THE CONTINUED SUBJUGATION OF SUBJUGATION OF INDONESIAN HISTORY

Reply to Akhmad Kusaeni on "The Fall of Suharto"

Tak Kenal Maka Tak Sayang
- proverb

For this western reader it was a welcome change to enter a latest account of Indonesia's quite recent tumultuous history. Written in the blogosphere by Akhmad Kusaeni, Deputy Chief Editor of Indonesia's Antara News Agency, 'The Fall of Suharto' promises an authoritative and authentic Indonesian description and explanation of the downfall of Soeharto's 'New Order' regime in May 1998.

In trying to explain those events and their key personalities, Kusaeni offers enthusiastic reference to four westerners' versions of that Indonesian history. Some of these western histories may serve novice readers well by packaging certain details and widely accepted previous accounts into a kind of chronicle form, handy enough for a student's effort at familiarization. Though sadly a very limited sample of an actually much wider discourse, Kusaeni's chosen histories present some analyses and perspectives more or less useful for consideration a decade or so after the events.

But on the more diplomatically delicate and ideologically contentious issues, these studies tend to locate the chief cause of instability away from the economic mechanisms of western-sourced globalization and Indonesia's acute strategic vulnerabilities to that post-Cold War fiscal and cultural expansionism. As Kusaeni summarizes it within his own endorsement, his four chosen authors (Eklof, Vatikiotis, Schwarz, and Kingsbury) believe "the fall of Suharto was more due to intra-elite manuevering than to 'people power', while "economic collapse provided the impetus for" a process of leadership downfall in train years before. At best, this view would hold monetary disaster to be akin to a hard-to-predict environmental calamity. Indonesia's people would be largely ineffectual, almost passive bystanders of almost no significance to the elite spawned from them. Outsider investment circles too would be virtually neutral, disinterested parties in inverse proportion to the extent of their actual wealth, power and ambition.

But that emphasis on anecdotal court intrigues in Jakarta would also be contradicted by many influential western parties themselves, who would prove by the nature of their surveillance the real coercive, gravitational power of their own interests in Indonesia. To deny the very intense Indonesia focus among the west's mutually dependent bankers, statesmen, academics and journalists would be like claiming that Heisenberg's discovery about observed phenomena had no relevance to the very malleable and dynamic fields of human activity we identify as strategy, economics, diplomacy and politics. Regardless, it is arguably quite blinkered and self-justifying - and certainly premature - for any study to draw conclusions which dismiss the causal significance of a phenomenon that actually lies largely unexamined in the study itself.

Is it not now understood as most fundamentally important that monetarist speculation smashed Indonesia's economy from 1997, and that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) imposed extreme austerity measures and conditional terms, thereby all but demanding explicitly Soeharto's exit? Perhaps there is a pattern now typical in increasingly relaxed notions of 'democracy' and 'sovereignty', as the state's 'reformist' and 'moderate' face appears usually when financier elites intend to collect the bigger debts, rents or assets. While on those points, we should not be surprised if Schwarz's 'prediction' of Soeharto's 1998 resignation was more a reasonable assertion of probability based on a 'deadline for Soeharto' heard via financier circles or even from someone directly within the IMF itself.

Instead, the Indonesian military (TNI) and other state apparatus supposedly shoulder the main responsibility for Indonesia's turmoil, including that seen around Soeharto's retirement. Yet during Soeharto's regime in particular, those uniformed TNI members often complied or colluded with a global regime, barely influencing and never commanding it. By mythologies so apologetic for neoliberalism and its essential project called 'globalization', four problematic points strike particularly in the case of the Indonesian Army's Prabowo Subianto and his repeated excoriation as the 'bad guy' of Indonesia's military (or its "virus" by Kusaeni's elaboration of Vatikiotis' account).

A first possible point for dispute is Prabowo's alleged factional intrigues and attached sinister connotations. Presumed factionalism is one of the most enduring western myths about the TNI i.e., 'Red & White / Nationalist' and 'Green / Islamist' factions. "Presumed factionalism" seems a more appropriate term because on close examination source detail is actually vague, thickened by conversational gossip (interviewees), and second-hand gossip (textual references of similar anecdote). Moreover, the discourse can assume a very insidious quality, because the phenomenon itself is undeniable: factionalism is a loosely defined but more or less routine part of organizational politics anywhere. By imposing simplistic assumptions and credulity around local conditions upon universal fact, these views create a polarizing agenda largely devoid of nuance. Thus may gossip mongers counter any reasonable, basic criticism of claimed 'military factionalism' to allege that critics somehow perpetuate nationalistic propaganda about a monolithic compact between state and military. Yet how do the 'factionalism' arguments hold now? A key 'player' in 1998 was Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin, for example: supposedly a 'Green' officer and 'Prabowo ally'. Sjafrie progressed well these past four post-Soeharto presidencies. Credulous students would be very tempted to thereby contrive a new 'Garibaldi faction', confounding such gossip about factional division.

Real dynamics of factionalism in scheming, shadowy alliances and treachery - or merely general philosophical or professional concord between colleagues - are usually much less apparent; indeed, they probably intensified most in Indonesia upon attempted manipulation by strong foreign parties. And while it appears true that Prabowo nurtured close connections in countries like Jordan or Tajikistan, mentioning those foreign links would be a conspicuously selective and unfair pursuit if disregarding the larger, more numerous - and often murkier - trails of money leading from Soeharto's Jakarta into western countries and businesses. We may serve history far better by contemplating just such ties and their persistent effects on western diplomacy towards Indonesia.

Another deficiency of such western histories' perspective on Indonesian politics is its typical neglect of political brinkmanship in an environment so highly charged and volatile. Yet such a consideration usually helps when analyzing a 30-year dictatorship that teeters under intense foreign and local pressures. So the orchestrated mass criminality ("riots") of May 1998 makes more sense if seen to threaten devastating 'scorched earth' to leadership contenders; specifically scorched earth in the financial sector as terrified ethnic Chinese either fled Indonesia or contemplated just such action. On the one hand the message seemed rather simple, even old fashioned, in the manner of extortionists petulant over their rejection by old subalterns: burn us, and we leave your prize in yet worse ruin. On the other hand, the mid-1998 unrest in Jakarta and elsewhere could have been a scheming device designed to provoke and implicate some of its obedient participants - just as appears to have happened to a few TNI officers loyal to Soekarno in 1965. But to assert "why the military would instigate riots was also not clear" - as Kusaeni alludes to Schwarz's analysis - seems an odd concession amid repeated, confident allegations of military involvement and direction. If firm conclusions remain unattainable then analysis should offer the available explanations rather than a resigned avoidance of the task.

In a similar way, the fatal shooting of several students at Jakarta's private Trisakti University showed the same dynamic of brinkmanship at work: Trisakti was a well-known finishing school for many children of Indonesia's ruling elite, including those of military and police chiefs themselves. However, even by the middle class standards of Indonesian tertiary education, Trisakti was hardly the wellspring of revolution or challenge to oligarchical wealth and other privilege, much less to military and police powers. The message then seemed an unequivocal one to elements of the ruling elite itself: 'stay loyal, if you don't want yourself or your kids to be next'.

More specific organizational and sub-cultural detail exposes those western histories' weakness on that point and on the apparent caricature in their prevalent historiographical verdict on Prabowo. He was Kostrad Chief at the time, so some units in his chain of command were already based in Jakarta, while others deployed there during that critical emergency period of May 1998 unrest and Soeharto's resignation. However, Kostrad units attached as outsiders to locally based formations, and Prabowo did not hold the direct command responsibility for the capital's security. The chain of command was clear: Sjafrie commanded the TNI's Jakarta territorial command - along with attached TNI and local Police - and Sjafrie was directly answerable to TNI Chief Wiranto. Moreover, Sjafrie's command held the local trump cards for instigating unrest: the local gangland of criminals and street thugs, as used just a couple of years earlier to oust Megawati from her political party. Earlier still, Wiranto too held the Jakarta command and was involved in those processes of territorial 'law and order' when he officiated at public parades to commence paramilitary discipline and organized coordination for such proxy gangster elements so important to routine and special military business.

On that point, the ironies are stark, exposing some rarely addressed neoliberalist cliches. In all the oddities of Jakarta's politics in the 1960s - the claimed 'G30S coup attempt' and the 'Supersemar' succession - historiographical anomalies, distortion and lies accompanied Soeharto's rise from his own term as Kostrad Chief (the CIA station leadership later claimed he was an unknown at the time!)... Little wonder that Soeharto's retirement brought similarly grand distractions, this time in a naïve morality play about the evil that comes from a 'fiercely loyal' and 'hardline' military man. Yet Prabowo's loyalty (and presumably that of Sjafrie, Subagyo - and Wiranto in his time) was to a chain of command that had the civilian office of President at its apex. Therefore, Prabowo was in this sense a staunch supporter of constitutionality and 'civil supremacy' over the military: key tenets of the liberal-reformist advocacy which would mould Indonesia into some idealized western image. Yet many who would claim to advocate those legalistic ideals of state reform would also condemn Prabowo without exception, and without regard for thorough processes of rigour, evidence or contrary views.

