. Seventy-five of the 500 Parliament seats are allocated to the military. In a separate protest in Jakarta, 500 demonstrators assembled outside Parliament, demanding that bank executives accused of corruption and misuse of funds be brought to trial. They also demanded food price cuts.
In the third-largest city, Medan, on the northern end of Sumatra island about 870 miles northwest of Jakarta, students joined 6,000 drivers in a protest outside the office of the provincial governor against the soaring price of spare parts for minibuses and other vehicles. They also complained about big increases in food prices, the newspaper Suara Pembaruan reported.
Shops were closed, mainly those owned by the ethnic Chinese minority. Their owners fled when crowds gathered and threw rocks at the windows of a shopping mall and passing vehicles. One mob broke into the mall and looted goods, mainly clothes, witnesses said.
Troops and police were deployed to quell the violence. Police said the situation had been brought under control. However, offices and schools in the city of 2 million were closed and residents were advised to stay home.
The private SCTV station reported that 33 people -- five looters and 28 rioters -- were arrested. Ethnic Chinese make up a small fraction of Indonesia's 202 million people. But many Indonesians struggling to make ends meet resent their success in commerce and blame them for Indonesia's economic meltdown.
News reports said Chinese residents also had fled Pinrang, a coastal town on Sulawesi island, amid rumors of riots. Most shops in the town, about 850 miles northeast of Jakarta, were closed today even though no trouble was reported.
In Jambi, on Sumatra island, police broke up a crowd that looted a rice warehouse today. The official Antara news agency reported that police arrested 10 people.
[On September the state news agency Antara reported that the capital of East Kalimantan, Samarinda, was paralysed by a strike by public transport drivers demanding lower prices of spare parts. They also protested against the arbritary issue of traffic tickets - James Balowski.]
| Human rights/law |
Cindy Shiner, Jakarta -- Indonesia-Genoveva Misiati named her son Bima, after a traditional Indonesian shadow puppet character that symbolizes honesty, strength and courage. She apparently hoped it would act as a mystical safeguard against trouble.
Her wish, however, foundered on political upheaval. Bima's life has been reduced to memories and fading photographs.
Bima, whose full name is Petrus Bima Anugerah, is one of 20 political activists who disappeared earlier this year at a time of crushing economic crisis and rising student protests against the government. Eight of them were abducted by security forces and later released from detention, but the military says it knows nothing of Bima and 11 others. The new government of President B. J. Habibie is trying to prove its commitment to reform by putting pressure on the military to investigate abuses. Lt. Gen. Prabowo Subianto, a son-in-law of former president Suharto, has been fired for his role in the disappearances. Ten soldiers face possible court-martial.
Two military officers were sentenced in mid-August to less than a year in prison for exceeding orders in connection with the shootings of four student demonstrators in May, although no one has been charged with the shootings themselves. It is still unclear where the bullets came from that killed the students. The deaths were followed by two days of massive rioting that claimed more than 1,000 lives and helped trigger Suharto's resignation.
The government announced last month that it had ordered the release of 32 political prisoners, bringing to more than 200 the total number of such inmates freed under Habibie. Nearly 100 more remain in jail.
Human rights groups say thousands of political activists disappeared during Suharto's 32-year rule. Investigations are currently underway into reports of mass graves in the province of Aceh, which along with areas of East Timor and Irian Jaya has been the focus of military operations against government opponents.
Misiati and relatives of the other missing activists repeatedly have gone to the office of the defense minister to demand information about their sons, husbands and brothers. Wiranto finally agreed to see the group last month and acknowledged that he still knows "nothing of their whereabouts and whether they are still alive or not."
Andi Arief, who was abducted and recently released, has said that, based on comments made by his captors, he believes at least two of the missing men are dead. Those who have been freed said that security forces beat them and tortured them with electric shocks to force them to reveal the names of colleagues or plans they were suspected of having to disrupt the presidential election in March.
"There's lots of reasons they don't want to come up with these 12 people," said a Western diplomat. "They're dead, they're mutilated or they're dead and mutilated. Right now I see the government as complicit in a coverup because it's not credible to say, 'We can't find them.'" Like many of the activists, Bima began his political activities at university and soon joined the youth wing of the People's Democratic Party, which was formed in 1994 to press for political reform and later banned by Suharto. While studying philosophy in the city of Surabaya in July 1996, Bima was instrumental in helping put together an anti-government demonstration that involved thousands of laborers and students.
