http://www.thejakartapost.com/detaileditorial.asp?fileid=20070129.E02&irec=1
Opinion January 29, 2007
Leng C. Tan, Jakarta
Last week's rally, organized by former student-activist Hariman Siregar, may be a sign of things to come for Indonesia in the year 2007. If so, this will be a daunting year for Indonesians.
For pious democrats Southeast Asia would not have seemed a pretty neighborhood last year -- with its one-party states, Laos and Vietnam; democratic states with one dominant party, Malaysia and Singapore; military junta states, Myanmar and Thailand; and wobbly democracies, Indonesia and the Philippines. Meanwhile, Brunei remains under the rule of a monarch.
The bloodless blow to Thailand's democratic polity as a result of the military coup there must have further muddied the neighborhood. It knocked the wind out of ASEAN's sails and stymied its push for democracy in Myanmar. Indeed, Thailand has fallen prey to the praetorians.
The domestic reaction in Indonesia to the militaristic turn of events in Thailand was one of worry. The nation vowed this would never be allowed to occur here. But who knows? This is Indonesia after all.
Fifteen years of democratic rule in Thailand was undone in one rumbling night when tanks rolled through downtown Bangkok. Democratic rule in Indonesia is only halfway there if you date it from elections in 1999. When mass protests gathered momentum in Bangkok, ending finally with the ousting of Thaksin from office early last year, the Economist warned in its editorial against throwing out the democratic rule-book citing the potential for dire consequences. Who would have know these editors would be so prescient?
So when a security consultant in Jakarta said, "Indonesia is now, arguably, the most democratic nation in Southeast Asia," (The Jakarta Post, Oct. 2, 2006) one was tempted to play the Cassandra role and ask, "Yes, but for how long?" Surely, this must have been said many times about Thailand. Unfortunately, we now know better.
Who is to say that Indonesia's military will not play the role of "savior" if a Thai-like political impasse hits Jakarta? Both countries share a similar historical trajectory that has been intersected by militaristic factors -- although coups have been more regular in Thailand than in Indonesia. However, the former has not had a military strongman such as Soeharto. That said, Indonesia has no King, unlike Thailand, to play the tacit arbiter who would save the country from itself. In the absence of an Indonesian king, who could give his royal blessing, how would the Indonesian military gain legitimacy as the country's savior? Who would play the stabilizing role in Jakarta if its democratically elected government was overthrown by mass protests, as in Thaksin's Bangkok?
The subsequent military coup ended Thailand's interlude of democratic stability. We need to ask, why has genuine political stability in Southeast Asia been so rare for so long? Apart from Malaysia and Singapore, where the same democratic governments have held power for four decades, Southeast Asia has witnessed for a similar period of time a series of political convulsions. These have been in Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines, which seem consigned to forever chase an elusive degree of stability .
What is the key feature that sets Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines apart from Malaysia and Singapore? Political turmoil that exists in Thailand and the Philippines, and is now brewing in Indonesia, reminds one of the words of a departing ASEAN diplomat, who remarked that Indonesians are "very political".
Could this be the reason why political stability continues to elude these nations? Are Indonesians, Thais and Filipinos more political than Malaysians and Singaporeans? Perhaps their political systems are configured so as to make them this way. One recalls Sukarno's phrase, "politics in command", though the people suffer.
In the larger scheme of things, the ASEAN diplomat's remark did not strike one as out of the ordinary. In any democracy it is expected that political players will be animals, each exhibiting a varying degree of "politicalness". So the diplomatic pointer on understanding Indonesians was filed away until last year, when the local mill started cranking out rumors of possible plots to destabilize President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's government. Such plotting never came to pass, in part, because doing so would have involved fishing in troubled waters, as the nation had just been struck by a series of natural disasters.
And so 2006 ended peaceably enough for President Yudhoyono, though 2007 may turn out to be a different story altogether given the growing opposition afoot. The organizer of last week's rally, Hariman Siregar, said, "Taking to the streets [calling for the president to resign] is constitutional." The Palace said, however, that the protesters' demand that the President resign was unconstitutional. Can they both be right?
This presents us with an obvious political impasse. It is advisable that opposition forces refrain from booting out, Bangkok-style, democratically-elected governments, if only to abide by the rule that a democratically elected president's tenure is sacrosanct. To also consider, however, is the no-less-important matter of whether to continue allowing this democratically elected government to mismanage and neglect the welfare of its people for another two years. Siregar asked, "How long do we have to languish is this mess? ... until 2009?"
This presents Indonesia with quite a tricky impasse. "The Constitution should not take precedence over the people's suffering," Siregar has said. As laudable as his goal of ending the people's suffering is, his is quite a worrisome statement to make, as the constitution is inviolable. Moreover, taking to the streets and demanding that a democratically elected government steps down gives the feeling that the "rule of man" could overrule the "rule of law". Is there not another way of breaking the current impasse? One that avoids the impression that the rule of man has taken precedence over law.
One truly wonders how the chastened Thais would advise their ASEAN neighbor, the Indonesians. In Bangkok, they threw out the baby with the bathwater, to paraphrase the Thai Foreign Ministry. The question of whether Thailand can still retrieve the baby must be exercising the minds of many anxious, democracy-loving Thais. This is one question which Indonesians, blessedly, need not pose themselves. At least, not yet.
The writer is visiting fellow with Soegeng Sarjadi Syndicate, Jakarta.
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