Another problem in the 'Downfall from Intrigue' history arises from the racialist overtones of 1998 violence, especially in Jakarta. The May 1998 murders, rapes, arson and looting apparently contained very racist motives among perpetrators at the street level, especially where class resentments mixed with old anti-Chinese hatreds fanned during the colonial-era. By implication, any military involvement in such 'scorched earth' unrest would reveal the heinous creed of race supremacy, especially to European onlookers mindful of colonialism and their own twentieth century history in particular. But Prabowo had some ethnic Chinese descent on his mother's side, still very rare for TNI officers. To not only isolate Prabowo for these crimes but assign to his command the original and main responsibility, or agency, needs good and reliable evidence as well as plausible explanation and analysis. The Intrigue School meets little of any such reasonably expected criteria. Where impressionistic western histories describe an Indonesian Kristallnacht in mid-1998, they do so more from their own navel-view than from specific evidence of fact. In this sense Kusaeni refers to Danish scholar Eklof, who mooted signs of 'a concerted campaign...to drive parts of the ethnic Chinese business community out of the country and thus facilitating a redistribution of their business and other assets to non-Chinese Indonesians'. Alas for Eklof's relativist hunch, any substantial 'redistribution to non-Chinese' could probably be found more in the post-1998 property markets and state revenues of such areas as Sydney, Perth, Melbourne, Vancouver, LA and London than in Jakarta.

A final point of dispute here relates a little more deeply to the vague 'factionalism' allegations against Prabowo (and by implication also against the TNI as an institution). Prabowo's supposed 'Green' factional membership was meant to define a preferred or at least calculated affiliation with political Islam nascent since the 1980s. In general, such presumed factionalism tended to exaggerate impressions of an absurd military riven by unprofessional conduct, questionable discipline and compromised loyalty to country. However, in western eyes, a 'Green' label for TNI officers carried a further badge of stigma: the old phobia of an exotic muslim threat, quintessentially and irreconcilably alien, driven by the danger of dogmatic fanaticism, or at least the unreliability of mystical irrationality. In the years after Prabowo's own retirement from the military, it can be seen how the west's demonization of him contained a subdued call to old European prejudices, since rendered in sensationalist alarms of an official and elaborate discourse known typically as 'counterterrorism studies'.

None of this argument is to deny that Prabowo or his colleagues engaged in savage repression in their service to Soeharto's regime. But many of Prabowo's alleged political rivals too had similar experience, if not worse. In 1998 Jakarta too it was clear that Prabowo continued the brutal calling of a career made bloody from Aceh, East Timor and West Papua. So Prabowo was a 'loyalist' in the professional military sense that he had chosen his job and intended to stick by its core rules and ethos. This prompts some questions. Who were not so loyal in the same sense? Where exactly were their loyalties? Were they loyal to foreign parties, and if so, were they not traitors to their own people?

Perhaps on some level Indonesian readers like Akhmad Kusaeni feel flattered that western publishers pay prominent attention to events and personalities in their country. But I think it more a pity when Indonesians have such uncritical regard for western histories of Indonesian politics; shocking where those histories contain much gossip for sources, packaged in simplistic and uncritical analysis. The many nuances of a more lively, multi-dimensional, and human Indonesian history await their composers - Indonesian historians.

Matthew N. Davies
Melbourne

GLOSSARY
G30S: Gerakan 30 September - (alleged) movement supposed to have plotted a Communist coup d'etat
Kostrad: Komando Strategis Cadangan Angkatan Darat - Army Strategic Reserve Command
Supersemar: Surat Perintah Sebelas Maret - Executive Edict of 11 March 1966 conferring officially national powers of governance to Soeharto

THE FALL OF SUHARTO

By Akhmad Kusaeni

It was the story of the end of an era: The fall of Suharto. Students in Indonesia were not chanting reformasi! any longer. Reformasi, meaning reform, by the mid of May 1998, seems an obsolete term. They began to use the more heroic and eerie term. They then shouted Revolusi sampai mati! --- revolution until death. The new chant resembles a similar one from 53 years ago, when Indonesian struggled for their independence from the Dutch: Merdeka atau mati! --- independence or die.

The economic disease had spread too far. For the past three decades, Indonesia has been one of Asia’s most powerful economies. During this period, its economy grew at an average annual rate of seven percent. But when financial turmoil struck the region last July, Indonesia’s economic achievements quickly unraveled.

Since then, its currency, the rupiah, has lost nearly 80 percent of its value. Before crisis, the values of rupiah were relatively stable with Rp3.000 per $1 U.S. dollar. During the crisis, rupiah jumped to Rp15.000 per $1 U.S. dollar. Banks and major companies have collapsed overnight. Unemployment has increased dramatically and food prices have skyrocketed.

Riots have erupted across the country, most of which are directed at ethnic Chinese, who make-up three percent of the population, yet control approximately three-quarters of the nation’s wealth. If economic conditions didn’t improve, many experts warned that Indonesia might plunge into social and political chaos.
But his handling of the recent economic crisis has failed to restore confidence both at home and abroad. Many contend that his reluctance to adhere to the International Monetary Fund’s prescribed reforms has exacerbated the current crisis. And despite his repeated promises, President Suharto has failed to dismantle the monopolies and cartels that control the economy, many of which are run by his family and friends.

Furthermore, his plan to peg the rupiah against the U.S. dollar has provoked international criticism. Continued defiance of the IMF plan may prompt its board to suspend future payments of its $33 billion loan package, potentially causing even greater chaos in the region.

When economics crisis became worst, it was too late for Suharto to recover. The bottom line was that the people have lost all confidence in him. Among mainstream leaders, Amien Rais (now holding position as the National Assembly’s House Speaker) was one of the first to see the potential for a mass uprising against Suharto. He said: “We must not afraid of the term “people’s power”. That, after all, was how we gained independence and again how we toppled Sukarno in 1966”.

Therefor, the student protest then continued to gain strength, with students all over the country demanding immediate “total reform” (reformasi total). The level of violence increased as the demonstrations grew in the strength and size, and the confrontation started to claim fatalities. On May 8, 1998, a demonstrator was beaten to death be security personnel in Yogyakarta, and the day after a plain-clothes security officer died in student demonstration in Bogor. The two deaths contributed to exacerbating the tension and animosity between the students and the security forces. On May 12, the troops shot dead four students in a demonstration at the Trisakti University in Jakarta. The Trisakti shootings were widely covered by the media, and the four slain students were dubbed “heroes of reform” (pahlawan reformasi).[1]

The next day (May 13) a memorial ceremony was held at the Trisakti University, which was attended by thousands of students from different universities in Jakarta. Several of Suharto’s most prominent critics in the previous six months came to speak to students, such as Amien Rais and Megawati Sukarnoputri (now VP under President Abdurrahman Wahid’s government). Meanwhile, a large crowd assembled outside the campus gates to watch the students’ activities and famous speakers who took part in the ceremony. Around noon the crowd started to become uneasy, and some of them called the students to go out on the streets to march to parliament building and Presidential Palace.

When the students declined, the crowd continued to grow restive, and some street lamps were smashed. Shortly afterwards, a passing garbage truck was stopped and set on fire. From the area around the Trisakti University, the rioting spread to nearby area and then to all over Jakarta.

In Center Business District Grogol, several shops, almost exclusively Chinese-owned, were looted, with rioters carrying away refrigerators, computers, TV sets and other electronic goods. Some of the goods were also taken out on the streets and set on fire, together with numerous cars and some motorbikes parked on the streets. Many shops were smashed or set on fire after they had been looted. The rioting continued throughout the night, and the next day, May 14, it flared up all over Jakarta and in the neighboring towns of Depok, Tangerang and Bekasi.

According to Joint Fact-Finding Team (TGPF, Tim Gabungan Pencari Fakta) over 1.000 people died in the riots which were the worst seen by far in Jakarta. Hundreds of banks and offices were partly or completely destroyed and close to 2.000 motor vehicles were set on fire. Rioters also attacked numerous police stations, hotels, restaurants, and gas
stations. An official estimate put the value of damaged property at almost 400 million US dollars.

One of the most gruesome aspects of the riots was the rape and sexual assault of large number of women, most of them of Chinese descent. The TGPF verified 64 cases of rape, several of them involving killing or mutilation of the victims. In the conclusion, these protest and riots, spearheaded by students, finally led to downfall of Suharto on May 21, 1998.

How can one explain the fall of Suharto, a long-term 'strongman' in May 1998, who had not only ruled for thirty-two years but had also been unanimously elected seventy-two days earlier? Was he the victim of a power struggle among the political elite, including the military, or was his fall simply the result of a momentum that had built up over many years and which exploded with the onset of the financial crisis?

Four western’s scholar tried to make analyses on the downfall of Suharto in their interesting and important books. They were Stefan Eklof in Indonesian Politics in Crises: The Long Fall of Suharto, 1996-98 ; Michael R.J. Vatikiotis in Indonesian Politics under Suharto: The Rise and Fall the New Order ; Adam Schwarz in A Nation in Waiting: Indonesia’s Search for Stability ; and Damien Kingsbury in Politics of Indonesia.
Stefan Eklof, in his book, tried to explore the two-year political crisis in Indonesia, which led to the fall of Suharto. Eklof, of the Center for East and Southeast Asian Studies at Lund University, Denmark, carried out research in Indonesia on four separate occasions during 1997-1998. Based on his research, he admitted that Suharto’s fall was precipitated by the economic crisis and the dynamics of international market mechanisms. But, according to him, the Asian economic crisis was not the beginning of the story.