"He was only 23 years old at the time but he had a capacity to organize a lot of people," said Wilson, who goes by one name. Wilson spent two years in prison because of his activities with the People's Democratic Party; he was released in July.
"My son said that in that organization there is hope for change in Indonesia," said Misiati, describing a conversation she and her husband had with Bima. "I said, 'What kind of change do you want?' He said, 'I want to have a change in education, politics and the movement of the workers.' "
"We said if you want to get involved in that organization you are going to hit a steel wall," Misiati said. Bima replied: "I know that, but if I don't do this, the next generation will be ruined." In subsequent months, Bima spent time with fellow party members, gathering with them at night, playing the guitar and singing songs by the Bee Gees and Beatles as well as others written about Indonesia's political struggle.
The Suharto government viewed joining the People's Democratic Party as tantamount to treason because its members were suspected of harboring communist ideals. Suharto had come to power in 1965 in the wake of what was described as an aborted communist coup against his predecessor, president Sukarno.
Bima and other youths who worked in the new party resented Suharto, his children and their cronies for amassing fortunes worth an estimated $40 billion during three decades of authoritarian rule. The activists now demand that Suharto be brought to justice and that the wealth be returned to help rehabilitate Indonesia's economy. Bima told his family nearly two years ago that he began to notice the potential for change in Indonesia. When Bima failed to go home last December, Misiati wrote him asking, "Don't you love your mother anymore?" He replied:
"It is not that I don't love my parents. But my life is not for my parents only. I don't want life to be a routine. ...I want to do something that other people need. If I don't I would be very disappointed and regret it. I would even die." Over the next three months, Bima went deeper underground as student protests grew. He was last seen on March 31, and his friends and family assume he was kidnapped by security forces. If he is still alive, he would be 25.
[On September 17 the Straits Times reported that Amien Rais had called for the court-martial Prabowo, saying it was the only way in which families of missing activists could gain justice. "It is quite amazing. Prabowo admitted that he gave orders to kidnap nine activists, so he must be court-martialled ...yet he is now living a loose life as a civilian", he said - James Balowski.]
Jakarta -- Volunteers working with Indonesian victims of rape, especially those from the May riots, said they and their families are still being terrorised. Mr Sandyawan Sumardi and Ms Karlina Leksono-Supelli of the Volunteers for Humanity told The Jakarta Post that those targeted included gynaecologists.
Mr Sandyawan, a priest who runs the Jakarta Social Institute which works for the urban poor, said a doctor who had just testified before the government-sponsored Joint Fact-Finding Team (TGPF) received a call telling him to "stop meddling".
The caller told the doctor that "they" knew where his daughters' school was and that they would be raped unless he stopped testifying. "The doctor then said he had to give up, which we understood and respected," he told the Post.
Ms Karlina quoted one of the callers she spoke to as saying: "So you guys still want to continue. Aren't you afraid of being raped?" She said the terror began soon after the "breaking of the silence" on the rapes during the May riots.
In July, the Volunteers for Humanity reported to the National Commission on Human Rights that they had received 168 reports of rape, 152 of them in Jakarta and the rest in other cities including Surakarta and Surabaya, in Central and East Java respectively.
Ms Karlina cited several factors which she said were a major hindrance to the solving of the cases -- "the gap between the demands for evidence", the condition of traumatised victims, as well as the continued terror and denials.
Only one victim appeared "courageously" in a closed session last month at a United Nations sub-commission with Ms Karlina and Mr Sandyawan. She did not return home because her family had been harassed, Ms Karlina told the Post. She explained that because rapes were difficult to prove, there had been efforts to silence victims and their families.
Officials have denied the rapes took place. The London-based Human Rights Watch last week called on the government to stop discrediting reports of the rape, saying it was scaring off potential witnesses. The TGPF is still investigating the May riots, including the reported rapes.
Ms Karlina said the terror against volunteers and families of rape victims reflected a "strong force" that wanted the cases to remain unsolved. "Society must show that it is able to fight such intimidation," she said.
| News & issues |
Jenny Grant, Jakarta -- In the first case in which President Bacharuddin Habibie has taken legal offence at public criticism, Indonesian police have summonsed actress Ratna Sarumpaet as a "witness to insulting the President".
Ms Sarumpaet said yesterday she would refuse to obey the summons, issued over a National Dialogue for Democracy conference she organised last month. The missive said Ms Sarumpaet was a witness in the "criminal case of insulting the President" and "organising a conference without a permit". The actress said: "I am sure that in their minds I am the suspect. They are just trying to play because they don't have strong enough proof which, meanwhile, they will try to find."
Ms Sarumpaet and five of her supporters were sentenced to three months in jail for "sowing hatred against the Government" when they organised a People's Summit to oppose the re-election of former president Suharto in March. "The Government is not serious about establishing democracy. They are encountering a lot of problems they cannot solve, so they have returned to their old ways," Ms Sarumpaet said at her home in South Jakarta.
Louise Williams, Jakarta -- All ministers who served under the former president Soeharto, including President B.J. Habibie, have been ordered to declare their personal wealth ahead of the questioning of Mr Soeharto in the first official investigation into corruption under his regime.
The Justice Minister, Mr Muladi, said: "The mistakes of Soeharto's New Order Government cannot be blamed just on Soeharto alone. All ministers and high-ranking officials under Soeharto must also be investigated. "President Habibie must also fill in the form [declaring his personal assets]."
However, Mr Muladi said the investigation would begin with Mr Soeharto, who is expected to be formally questioned as early as next week, and may be jailed if found guilty of an abuse of power or a criminal act.
Mr Habibie, who is facing worsening social unrest as the economy continues to slide, announced the investigation this week into the assets of Mr Soeharto, once his mentor and best friend. The State Minister, Mr Akbar Tandjung, said: "The [investigation] team is expected to meet Mr Soeharto next week."
But the corruption investigation is a minefield for Mr Habibie, whose own family enjoyed considerable success in business under Mr Soeharto, and some commentators say they fear the investigation is merely being used to stall criticism of his government.
A diplomat said: "President Habibie has social, economic, security and stability problems and needs both international and domestic credibility. What better way to get that but to move against his predecessor?" Several weeks ago, Mr Soeharto appeared on television announcing that he had "not a single cent" in bank accounts in Indonesia or abroad, a move seen as a public warning to Mr Habibie to back off.
With daily demonstrations against rising food prices, and sporadic riots and looting across the country, Mr Habibie is under considerable pressure to distance himself from the past and seek justice because of the economic ruin that the nation is facing. However, the diplomat said: "It will be very difficult to move against Soeharto."
He had had since May, when Mr Soeharto resigned, until September to tie up any loose ends, and any large amounts of cash he might have had would now be untraceable. "It will be very difficult to prove anything, and everyone's hands are dirty, so the message is that if you push him too hard then he will come up with evidence that Habibie benefited, too."
An Indonesian specialist, Mr Jeffrey Winters, said the most important reason Mr Soeharto "thumbed his nose" at those demanding his fortune be revealed and returned to the nation was that he was obviously confident no-one would be able to prove how much money he had and where it was hidden. The best that could be hoped for was the seizure of some of the Soeharto family's domestic assets, Mr Winters said. Some estimates put the family's fortune at as high as $US40 billion ($68 billion).
An Australian-based Indonesian specialist, Mr George Aditjondro, said the Habibie Government was probably unable to thoroughly investigate Mr Soeharto's assets because the families shared interests in at least three areas. "It is impossible to cut through the flesh and nerves of Soeharto's wealth without touching Habibie," he said. Habibie and Soeharto family members share business interests in telecommunications, power generation and the industrial development zone on Batam island, he said.
The diplomat said Mr Habibie had to show some results, since the issue was on newspaper front pages every day. "One thing he could be looking at is to investigate in an inconclusive way and let it drag on, and then find no proof."
Jakarta - Maj. Gen. (ret) Theo Syafei and Maj. Gen. (ret) Raja Kami Sembiring Meliala led an illustrious pack of former military officers, former Golkar leaders and businessmen who formally joined the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) under Megawati Soekarnoputri on Friday.
Theo was formerly chief of the Udayana Regional Military Chief and served a brief stint as legislator in the Armed Forces (ABRI) faction in the House of Representatives (DPR) before he was withdrawn last year for criticizing then president Soeharto.
Sembiring was also known as an outspoken and highly critical legislator when he represented ABRI in the House. Two other former ABRI officers who joined the PDI's ranks were Maj. Gen. (ret) Sunarso Djajusman and Police Col. (ret) R.B. Hutagaol.