In preface of his book he stated:
“Economic collapse provided the impetus for the political crisis to evolve in full, but Indonesia was already in the midst of a political legitimacy crisis when the economic crisis struck in mid-1997”.

This political crisis, its background and development, was the theme for his book. But, Eklof, also gave the readers a brief history about Suharto (born in 1921) and his “military dictatorship”. Yes, few of the world’s major countries have been so completely dominated by one person as Indonesia was by Suharto from the mid-1960s to 1998. When he was forced to step down in May 1998 he had already by far surpassed his predecessor and Indonesia’s first president Sukarno, as the country’s longest serving head of state. As Suharto had led Indonesia for 32 years, few other world leaders had led their countries for longer than the Indonesian president.

Suharto and his New Order regime came to power in 1966 in the wake of an abortive coup attempt the year before in which six top army generals were murdered. The circumstances around the coup were still unclear, but the event provided a pretext for the military to move against its main political adversary, the Indonesian Communist Party, PKI (Partai Komunis Indonesia). In a nation-wide purge from October 1965 to March 1966, an estimated 500.000 real and imagined Communist were killed as long-standing social and political tension exploded, fuelled by the army’s organized campaign against the PKI.[2]

During his 32 years in power, according to Eklof’s book, Suharto presided over tremendous changes in the social and economic spheres. Enormous progress was made in health, education, agriculture and poverty eradication to mention a few of the most important fields. This was at the heart of Suharto’s and the New Order’s legitimacy.

How was Suharto maintaining his power for such very long time? Suharto has been succeeding in making himself as president, general and king. The political structure of his New Order regime can be described as a steeply ascending pyramid in which the heights are thoroughly dominated by single office, the presidency. The President commands the military, which is primus interpares within bureaucracy, which in turn holds sway over the society.

David Jenkins, Australian journalist, describes the degree of control Suharto had achieved almost three decades after taking power:
Suharto stood at the apex of the pyramid; his appointees sat in each of the key executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the government. His writ extended into every department and into every state-run corporation; it reached down, if he chose, to every village…In short, he had established himself as the paramount figure in a society in which deference to authority is deeply rooted[3].

Golkar is the government’s party, an electoral vehicle given its present form in 1969 in order to deny any parliamentary majority to the other parties. Its seats are filled with men and women who have or have had bureaucratic careers or are in other ways connected to bureaucracy. In Parliament and Assembly, the Golkar delegations have never taken autonomous initiatives, but served instead as the sponsors of policies arrived at elsewhere in the government. A large majority of the 1000-members Assembly is appointed or approved by the sitting executive. Every five years, all 1000 members “vote” by acclamation for Suharto’s re-election. Before his resignation, Suharto has just elected for the seventh terms of presidency.

Critics of the New Order had often been tended to characterize the regime as a military dictatorship. The relationship between ABRI (Angkatan Bersenjata Republik Indonesia, Armed Forces of the Republic of Indonesia) and the civilian politicians was always uneasy. The military vigorously defended in prominence in politics, enshrined in the doctrine of the dual function (dwifungsi) of the military.

The doctrine stipulated that ABRI, because of its historical role in the struggle for national independence, had two roles, one in defense and security, and the other in social political management. ABRI also saw itself as the essential vanguard for national stability and unity. Most evidently, the dual function meant that ABRI was represented by an appointed faction in parliament, and that active and retired officers held the key post in the government and throughout the bureaucracy. Besides the presidency, ABRI clearly was Indonesia’s most politically influential institution under the New Order.

So, in the case of May riots, Eklof believed that the military were involved in instigating the riots. He stated:

“The involvement of personnel from the special forces, Kopassus, in all three cities, Jakarta, Medan and Solo, seems particularly incriminating, and strengthens suspicions that the group of senior officers around Lieutenant-General Prabowo (former Kopassus Commander) was responsible for instigating at least parts of the unrest”.

It was not completely clear what motive, or motives, Prabowo and the group around him would have had for instigating the riots. Adam Schwarz, in his book “A Nation in Waiting”, had quoted Indonesian’s scholar Dewi Fortuna Anwar:

“It’s very hard to believe the riots were spontaneous. It was all done with military precision”.

For Schwarz, an American journalist worked for the Far Eastern Economic Review and now lecturer on Asian politics at John Hopkins University, why the military would instigate riots was also not clear. One theory was that military elements loyal to Prabowo and close to his radical Muslim supporters saw an opportunity to strike at the ethnic-Chinese, in what sociologist Ariel Heryanto called an “act of the state-sponsored terrorism”. It’s aims “to spread greater fear among the large population against whom similar violence could happened at any time”.

Similar to Schwarz views, Stefan Eklof also sees the possibility that the riots were part of a concerted campaign against Indonesia’s ethnic Chinese population. It’s aims to drive parts of the ethnic Chinese business community out of the country and thus facilitating a redistribution of their business and other assets to non-Chinese Indonesians. The rapes and sexual violence against Chinese Indonesian women, primarily in Jakarta, might in this context have been part of the campaign.

Another theory that Adam Schwarz mentioned in his book is that Prabowo and the generals close to him helped foment the riots in a bid for power. According to this theory, Prabowo hoped the riots would discredit Armed Chief Commander General Wiranto and convince Suharto to appoint Prabowo as armed chief commander or chief of a new security agency.

Earlier in the month, Suharto had reportedly considered reconstituting the disbanded internal security agency, Kopkamtib, and putting Prabowo or Army Commander Subagyo in charge of it. He would have been able to do this thanks to the new powers given to him in March at the MPR (National Assembly) session. The Kopkamtib chief would have wide-ranging powers and be outside Wiranto’s chain command.

On the afternoon of May 14, several senior generals and influential civilians held a meeting at armed forces headquarters. The purpose of the meeting was disputed, but several members of government-appointed team that investigated the riots believed the meeting discussed the restoration of Kopkamtib and the granting of emergency powers to Prabowo.

In its formal report, the fact-finding team said there were links between the abduction of pro-democracy activists earlier in the year, the killings at the Trisakti University on May 12 and the riots that began next day.

The TGPF report said:
“The range of incidents climaxing on May 13 to May 15 gives the perception that the situation was engineered to create an emergency which required extra-constitutional force to control”. [4]

The two officers, General Wiranto and General Prabowo, were known to be averse each other. All the four books mention this competition among military elite, but only in Damien Kingsbury’s book, readers could understand these rivalries in very detail.

All the four books had a common ground on one thing that while Suharto out of the country (Suharto visited Egypt at that time), Prabowo might have staged the unrest to create impression that Wiranto was incapable of commanding the security forces and upholding order.

The chaotic situation would have been occasioned a direct intervention by Prabowo to restore order, thus making him stand out as a national savior. This scenario resembles the events of 1965-66, when Suharto used his position as Commander of Strategic Reserve Army (Kostrad) to wrest power from Sukarno. A senior military officer, quoted by Asiaweek, even suggested that it was Prabowo’s plan to take power from Suharto in the same manner.

It was very interesting to know the result of rivalries between General Wiranto and General Prabowo. As it mentioned in Kingsbury’s book “The Politics of Indonesia”, General Wiranto represented the Red and White Faction in ABRI and General Prabowo represented the Green Faction in Indonesia military. Red and White Faction were army officers who close to nationalists, Christians, and other minority group such as Chinese. Green Faction were army officers who close to the modernist Muslim community.

Kingsbury further mentioned that while Suharto’s resignation was greeted with enthusiasm and Vice President Habibie replaced him as the Head of State, real power appeared to be firmly in the hands of General Wiranto. The fact that several army officers closed to Wiranto became minister in Habibie’s “Reform Cabinet” indicated that ABRI was again in the ascendancy, and that the Red and White Faction had won the day.

After a brief and somewhat ill conceived show of power on May 22, in which he told Habibie to appoint him as ABRI Commander-in-chief, Prabowo was shuffled out of Kostrad to the staff and Command College at Bandung. He then applied for earlier retirement from the military and went to Jordan to seek a new life as a businessman. (Prabowo was a close friend of Prince Abdullah of Jordan. They were classmates in Army College in America).

Meanwhile, Prabowo’s military allies were similarly moved from influential positions in what was beginning to look like a purge, to be replaced by Red and White loyalists. In particular, Kopassus Commander Major General Muchdi (Prabowo’s allies) was replaced by Major General Sjahrir (Wiranto’s allies).

Kingsbury made conclusion that:
“The Red and White Faction had not only won in Cabinet; it had also won control of ABRI”.

Michael R.J. Vatikiotis, another U.S scholar who watched closely situation in Indonesia before and after the fall of Suharto, wrote in his book “Indonesian Politics under Suharto” that “there was clearly a virus in the military’s software”.
He mentioned that consistent with Suharto’s long-standing policy of divide and rule within the ranks, Suharto --at the end of the New Order era-- had appointed Wiranto as armed forces commander; another loyal adjutant, Subagyo as army commander, and his son-in-law Prabowo to the key Kostrad commands.

If Subagyo’s intense loyalty to Suharto acted as a check on Wiranto’s professional inclinations, Prabowo was the virus. As Kostrad commander, he had more active troops than Wiranto under his direct command. Prabowo also used his influence with Suharto to have several close fellow officers appointed to other key command in Jakarta.

Wiranto therefore had a tough time mobilizing troops to protect Jakarta once the rioting broke out. Reinforcements had to be brought in from as far as East Java – apparently because Kostrad troops were standing aside to let the looting continue. Later, before removing Prabowo and dispatching him to Staff College in Bandung, Wiranto told Suharto that Prabowo was a “troublemaker”. Suharto, by then out of power, readily agreed.

Habibie, Suharto’s successor, also agreed that Prabowo was a “troublemaker”. In Stefan Eklof’s book, it was mentioned that in the afternoon after Suharto resigned, news spread that the presidential palace was surrounded by troops, believed to have been ordered there by Prabowo. According to intelligence reports, the troops were from Kopassus. Coordinating Minister of Politics and Security Feisal Tanjung ordered troops reduction, but the order was not followed, and instead the number of troops in the city center increased.

In the evening of May 21, Prabowo, accompanied by the Kopassus Commander Major General Muchdi, showed up in full battle gear at the presidential palace and demanded to see Habibie. A scuffle occurred between Prabowo and the presidential guard, as the Kostrad commander initially refused to hand over his gun before entering the place. Eventually Prabowo conceded and was allowed to see Habibie unarmed.

According to one of Habibie’s close associates, Prabowo presented the president with a list people whom he wanted to sit on the cabinet. Wiranto would retain his position as defense minister, but Prabowo demanded that he be replaced as commander-in-chief by the army chief of staff, General Subagyo. Prabowo himself was to be promoted to a new post as deputy commander-in-chief.

Prabowo also reportedly told Habibie that he had already made arrangements to assemble a gathering of Muslims to retake the parliament building and restore order the following morning, and he demanded to be rewarded for this and other services. However, Prabowo eventually left the palace without having had his demands granted by the president. Meanwhile, Habibie, fearing his life, moved to the state guest house Wisma Negara where he remained overnight, but no further disturbances occurred. The obvious threat of a coup d’etat triggered an alert among the other military units in Jakarta, and military presence in Central Jakarta remained heavy for the following 24 hours. [5]

In the morning of May 22, Prabowo was officially relieved of his command over Kostrad at a closed ceremony. He was to be transferred to Bandung where he has assigned as chief of the Army’s Staff and Command School, Seskoad, a position out of the capital and with no combat troops under his command. His associate, Kopassus Commander Major General Muchdi, was also immediately removed from his position. The two replacements marked the beginning of process. Led by Wiranto, to consolidate ABRI and to remove Prabowo’s associates from strategic positions.

The four scholars --Eklof, Schwarz, Vatikiotis and Kingsbury-- agreed that Habibie’s own role in the succession process was unclear. Although there was no evidence that he actively conspired to depose Suharto, the latter possibly believed that Habibie had done so, and after the transfer to power the relationship between the two men became markedly cooler.

Another question mark regards Prabowo’s role. If relationship between Suharto and
Habibie became cooler, it seemed that Suharto after his resignation completely broke with his son-in-law. Eklof stated that:

“There are indications that Prabowo and his associates were involved in instigating parts of the riots in Medan, Jakarta, and Solo, and it has been suggested that the Kostrad commander worked with Habibie to encourage Suharto to resign. Prabowo seems to have counted on benefiting from Habibie’s ascendancy, but his plans backfired as Suharto, on the night before his resignation, reassured himself of Wiranto’s support for the hand-over of power to Habibie. In the new power constellation, there was no room for Prabowo”

It was interesting to find out what Wiranto and Suharto talked about on the night before president resignation. The Jakarta Post quoted informed sources as saying Wiranto went to Suharto’s house on Wednesday evening and, speaking on behalf of the military leadership, “asked the president to resign”. But, either Schwarz or Vatikiotis, they did agree with that speculation.

Vatikiotis wrote:
“At around 10.30 p.m. Wiranto came to see him. Tempting as it is to assume that Wiranto asked him to resign, almost every military source insists that this would have been unthinkable. Wiranto briefed Suharto on the security situation, and doubtless painted a bleak picture”

Schwarz, similar to Vatikiotis, wrote:
“Some believe the military’s version on events exaggerates its role after the fact in order to appear on the side of reform movement”.

Military analyst Salim Said claimed:
“Wiranto just reported to Suharto what was going on without encouraging Suharto to do one thing or another. Until the last minute, Suharto was in control of the army”.

Hasnan Habib, a retired general and former ambassador to the United States, took the same view:
“Wiranto was Suharto’s favourite aide-de-camp. There is no way a Javanese soldier like Wiranto told Suharto to resign. Lots of my colleagues think Wiranto was too passive”.

In the other hand, as it mentioned in Adam Schwarz’s book, General Prabowo considered himself “a king maker”, because he had contributed to the unrest in Jakarta and elsewhere, paving the way for Habibie to take over the presidency.[6]

According to Habibie’s aide Dewi Fortuna Anwar, Prabowo once showed Habibie evidence of his support, including pamphlets supporting Habibie and of the demonstrations he had covertly organized to counter pro-democracy activists. But, Habibie denied Prabowo’s support. Habibie was shrewd enough to prevent Prabowo from doing the same thing to him. If Prabowo could orchestrate the riots in order to topple Suharto, his father-in-law, he might do the same thing to Habibie.

There was a widespread feeling that the students had been exploited as pawns in the political manuevering among the elite. In its final stages, the four authors: Eklof, Schwarz, Vatikiotis, and Kingsbury, had made a conclusion, that “the fall of Suharto was more due to intra-elite manuevering than to ‘people power’”.

They also believed that economic collapse provided the impetus for the political crisis to evolve in full, but Indonesia was already in the midst of a political legitimacy crisis when the economic crisis struck in mid-1997. Therefore, Suharto was nothing less than the victim of a power struggles among the political elite, including the military. His fall simply was the result of a momentum that had built up over many years and which exploded with the onset of the financial crisis.

Clearly, there was no disagreement in terms of substance between the four authors, but rather it reflects their different personal styles of writing. For example, Schwarz was slightly more explanatory, while Vatikiotis is slightly more adversarial. Not surprisingly, the issue of Suharto’s succession haunted both Schwarz and Vatikiotis’s books. While this issue had been critical in contemporary Indonesian politics, it had been the dominant issue on the political agenda since the late 1970s.

Vatikiotis hinted that Suharto would be on his way out either in or soon after 1993 (the year when his first edition of the book published), while Schwarz hinted that Suharto would be looking to step down in 1998 which possible democratization to follow. In this case, Schwarz was absolutely right, while Vatikiotis was not completely wrong. Anyway, Suharto resigned in 1998 just ahead a few years of Vatikiotis prediction.


[1] Kompas Daily Newspaper, Jakarta: May 14, 1998.
[2] R. William Liddle, Leadership and Culture in Indonesian Politics, Sydney: Asian Studies Association of Australia, 1996.
[3] David Jenkins, Soeharto and his Generals: Indonesian Military Politics 1975-1983, Ithaca: Cornell Modern Indonesia Project, 1984.
[4] Far Eastern Economic Review, May 28, 1998.
[5] Michael Sheridan, “The Day Civil War Simmered in Indonesia”, Sunday Times, November 8, 1998.
[6] Keith Richburg, “Seven Days in May that Toppled a Titan: Back-Room Intrigue Led to Suharto’s Fall”, Washington Post, May 24, 1998.

THE INTERNET RULES

By Akhmad Kusaeni

“The pen is mightier than the sword, but the Internet rules”.
This slogan written in a drinking mugs and distributed as souvenir to the guests when Malaysiakini.com celebrated its first anniversary in 2000.
The Internet rules? At least it does in Malaysia.

(In what context was Malaysiakini born?)
In Malaysia, the mainstream media rarely publish articles critical of the powers that be. That leaves Malaysia’s best-known web newspaper, Malaysiakini.com, as the country’s only credible independent voice. Malaysiakini had broken “the government’s monopoly on the truth”. Just over a year since it began operations in November 1999, the site claims 250,000 readers a day.
Malaysiakini was formed by journalists who had worked in the mainstream media, who were getting a bit fed up with the level of censorship in the mainstream media. Steven Gan, one of the founders, felt there was a need to get into an alternative medium to break self-censorship, to get across to Malaysians ... that information is not getting through.

(A proof of diminishing control of information)
There are a few reasons why the Internet was the best way for alternative media. The first reason is because there are quite a lot of people going into the Internet. It is a new medium and it is not being censored. Other reasons are they don't need to raise that much money; they don't have to worry about distribution--it is there already. They also don't have to get a publication license, which is required of all print and broadcast media in Malaysia.
“With an Internet site you don't have to worry about getting a publication license, you don't need to worry about getting an annual permit, to renew it ..,” said Gan in an interview.
In short words, Malaysiakini is a proof of diminishing state control of information and the media. The ruling party in Malaysia (UMNO), and its allies, might owned or controlled most of the mainstream newspapers and broadcast stations in the country. Malaysian Government might have a very strict licensing that makes it virtually impossible for critical newspapers to emerge. There is very little room for editors in print and broadcast media to go beyond, in terms of criticizing the governing political parties in Malaysia. But, Malaysiakini had effectively sidestepped the tough regulations by publishing solely on the Internet.