Former Golkar officials who defected were former deputy chairman Jacob Tobing, Rio Tambunan and Widjonarko, who was chairman of the Golkar-affiliated Indonesian Young Generation for Reform. Making up the remaining names on the list were businessmen Julius Usman, Erwin Pardede and Suko Sudarko. All registered as members of the PDI's South Jakarta branch.
The ceremony was held at the branch's office in Ciganjur subdistrict and was lead by branch chairman Audy F. Tambunan. The chairmen of the party's Jakarta chapter and East Jakarta branch, Roy B.B. Janis and Tarmidi, both attended.
Separately, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Subagyo Hadisiswoyo said the military had no qualms about any of its former officers joining political parties. "Basically, it's their right as retired officials to join political parties. The most important thing is that they remain committed to the country and the nation," Subagyo told reporters at the Army headquarters in Central Jakarta after the weekly Friday prayer. "There is no law requiring them to join Golkar," he said.
However, he added that ideally, they should follow the stance of the Armed Forces Veterans Association (Pepabri) to which all former officers belong. "But, again it's their right to join the PDI. We cannot force them not to," he said. Many other former servicemen said they supported the retired generals' decision to join Megawati's camp.
Maj. Gen. (ret) Syamsir Siregar, a former chief of the Armed Forces Intelligence Agency (BIA), said that retired military officers were free to choose how to channel their political aspirations. Former ABRI legislator Lt. Gen. (ret) Syaiful Sulun said the move was "natural".
Meanwhile a former chief of the Army's Strategic Reserves Command (Kostrad), Lt. Gen. (ret) Achmad Kemal Idris, called on the Armed Forces Headquarters to maintain an equal distance from all political parties.
Jakarta -- The Indonesian government has set May 26 as the tentative date for parliamentary elections, which will be held under new democratic electoral laws, a newspaper reported Friday.
Bisnis Indonesia quoted Home Affairs Minister Syarwan Hamid as saying the government hoped the new laws would be in place by December and that elections may be held May 26. According to Syarwan, drafts of the new bills, including regulations on elections, political parties and the composition of new legislative bodies, would be submitted to Parliament soon for debate. Originally, the government had planned to have done this by August.
The opposition has criticized the delay, saying it was designed to give extra time to the ruling Golkar party, which supports President B.J. Habibie, to reorganize itself. The new laws are expected to be enacted by the People's Consultative Assembly at a special meeting on Nov. 10. After the parliamentary election are held, the assembly is scheduled to meet against and select a president before the end of 1999. Habibie has said he plans to stand again for office.
[On September 19, the Jakarta Post reported that at the second reading of the bill, the party to oppose it was the United Development Party which was defeated by the armed forces and ruling Golkar factions. The Indonesian Democratic Party said it neither opposed nor supported the reading of the bill - James Balowski.]
Jakarta -- A former military officer in charge of distributing rice in Jakarta has admitted to syphoning off half of the food grain for profit as prices soared beyond the reach of the poor, reports said Thursday.
Ahmad Zawawi, former head of the Jakarta National Logistics Agency (Dolog), had confessed under questioning that he was involved in the massive diversion over a period of five months, the head of the Jakarta police economic detectives Lieutenant Colonel Saut Usman Nasution said.
Nasution, speaking after Zawawi had been grilled for eight hours on Tuesday, said the official had confessed to receiving 5,000 metric tonnes of rice daily to distribute in the capital, but that only some 2,000 to 2,500 tonnes were actually handed out.
"The remainder was sold illegally to Zawawi's close associates and other rice distributors, using fake delivery orders," Nasution was quoted as saying by the Jakarta Post. Nasution added the illegal practices caused rice prices to soar and enabled rice hoarders to sell the valued commodity for huge profits, the report said.
Zawawi was asked to supply documents to support his confession which showed that he had in fact diverted some 465,000 tonnes as of early this month or enough to feed the city for three months.
The police on Monday named Zawawi, 56, a retired army colonel, as a suspect, meaning that he could be tried on criminal charges for involvement in the manipulation of the rice supply. Last week he was called in only as a witness following the arrest of 15 rice distributors for their alleged involvement in rice-trading with fake delivery orders.
Zawawi was also a witness in a case involvingr an illicit attempt to export 1,900 tonnes of rice to the Malaysian port of Kuching. Police had seized that rice from five vessels and several trucks and containers at Jakarta's Sunda Kelapa Port. He failed to show up for further questioning on Wednesday, and his lawyers claimed he was too ill, the Post said.