(The factors behind its success)
Malaysiakini help to improve the media situation in Malaysia. That online newspaper is putting pressures on the mainstream media by reporting things that are not being reported by mainstream media. People are able to see that there is other news that is not being reported in the mainstream media.
For example, the chief justice had gone on holiday with a corporate lawyer who had appeared in his court. That was clearly a case of judicial misconduct, but that was not appeared in headlines of the mainstream media. Only Malaysiakini had published that controversial holiday.
There were photos on the Internet of the chief justice and the lawyer together in New Zealand. Malaysiakini also published evidences, which included ticket stubs showing that they actually took the same plane all the way to and from New Zealand with their families.
Malaysiakini attracts public attention because it gives people “the other side of stories”. It gives them “out there news”. It gives information that they couldn’t find it in mainstream media.
There are other factors behind its success. The most important thing is Malaysiakini breaks “government’s monopoly of the truth”. Malaysiakini becomes one of the country’s only sources of independent news.
International Press Institute (IPI) gave Media Pioneer Award to Malaysiakini because “the online organization works against a backdrop of harsh government restriction on independent and pro-opposition print media”.
IPI Media Pioneer Award was established to honor “individual or organizations who have fought against great odds to ensure free and more independent media in their country”.

(What could make it fail in the future?)
Despite the site’s popularity, however, Malaysiakini financial fortunes faltered. In order to survive, it began charging a subscription fee to access a portion of its content in February 2002. Annual subscription fees range from $36 to $79.
Malaysiakini now averages about 15.000 readers per day, said Charmaine Ong, business development manager, a sharp drop from the 250.000 readers the site formerly attracted. The fail in its readership is partly attributed to the more stable political climate.
The mainstream newspapers took a hit in terms of their circulation and readership during and after the trial of Anwar Ibrahim because of the public’s hunger for more balanced and independent news coverage. Alternative news providers flourished and mainstream newspapers began to see a decline.
Since then, the political atmosphere in Malaysia has quieted down and this climate of relative calm has helped mainstream newspapers regain readers. Mainstream newspapers are also now more aware of the need and reader’s demand for more independent and balanced coverage.

(Malaysiakini, power and public sphere)
While Malaysiakini says they are fighting for the “free press” in Malaysia, to the Malaysian elite the press is not for the open discussion of issues, but for relaying and publicizing policies already agreed. In other words, to the Malaysian ruling government, Malaysiakini is not the Messiah of the Press – he’s just a very naughty boy!
In Malaysia, every segment of the community, including media, has to operate within an understanding of what is best described as the “Malaysian way”. As defined by former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad on many occasions, the “Malaysian way” is to get around a table and discuss issues together, rather than in the open and publicly. Mahathir often boasts that Malaysian workers never take to the streets to demonstrate, unlike those in South Korea and Western countries for example.
In the foreign affairs department, the “Malaysian way”, sometimes likened to the “Asian way”, is the overriding philosophy behind Mahathir’s strong views on the way ASEAN should work embodied in the principle of “non-interference” – that member countries should not publicly criticize policy of other ASEAN countries openly, but instead discuss problems at an appropriate level in private.
The “Malaysian way” can be seen as having it’s origins in Confucian philosophy which sees political power as being centralized within an intellectual elite of “learned scholars”. Policy is discussed within this elite, and then distributed to the masses when all has been agreed. This assumes that the masses have little education and are the best led by this group.
Malaysiakini refuses to play “The Malaysian way”. It promotes open discussion on issues that the government would prefer to be discussed only among the elite. It promotes a political consciousness, which is foreign to many Malaysians who have been happy to leave decisions to the government while their standard of living spiraled up-wards.

References:
- Mostly from news and articles from the websites such as Malaysiakini.com, UMNO, CPJ and other sources

THE IMPACT OF THE INTERNET ON JOURNALISM

By Akhmad Kusaeni

Technology plays important role in changing the way journalists do their job and the way people receive their news. However, the interplay between journalism and technology has never been more dramatic than the emergence of the Internet as a widespread medium of communication in the 1990s (Elliot King, 2004).
How the Internet is changing journalism? What are the impacts of the Internet on the way journalists do their jobs?
Cyber Journalists are working around the clock. People access the Internet at all hours of the day. That’s why journalists at the Detik.com (http://www.detik.com) are working within 24 hours/day and 7 days/a week. Detik.com is the real first media online in Indonesia. It is the most popular and the most credible news portal in Indonesia.
Detik.com is not serving print editions, but is being designed for Internet users. Detik is an Indonesian word for “second” and provides continuously updated news, hopefully in every second. Detik.com’s characteristics of services are short and updated news and giving priority to speed and accuracy.
“News stories are updated all the time. When important stories occur, at the same time they also appear in the web. There is an editorial policy that reporters should report breaking news as fast as possible. Sometimes we publish stories as it happens,” said Budiono Darsono, Detik.com Editor in Chief.[1]

The Internet also changes journalism in the way it presents information. George Frajkor, retired journalism professor of Carleton University, Ottawa, said that on the web, it’s the first time a journalist has a choice: “How do I best present this item?”. Is it best presented visually? Is it best presented through sound? Or is it best presented through text? Or is it best presented as a mixture?.[2]
Instead of having to choose between text, audio or video to get their news, now people can get it all in one place. Take a look http://www.cnn.com. On this site, people could read about the assassination of Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin. People can watch video clips on how the Israeli helicopters fired missiles at Yassin’s car as he left a mosque near his house at dawn on Monday (March 21, 2004). People also might listen to CNNRADIO for the latest update.

Another thing the Internet does – better than any other medium – is provides depth. The Jakarta Post Daily (http://www.jakartapost.com), for example, provides links to wide range of useful websites from media organizations, government institutions, and foreign embassies in Jakarta to business organizations. This links give people easy access to a variety of news stories from various news sites.

If the Internet had changed the way journalists do their job, then what are the impacts of the Internet on the way people receive their news?
The Internet give people much more control over the news they receive.
Bali bombing case on October 12, 2003 is a good example on how online journalism places far more power in the hand of the user. If people missed the news surrounding the Bali bombing case, they can always catch up by checking out various online news archives. The Bali bombing case was actually happened on October 12, 2003, but several years later, Suara Pembaruan Daily (http://www.suarapembaruan.com), Kompas Daily (http://www.kompas.com), and Detik.com (http://www.detik.com) all still have their archives on the tragedy. Archives become easily accessible.

The Internet allows people to actively participate in the news and do things online. Detik.com (http://www.detik.com) provide its readers with SMS polling online and comments facility to every news and stories appear in the web. People can buy something, from movie ticket to used car, from e-commerce facility at Detik.com. This news portal also provides chatting facility to their users.

In conclusion, I quote part of John Pavlik’s article on “The Future of Online Journalism”.[3]
“Since networked new media can be interactive, on demand, customizable; since it can incorporate new combination of text, images, moving images, and sound; since it can build new communities based on shared interests and concerns; and since it has the almost unlimited space to offer level of reportorial depth, texture, and context that are impossible in any other medium, new media can transform journalism”

Online journalism also has social and political impact. Take a look of the role of Malaysiakini.com (http://www.malaysiakini.com) in democratizing Malaysia. In Malaysia, the mainstream media rarely publish articles critical of the powers that be. That leaves Malaysia’s best-known web newspaper, Malaysiakini.com, as the country’s only credible independent voice. Malaysiakini had broken “the government’s monopoly on the truth”. Just over a year since it began operations in November 1999, the site claims 250,000 readers a day.
Malaysiakini was formed by journalists who had worked in the mainstream media, who were getting a bit fed up with the level of censorship in the mainstream media. Steven Gan, one of the founders, felt there was a need to get into an alternative medium to break self-censorship, to get across to Malaysians ... that information is not getting through.
Malaysiakini help to improve the media situation and press freedom in Malaysia. That online newspaper is putting pressures on the mainstream media by reporting things that are not being reported by mainstream media. People are able to see that there is other news that is not being reported in the mainstream media.
References:
Budiono Darsono, email interview with author on March 22, 2004.
Elliot King, lectures and discussion on Online Journalism Course, Ateneo de Manila University, Phillipines, 2004.
George Frajkor, How the Internet is Changing Journalism: News Production,
John Pavlik, The Future of Online Journalism, Columbia Journalism Review, July/ August 1997.
http://www.detik.com
http://www.cnn.com
http://www.jakartapost.com
http://www.kompas.com
http://www.malaysiakini.com

[1] Email interview with Budiono Darsono on March 22, 2004.
[2] George Frajkor, How the Internet is Canging Journalism: News Production,
[3] John Pavlik, The Future of Online Journalism, Columbia Journalism Review, July/August 1997.

PUBLIC JOURNALISM

By Akhmad Kusaeni

I believe public journalism can be a key to assure the survival of the media in the future.