Jakarta -- Indonesia's former president Suharto, facing questioning this week by a government probe into his wealth, says he doesn't have "even one cent" stashed in foreign bank accounts.
His children lament that they have been battered by the country's savage economic downturn. Son Bambang Trihatmodjo says he can no longer be called a rich man, and youngest son Hutomo "Tommy" Mandala Putra has had to sell off his 60 percent stake in luxury Italian sportscar company Lamborghini.
But analysts say that despite Indonesia's economic crisis and a backlash against Suharto family companies in the wake of the former president's fall, the wealth of Suharto Inc runs into billions of dollars. Some estimates go as high as $40 billion -- approaching the amount of money being pumped into the stricken country by international donors to keep the economy from collapse.
Most analysts say this figure is too high. But all agree the sprawling business empires linked to Suharto's relatives, along with more than 100 shadowy "charitable foundations" connected to the former president, are worth several billion dollars -- without taking into account cash stashed overseas. "My suspicion is that $40 billion is an exaggeration. But that is not to say the Suharto family is not immensely wealthy," said Roderick Brazier, director of publications at the Castle Group. "I would guess it would be $8-10 billion."
The Castle Group is a Jakarta-based business consultancy that has published a study of the Suharto family's wealth and several studies of Indonesia's corporate landscape. Brazier said the personal wealth of Suharto's six children was likely to be $4-5 billion, with the charitable foundations adding another $2 billion. "On top of that, I would imagine the family has squirrelled away in the order of another couple of billion," he said.
Some observers believe Suharto may have much more than this hidden in overseas bank accounts. David Hale, chief economist of Switzerland's Zurich Insurance, told Barron's magazine he estimated Suharto had moved $8 billion from Indonesia to Austria in the months before his fall. According to Austria's Wirtschaftsblatt newspaper, the value of investments held by foreign depositors at Austrian banks rose 93 billion schillings ($7 billion) in the first quarter of 1998. The paper said much of the money was believed to be Suharto's.
US magazine Forbes put the clan's wealth at $16 billion last year, but this year cut the estimate to a more modest $4 billion. The Indonesian Business Data Centre (IBDC), an independent consultancy, says the family's assets are likely to be as high as 200 trillion rupiah ($18 billion). "We believe that is a reasonable estimate," IBDC executive Benny Sindunata said.
Suharto insisted in a rare television appearance this month that talk of his wealth was exaggerated. "The fact is I don't even have one cent of savings abroad, don't have accounts at foreign banks, don't have deposits abroad and don't even have any shares in foreign firms, much less hundreds of billions of dollars," he said on the private TPI television channel, part- owned by his eldest daughter.
His son Bambang told reporters this week he could no longer be considered rich. "I might have been a rich person. But not any more," Bambang said. "You must know that the value of my shares has dropped drastically. I also have liabilities that must be paid in dollars. So how can I be called a rich man now?"
Analysts agree the wealth of Suharto's six children has been hard hit by their father's resignation on May 21, which has left them facing a far chillier business environment. Numerous state firms have cancelled contracts with companies linked to the former first family. Eldest son Sigit Harjojudanto and Tommy have lost many of the deals their Humpuss conglomerate had struck with the Pertamina state oil firm. Many of Suharto's children have resigned from executive positions in a bid to adopt a lower profile, but retain large holdings in numerous firms. Bambang, regarded as the wealthiest, has stepped down as head of the Bimantara conglomerate, though he still holds a hefty stake in the company. "The situation is very fluid, and the family has certainly been hit," Brazier said. "But the assets of the children alone can still be measured in billions of dollars."
Jakarta -- The government is ready to submit to parliament three draft bills on political parties, elections and the legislature in post-Suharto Indonesia, State Secretary Akbar Tanjung said Monday. "The draft bills on politics have reached their final phase and in the near future, in the next few days, will be submitted to parliament," Tanjung said, "God willing, we will send three political draft bills, the first on political parties, the second on elections and the third on the composition and status of the MPR, DPR and DPRD," Tanjung added.
He was refering to the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR), the nation's highest legislative body which convenes every five years to appoint a president and vice president, the national parliament or People's Representative Council (DPR) and provincial parliaments (DPRD.) "There is not the slightest intention by the government to postpone the submission of the draft bills," Tanjung said in reply to blistering criticism by opposition politicians over the weekend that he was stalling. The bills had been initially been due to be submitted in August and several socio-political organisations have also criticised the delay.