Why? Because I believe what Jan Schaffer said when he created Pew Center for Civic Journalism around 11 years ago. He said, “When the media does its job differently, citizen do their jobs differently”.

Yes, when you seed innovation in newsrooms, you get new ideas.

There was concerned that media were out of touch with their readers and viewers. Media tend to report stories based on elite –the rich and powerful—perspective.

In political coverage, for instance, media had turned election campaigns into what Sheila S Coronel calls as “cockfight, horserace, and boxing match”. Media coverage of elections, in the Philippines, Indonesia and elsewhere, has been criticized for its superficiality. Media focus on personalities rather than issues and platforms. Thus, stories of conflict, competition, and controversy dominate.

We, journalists, were doing a great job of covering the election campaign –what the candidates spin doctors, PR people and campaign strategists do. But a lousy job of covering the elections: what the voters do.

Robert Entman in “The Dilemma of Journalism: Democracy Without Citizen”, wrote that elite make most of the national news. The newsmakers who set the agenda are the one who control policy outcomes in Washington: top officials in the White House and executive branch agencies, member of Congress, think-tank experts, former government officials and elder statesmen still involved in politics. They have a stake in what is reported. News reports can advance or undermine the policy proposals they wanted enacted or privileges they want maintained. The information they provided is tainted.

To become informed and hold government accountable, the general publics need to obtain news that conveys facts and outcomes, not cosmetic images and empty promises. The news media should serve as watchdog and offer voice to the forgotten.

That’s why people need another kind of journalism, which is different with this conventional day-to-day journalism. People need public journalism that put citizen perspective into the angle of the news and stories.

Public journalists, as Jan Schaffer always says, try to ensure that all the people affected by the issue –all the stakeholders—have a voice in the story, not just the proponents of the most extreme viewpoints who send us their press releases (and sometimes envelopes full of money, vouchers or gift certificates).

We have to go back to basic. Bill Kovach says the first loyalty of journalism is to citizen, not to the elite, the rich and powerful. We should not be an agent of power or the megaphone or the mouthpiece of elite. We should give voice to people who need voice…people who are powerless.

Only with public journalism that ideal can be achieved. And only with public journalism the media could survive from decreasing its readerships and credibility.

LAND OF THE GREAT LEADER

By Akhmad Kusaeni

Welcome to North Korea, “the world’s best socialist paradise on earth”.

It is still warm in my ears, a North Korean greeted me upon my arrival in Pyongyang Airport last year. I was invited to cover the Indonesian delegation attending the anniversary of the Worker Party. It was an intriguing experience to see the most isolated country in the globalization world.

Invitations to visit Pyongyang are rare enough, especially for journalists. I was privileged. North Korea’s government granted me access to visit the last preserves of the communist country in the 21^st century. They took me on a two-days “City Tour” to see the greatness of the “Land of Great Leader Kim Il-sung”.

North Korea is poor, isolated, and desperate. It is unpredictable and provocative[1]. But, Pyongyang is a showcase of Kim Il-sung glorious achievement of his megalomaniac desires.

This unique capital city has the neat and orderly apartment complexes, three-lined avenues festooned with colorful banners and flags, no ugly traffic congestion anywhere (because there are virtually no cars and not even any bicycles there), smiling uniformed-clad children singing praises to the “Great Leader” when they march to schools, and more than 100 works of superb architectures.

The North Korean media tirelessly boasts about the various monuments, enormous in size and grandiose in style, which have been erected in Pyongyang in an effort to build the city into a showcase of Kim Il-sung’s Juche (self-reliance) ideology.[2] Even these days, various projects to beautify the city are being vigorously carried out under the ‘direct guidance’ of Kim Jong-il, son and heir-designate of President Kim Il-sung.

Kim Il-sung, who died in 1994, is still the head of state as “president in eternity”. To keep him “alive” and glorifying him as a charismatic leader, North Korea built some 35,000 Kim Il-sung statues. Everywhere you go, you will see the Great Leader’s pictures. Great Leader’s portraits and statues are found in the streets, the buildings, the rice fields, the jungles, and the mountains.

For example, Milyong (secret camp) statue was built in 1987 on the slopes of Paekdu, North Korea’s highest and most sacred mountain. This “revolutionary historical site” was built solely to perpetrate the myth that Kim waged anti-Japanese guerrilla operation there in 1930s.

Kim-cultists have spread the myth that soon after Korea was emancipated from Japanese rule, three stars literally rose over Paekdu mountain: the Great General Star (Kim Il-sung), the Woman General Star (Kim’s wife, Kim Jong-suk), and the Baby General Star (Kim Jong-il).

“Daily approximately 10.000 people, mostly students, have been enduring bitter cold and deep snow to make devoted pilgrimages to this secret shrine in the mountain out of burning desire to express their absolute loyalty to the Great Leader and his son,” the North Korea Central Broadcasting Station reported on various occasion.

Another important statue is in the Kim Il-sung mausoleum complex. Kim’s followers continue to shower his statue with gifts and worship his embalmed body at a mausoleum bigger than Buckingham Palace.

Having visited the fascinating mausoleums of Mao Zedong in China and Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, I was delighted to pay my respects to the “Great Leader”. Guarded by soldiers with bayonets fixed, I stepped on to a moving walkway and levitated slowly towards a giant portrait of the “Kamerad Kim” hung above the palace entrance. Walking was prohibited on the conveyor belt to the netherworld.

I had to pass a full-body hairdryer where a dozen little jets brushed off dust or insects before I entered the inner sanctum, a Manila cathedral-like space with high ceilings and hymns in the air. In-group of four, we approached the man who had started the murderous Korean War and we were expected to bow deeply. We then walked around the shiny Kim Il-sung body, lit up by red spotlights.

I saw North Korean people mumbled and cried before Kim’s corpse. I felt astonishment over the bizarre cult-worship system that has been erected in North over the past 50 years. An Indonesian diplomat told me on how Kim Il-sung’s pictures, for example, has been revered as “sacred relics” and many devout Kim-cult believers risk lives to save them.

A young painter, who unconsciously sat on the head of Kim Il-sung in the portrait while he was painting, was arrested on charges of defying the “Great Leader” and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

In the meantime, those who sacrificed his or her life to save Kim’s portraits from being damaged by burning flames or water were cited as heroes. Here is a story that appeared in the Rodong Chongnyon on January 10, 1995.

When a big fire broke out in a small-town factory in North Korea, Cho Young-ok, one of the girl workers in the factory, thought first not of her own safety but of rescuing Kim Il-sung’s portraits which were hanging on the walls. She bravely charged into the fire to fulfill her wish to save the portraits. She managed to take down one of them, but unfortunately the building collapsed before she could escape from the scene of the fire. Her charred body was recovered, but miraculously the portrait of Kim Il-sung she was cradling in her arms was undamaged.

The paper praised her selfless courage as the “exemplary conduct of a revolutionary fighter”. She has “shown us the way all of us should follow… We find value in life only when we devote ourselves to Kim Il-sung and the Party”.

In the wake of promoting the personality cult of Kim Il-sung, the North Korean not only built many monuments, but also develops myths of their leaders as “Sun of the People”, “Genius of All Mankind” or “The Great Comrade of the Revolution”.

Thus, having learned almost from birth to praise the Great Leader regularly and without restraint, North Korean are not in practice of complaining about the hardships they face. They are brainwashed as their leaders declare with pride that there are no taxes, no prisons, no pickpockets, no prostitutes, and no social unrest.

“This is our happy land, and it’s all due to the Great Leader,” said Kim Ho-sok, a Pyongyang citizen. “Without his great leadership, our revolution would not be able to move even a step forward,” he added.

My impression after having seen the land of the Great Leader is I was amazed. How the propaganda machines work in the country really amaze me. It has been succeeded to make citizen believe that their nation have achieved paradise on earth, although in reality they are facing food shortages and their children are dying for malnutrition.

If North Korea is a “paradise on earth”, no one should have escaped the land in search for a better world.

REFERENCES

Ik-Sang-lee (ed), Recent Developments in North Korea, Naewoe Press, 1991.

Kim Choong-nam, The Uncertain Future of North Korea, Korea and World Affairs Quarterly, 1996.

---

[1] Kim Choong-nam, The Uncertain Future of North Korea, Korea and World Affairs Quarterly, 1996.

[2] Ik-Sang-lee (ed), Recent Developments in North Korea, Naewoe Press, 1991.

MODERATES AND RADICALS

By Akhmad Kusaeni

One of Indonesia’s finest boarding schools (pesantren), Al-Zaitun, may be what is needed to give Islam a new image in the aftermath of the Bali and J.W. Marriott bombings. Located in the District of Indramayu on 1400 hectares of beautiful parkland with an enrollment of 7300 students, Al-Zaitun is seen to be a model pesantren for other boarding schools in Indonesia.
“It is a center of excellence for modern and moderate Islam in Indonesia,” said Pandji Gumilang, the principal of Al-Zaitun.
While on the other hand, pesantren like Al-Mukmin in Ngruki, Central Java, led by cleric Abu Bakar Baasyir, is considered as a radical’s Islamic boarding school. International Crises Group (ICG) accuses Al-Mukmin as a place for breeding terrorists. On JW Marriot bombings in 2003, the suicide bomber, Amsar Latinsani, reportedly was an alumnus of Al-Mukmin as well as Imam Samudra and Amrozy, the perpetrators of Bali bombing.
Pesantren got its bad name after those bombings. Panji Gumilang said thousands of moderate pesantrens in the country, only a few are radicals.
“The radicals make up only a small group. They represent a minority group, but they are very outspoken. They’ve hijacked the image of moderate Muslim Indonesia,” he added.
The moderate and the radical pesantrens may look alike physically and by name. But, in terms of their teachings and moral values they are like night and day, Panji Gumilang said.
“Moderate Muslims embrace globalization with love and hope while radicals face it with hate and bomb,” Panji Gumilang explained.
Al-Mukmin promotes the hard line that globalization and Americanization are threatening the Islamic religious identity. Their interpretations are based on selective reading of the Quran and practices from a sacred past.
Al-Mukmin students wear the same clothes as their idol Osama bin Laden. They keep long beards adhere to strict religious teachings. They hate George Bush because they think America is against Islam. They believe that America, Israel and the Jews are conspiring to destroy Islam and dominate the world.
During Iraq and Afghanistan war, they burn American flags and shout “Bush is the King of Terrorists!”.
In Al-Zaitun, the students wear modern clothes and New York Yankees cap. They play basketball and hockey. They log on to Internet and set up their own website. They run Al-Zaitun Magazine and practise freedom of press and expression. They watch MTV and speak English as well as Arabic and Bahasa.
“English is the language of computers and globalization—and the future. I’m very excited about getting on the Internet,” said Muhammad Abror, Al-Zaitun student.
It is no wonder to see Al-Zaytun student, like Abror, humming a Michael Jackson tune as good as when they recite adzan (a calling to prayer).
Islamic scholar Lily Zakiah Munir said moderate pesantrens advocate three levels of brotherhood (among Muslims (ukhuwwah Islamiyah); among people of the same nation (ukhuwah wathoniyah); and among all human being (ukhuwwah basyariyah) regardless of their race, ethnicity, religion and nationality.
“Islam is the religion of peace, not religion of terror,” Munir said.
Komaruddin Hidayat of the Ministry of Religious Affairs says that radicalism is not typical Indonesian. Islam in Indonesia has been known as tolerant, pluralistic and adaptable to local and foreign cultures. But, the bomb attacks on Bali and JW Marriot have painted a radical picture of Islamic terrorism.
Dr. Jamhari from the Indonesian Muslim University, IAIN, said new research pointed to radicalism’s “growing intensity of their activities, training and media exposure” in the rural areas since Soeharto downfall in 1998.
The economic crisis in the country since 1997 has also intensified radicalism where “many poverty-stricken people have taken refuge in religion,” Dr. Jamhari said.
Poor and lowly skilled people are easy to manipulate and brainwashed to do jihad (holy war) with the slogan Hidup terhormat atau mati syahid (Life in honor or die as martyr).
Moderate pesantrens, as Munir said, should stay alert against this radicalism and focus their teachings on pluralism.

THE KILLING OF JOURNALISTS

By Akhmad Kusaeni

Broadcaster Roger Mariano was on his way home Saturday night when he was gunned down. He died instantly after being shot several times in the back by M-16 rifles. He is the 47^th Filipino journalist murdered in the Philippines since democracy and a free press restored in 1986.

Around three journalists on the average have been killed each year. Recently, the number of journalist killings is increasing dramatically. The attack on Mariano follows the killing of four journalists within a span of two weeks.

“In the past we have three journalists being killed a year, now we have six. It is bad, very bad,” said Sheila L. Coronel, Director of Philippines Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ).

The latest incident was on August 13 when an unidentified gunman ambushed radio commentator Edward Balida in the public market in Valencia City, Bukidnon Province. Balida, a broadcaster for the Radio Mindanao Network (RMN), survived the gunshot wound.

Journalists, according to Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR) report, are targeted by politicians and by the people they write upon. Obviously, these killings are related to the freedom of the press and to silence the journalists. Balida told CMFR he believes that the shooting was an assassination attempt in response to his commentary against drug trafficking. Angelito Paraguya, RMN station manager, confirmed that Balida has been a vocal supporter of the government’s anti-drug crusade, which may have angered local drug gangs.

Last year, radio journalist Rico Ramirez, was killed in Agusan del Sur apparently by the drug underworld he had criticized. Ramirez, who worked for the radio station DZSF, was shot dead by two gunmen, who fired at him from behind about 100 meters from his place of work. The station manager, Max Tutor, who saw what happened, said police had not found any clues so far. But Ramirez’s criticism of local organized crime and drug traffickers suggested these circles were responsible.

Ramirez, Balida and Mariano have been killed because of their work, but so far no one has been prosecuted for the murders.

“The police don’t do the job well and the government are slowly to react.” Coronel pointed her fingers to the lack of law enforcement.

Professor Luis Teodoro agreed with Coronel.

“Nobody is being punished since 1986. There are suspects of the killings, but never have people been jailed for this crime,” said Teodoro, a columnist and professor of communication at University of Philippines.

To get the police attention and the government reaction to this cause, he admitted that it needs a political clamor. The crucial thing for journalists to do is keep pressure on authorities to find and bring the killers to justice.

“In this country, if there is no political clamor, the government will not do anything. Look at the Angelo de la Cruz case,” he said.

Iraqi militia took hostage Angelo de la Cruz, a Filipino truck driver, in Baghdad last month. The political clamor and media attention pushed the government to withdraw the troops from Iraq.

“Media reports should continue. Don’t allow the police a moment’s peace. We need to push police that the one and only way to stop the killings is to get the killers,” he stressed.

Ermin Garcia, a veteran journalist and media adviser, said that no one should get away with the killings of journalists. Right now there are so many journalists is being killed because the convict can get away, without being charge, without being arrested.

Today situation is completely different with 1966, when Garcia’s father (a journalist) was killed. The government acted quickly and promptly. The mastermind and the perpetrators were arrested three days after the killing and were convicted in the court.

“It takes 20 years before another journalists was killed. It means the message was clear that the government protected journalists safety,” he said.

Garcia called on the Philippines government to exercise its political will by bringing the perpetrators to justice and declaring an end to the culture of impunity, which has allowed these attacks to continue.

“I am still looking the announcement from the president directing the chief police and the NBI to look into this cases,” Garcia added.

But, actually, the government and the police have taken several steps in dealt with journalist killings. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo last week offered two million-peso rewards for the captured of the killers of every journalist murdered in the last five years. There have been no takers so far.

The Philippine National Police (PNP) had set up The Task Force Media to conduct special investigation on related journalists murder cases. But The Task Force Media is still “in the process of investigating” so the public has to wait for the results.

The government also had made proposal of arming legitimate journalists. Regional police commanders were encouraged to “help facilitate” the issuance of permits to carry firearms to journalists outside the residence. This proposal put journalists in pros and cons.

“The government’s proposal of arming journalists is worthy of approval in the wake of widespread cruel killings of the members of the Fourth Estates,” said Leonardo Basilio, publisher of Mirror Scribe.

Dianne Garcia, a broadcast journalist in Baguio City, bought a gun for protection. She admitted that the killings of provincial media practitioners have made her fear for her own safety. With a gun in the left hand and a microphone in the right hand, Dianne has this message to would-be attackers: Don’t dare hurt me.

On the other hand, the PNP Director General Hermogenes Ebdane proposal to arm journalists is considered as a primitive idea.

“It is a patent abdication of the police force’s responsibility to protect citizenry and enforce the law”, write editorial of Philippine Daily Inquirer.

Journalists, as Luis Teodoro mentioned in an interview with the writer, are not necessarily the most responsible people on this side of the planet. They are not immune from yielding to the sense of power of a gun.

“Once armed, what’s to stop certain journalists from whipping out their guns and firing at who ever they suspect?,” he asked.

Odina Batnag, correspondent of Jiji Press, made it clear that journalists should not bear arms. Police solution to relax permit-to-carry-firearms requirements for journalists has dangerous consequently. It is likely to add to the violence rather than to subtract from it.

“They should not make the war between journalists and the people they write about,” she said.

INDONESIAN MUSLIMS RESPONSE TO GLOBALISATION

By Akhmad Kusaeni

“Moderates embrace globalization with love and hope.
Radicals face globalization with hate and bomb,”

Thomas Friedman loves globalization. He writes many books on globalization. He believes globalization is a kind of humankind destiny. He says no countries in the world can’t stop globalization just like nobody in this universe can’t resist the sun comes up every morning.
Friedman makes intriguing theory on globalization. He defines globalization as a new international system that replaced the Cold War system. It involves the inexorable integration of markets, nation-states and technologies to a degree never witnessed before – in a way that is enabling individuals, corporations and nation-states to reach around the world farther, faster, deeper and cheaper than ever before, and in a way that is also producing a powerful backlash from those brutalized or left behind by this new system .
The driving idea behind globalization, according to Friedman’s theory, is free market capitalism and cultural homogenization. Globalization means the spread of free-market capitalism to virtually every country in the world. Globalization also means the spread of Americanization –from Big Macs to MTV to Mickey Mouse—on a global scale.
Everyone in the world is directly or indirectly affected by globalization, but not everyone benefits from it. That is why the more globalization diffused, the more it also produces a backlash by people like Osama bin Laden who feel overwhelmed by it, homogenized by it, or unable to keep pace with its demand.
Osama bin Laden declared war on the globalization and Americanization in the late 1990s. After he organized the bombing of two American embassies in Africa, the U.S. Air Force retaliated with a cruise missile attack on his base in Afghanistan. The United States fired 75 cruise missiles, at $1 million a piece, at a person! That was the first battle in history between a superpower (America) and a super-empowered angry man (Osama). September 11 was just the second such battle
This paper will
Panji Gumilang, the leader of Indonesia Al-Zaitun Islamic Boarding School, has an eloquent answer to the question how Indonesian Muslims respond to the globalization. He says moderates embraces globalization with love and hope while radicals face it with hate and bomb.