Tanjung, who is also head of the ruling Golkar party, said the draft bill governing political parties would guarantee the people's right to organise, but set criteria for parties taking part in general elections set for next year. He citied a minimum number of chapters in provinces and branches at district level as well as the written support of a minimum number of supporters.
An astounding 80 political parties have sprouted since May when president Suharto fell from power and his vice president B.J. Habibie took over. Their recognition awaits replacement of a law restricting the number of parties to three.
Tanjung said the bill will divide the country into 420 electoral districts, half of them on densely-populated Java island. "The personality of the candidate will be more dominant in the next elections," he said. In past polls electors voted for a party, not a candidate.
Tanjung said that under the new bill, 420 members of the DPR should be directly elected, while another 75 would be part of the "proportional representation" -- a central government allocation to diminish wide seat disparities between the parties. Another 55 seats will be allotted to members of the military, who do not vote in polls. The total membership of the DPR at national level would be 550 members compared to the current 500 -- 425 of whom were indirectly elected through the polls and 75 appointed from the military. He did not elaborate on the membership of the MPR or DPRD.
Habibie has said that he expects the MPR membership, currently at 1,000, to be slashed by 300 seats. The MPR will be composed of the DPR membership and another 81 seats to represent the regions and 69 to represent non-political groupings, he has said.
At present the MPR is composed of the 500 DPR members, 251 presidential appointees shared by the MPR factions, 149 appointees representing the regions and 100 people picked by the president to represent non-political groupings.
Under Habibie's proposed timetable, the current MPR will convene in November to approve laws for the elections which will be held in May 1999. It is hoped to convene the resulting MPR before the end of next year so it can pick a president and a vice president for five years beginning January 1, 2000. Habibie has not ruled out standing for president.
| Arms/armed forces |
Jakarta -- The Indonesian military is reviewing its role in the country's political life but has vowed to stay in the legislature where its members are appointed directly by the president, reports said here Tuesday. Armed Forces Chief General Wiranto told a parliamentary hearing here on Monday that the Indonesian armed forces (ABRI) was currently "reactualizing, redefining and reorganising" its socio-political role in a systematic and planned way, the Antara news agency said. The Jakarta Post daily quoted Wiranto as saying the military "has and will continue to adjust" its socio-political role.
Under the Indonesian law, the military is given a wide role in the country's socio-politic life besides its more traditional role in defence. In the past, that has translated into active and retired military officers holding key positions in the government, the legislature and the judiciary as well as in mass organisations.
Calls for a review of the armed force's non-defence role were aired by many in the last years of the rule of former President Suharto. But they have since increased after the veteran leader stepped down in May 21 and handed over power to then vice- president B.J. Habibie.
"Therefore, rumors on a planned disbanding of the ABRI socio- political institution is not true. Even though there are changes, it does not mean that the socio-political institution will be disbanded," Wiranto said, referring to the military's influential socio-political department.
The department translates the military's role in socio- political affairs into policies. "ABRI is developing four new paradigm on the socio-political role of the ABRI," Wiranto added. He did not elaborate but said the armed forces was currently enhancing the spirit, soul and application of ABRI's socio- political role in the field.
Antara also quoted the head of the socio-political department, Lieutenant General Susilo Bambang Yudoyono as telling the same hearing that the military planned to hold a seminar to mark the anniversary of the armed forces on October 5. Yudoyono said the seminar, to be held at the command school in nearby Bandung, will also discuss "the role and tasks of ABRI in the future."
Wiranto added that ABRI, whose members do not vote in elections, would stay in the legislature where it has a "voice". "Therefore those who have the idea of taking ABRI out of the DPR (The house of representatives) and the MPR (The People's Consultative Assembly) should better review their ideas again," Wiranto said.
Under the prevailing laws, the military holds 75 of the 500 seats at the DPR. At the MPR the military factions holds 113 seats of the 1,000 seats there but at least 32 members for the 100 representatives from non-political groupings are active military members.
A draft bill on the composition and role of the membership of the MPR, DPR and the parliament at provincial levels to be submitted by the government of Habibie to the parliament this week has already cut down on the military presence in the legislature. If adopted the military would hold 55 seats out of the total 550 at the DPR.
Wiranto was speaking as students from several universities tried to hold a protest at the military headquarters in central Jakarta to demand an end to ABRI's non-defence role as well as to the military's use of force and violence in dealing with internal affairs. About 75 demonstrators were blocked by a cordon of soldiers and police before reaching the headquarters.