Welcome to Al-Zaitun, one of Indonesia’s finest Islamic boarding schools. It is located in the District of Indramayu, around 4 hour-drive from Jakarta. Built on 1400 hectares of beautiful parkland and having an enrollment of 7300 students, Al-Zaytun has been known as a modern pesantren worthy of setting an example for other boarding schools in Indonesia.
“It is a center of excellence for modern and moderates Islam in Indonesia. It is neither a place for breeding terrorists nor suicide bombers,” said Panji Gumilang, the leader of Al-Zaitun.
There is an emerging stigmatization against pesantren (Islamic boarding schools) in the aftermath of the Bali and JW Marriot bombings. The suicide bomber, Amsar, reportedly was an alumnus of a pesantren, the Al-Mukmin in Ngruki, Central Java, which is led by the radical cleric Abu Bakar Ba’asyir.
The idea of linking pesantren to suicide bomber, according to Panji Gumilang, can ruin the image of moderate and tolerant Muslims in Indonesia. There are thousands of moderate pesantrens in the country, but only a few are radical pesantrens.
“The radicals make up only a small group. They represent a minority group, but they are very outspoken. They’ve hijacked the image of moderates Muslim Indonesia,” he added.
From outside, judging by the names or physical appearance, the moderates and the radicals’ pesantrens may look alike. But, in terms of teachings and moral values nurtured they are completely different.
“Just like night and day,” he stressed.
In a pesantren like Al-Mukmin, the school promoted a hard line interpretation of Islam. The radicals feel that Islamic religious identity is at risk and is being eroded by globalization and Americanization. They try to fortify their interpretations of religious ways of being through their selective retrieval and particular reading of Islamic doctrines and practices from a sacred past.
The differences between moderates and radicals can be seen by how both respond to the globalization challenge.
“Moderates embrace globalization with love and hope. Radicals face globalization with hate and bomb,” Panji Gumilang explained.
In moderate Al-Zaitun, the students wear the same clothes as people in London do. Some of them wear the New York Yankees cap. They watch MTV and speak English as well as Arabic. They play basketball and hockey. They log on to Internet and set up their own website. They run Al-Zaytun Magazine and practice freedom of press and expression.
On the other hand, in radical Al-Mukmin boarding school, students wear the same clothes as Osama bin Laden --their hero and idol-- does. They keep a long beard and practicing religious teachings in a rigid and exclusive way. They hate George Bush because they think America is against Islam. They believe that America, Israel and the Jews are conspiring to undermine Islam and dominate the world.
They burn American flags and shout “Bush is the King of Terrorists!”.
Moderates and radicals are, in fact, completely different, just like “night and day”.

Religion of peace
Islamic scholar Lily Zakiah Munir said that in moderate pesantrens, the teaching advocates three levels of brotherhood that need to be uplifted in pursuing peaceful coexistence of all humankind.
First, brotherhood among Muslims (ukhuwwah Islamiyah); second, brotherhood among people of the same nation (ukhuwah wathoniyah); and third, brotherhood among all human beings (ukhuwwah basyariyah) regardless of their race, ethnicity, religion and nationality.
“Islam is the religion of peace, not religion of terror,” Munir said.
Thus, she said, the radical’s type of Islam is not typical Indonesian. Islam in Indonesia has been known as tolerant, pluralistic and adaptable to local and foreign cultures. But, the bomb attacks on Bali and JW Marriot are often cited as evidence that Indonesian Muslims are becoming more radical.
The Indonesian Muslim University, IAIN, has recently conducted a research to see if the entire country is becoming more radical. Dr. Jamhari, one of the researchers, said radicalism has gained a foothold in rural areas since the downfall of President Soeharto in 1998.
Although there is no evidence to suggest that number of radical Muslim is rising, he pointed at the “growing intensity of their activities, training and media exposure”.
The economic crisis that has afflicted the country since 1997 has also produced more radicalism. “Many poverty-stricken people have taken refuge in religion,” Dr. Jamhari explained.
In the case of Indonesia, radicalism is not always based on religious motives. Poor and low-skilled people are easy to manipulate. They can easily be brainwashed to do “jihad” and ready to die or kill the infidels.
Hidup terhormat atau mati syahid (Life in honor or die as martyr) is a campaign slogan of radicals and it had attracted many followers.
Moderate pesantrens, as Munir said, should stay alert for this and enhance their teachings on pluralism to their students.

FEMALE LEADERS IN PATRIARCHAL SOCIETY

By Akhmad Kusaeni

This is the paradox of Asia. Its cultures have long been typecast as patriarchal, but a presumptively sexist culture has been breeding some of the world’s most interesting female leaders –the Bhuttos, Gandhis, Soekarnoputris, Aquinos, Arroyos and Bandaranaikes.
Asia now fields more top-level female leaders more than the United States (Tom Plate, 2002). U.S. has 51 presidents already, but none of them are women. While American still awaits the apotheosis of its first female president, women rule in Asia.
Why so many women leaders in Asia, a region that has been described as an overtly patriarchal states? This short paper will try to answer the intriguing question.

Subordinate to men
In a patriarchal society, women are subordinate to men within the family and the States/Government. Women’s primary civic duties are performed in their roles as wives and mothers (Robinson, 2002). A gendered model of political authority with its origin in an imagined tradition of a patriarchal family is a cornerstone of the State ideology.
The gendered ideology –that putting the male power over women—has been institutionalized, internalized and imposed on the society in many government regulations or religious laws.
In Indonesia, for example, the conservative Muslim leaders have attempted to block the rise of women leaders, arguing that female leadership violates Islamic principles. The (gendered) cards would seem to have been heavily stacked against female leadership in Indonesia.
Yet patriarchy did not block women from heading anti-dictatorship struggles. Rather, gender stereotyping proved to be of political advantage. As women, the politicians in question were perceived to be weak making them appear less threatening to ambitious opposition rivals. They were the “mother” or “sister” of a suffering nation. They promised to cleanse the soiled public realm with private, familial virtue.
Megawati Sukarnoputri was the victim of openly gender-motivated attacks in Indonesia. After emerging as the most popular oppositionist from the Anti-Suharto movement, conservative Muslim politicians tried to undercut her presidential campaign, claiming Islam forbids the election of a female Leader:
Although her party received a plurality in the June 1999 parliamentary Polls, she lost a narrow vote for the presidency in the people’s Consultative Assembly. Her reluctance to cut political deals was one reason for her defeat. But she was clearly hampered in her efforts to win votes from a coalition of Muslim parties that united against her candidacy on the basis of gender.
Ironically, after Megawati succeeded to the presidency upon the legislature’s with a conservative Muslim leader who had earlier argued that women are not fit for high office. The new vice president, Hamzah Haz, who leads the country’s third largest party, the Muslim-based United Development party, moderated his views, saying a female president was preferable to an incompetent and corrupt man.
Viewed through traditional gender stereotypes, female leaders were not considered to be threatening to potential rivals, making it easier to unite opposition. Belonging to “weaker sex” and stressing non violence, female leaders represented what Vaclav Havel has called “the power of the powerless”. Suharto ungentlemanly attacks on Megawati made him heartless. Megawati leader received not only enthusiastic support in their own countries, but were also celebrated by the foreign press, despite their lack of policy specifics. Women could lead victorious democratic revolutions because thy occupied the moral high ground.
Less than two years after hard-line Islamic politicians blocked her from the presidency, claiming a woman could never govern the world’s most populous Muslim nation, Megawati Soekarnoputri has finally become Indonesia’s first female head of state on July 23, 2001.

Another reason for the rise of women leaders is that traditional stereotypes about their gender were not a hindrance, but proved to be to their political advantage. In the feminist literature the rarity of female leadership is commonly explained by the cultural construction of the role of women which is traditionally based in the family. But such a patriarchal ideology did not hinder women from achieving leading political positions in these Asian countries. Women leaders were often perceived as political. They were best suited to lead a moral struggle against male machiavellis. As the wives, widows, or daughters of male martyrs, these women rose to political power “over his dead body,” in Diane Kincaid’s ironic phrase. Murdered, imprisoned, or discredited Asian male politicians became political martyrs (al least for their supporters); their often-ambivalent political backgrounds were conveniently overlooked as “their” cause was taken up by their female successors. At the same time the experience and abilities of these women was left unquestioned (once in power, however, the competence of women leaders often became a question of great political importance, the answer to which was often given by men).