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Megawati's other
anniversary
By Bill Guerin
The first anniversary this week of Indonesian
President Megawati Sukarnoputri's accession to power
gave little cause for celebration as far as her people
were concerned, but it grabbed the attention of the
local and international press. Megawati is Indonesia's
fourth president in three years, and the consensus of
opinion was that, though much was expected of her, she
has achieved little.
It is doubtful, though, if
the anniversary on Saturday of another event closely
tied to Megawati will command the same attention outside
of Indonesia.
On July 27, 1996, five people
died, 149 were injured and 23 others went missing after
a bloody and violent attack on what was then the
Indonesia Democratic Party (PDI) headquarters in Central
Jakarta. Despite the official death toll of only five,
many of Megawati's rank-and-file supporters believe that
the number of deaths was considerably higher. At the
time, the authoritarian president Suharto and his "New
Order" regime considered Megawati public enemy No 1.
She had been elected as the party chairwoman in
1993 at a party congress in Surabaya, the capital of
East Java, but three years later was ousted by Surjadi,
a pro-Suharto politician at a government-backed party
congress in the North Sumatra capital Medan in 1996.
Opposition leaders had been boldly using the PDI
headquarters as a forum for free speech to criticize the
Suharto administration much to the latter's extreme
displeasure.
After what Indonesians refer to as
the "July 27 Incident", no fewer than 124 of Megawati's
supporters were arrested and detained without trial or
even legal process for almost a month. Investigations
into the perpetrators proceeded at a snail's pace, but
finally this week state prosecutors said they were ready
to bring to trial those allegedly involved in the
incident.
The head of the Jakarta Prosecutors'
Office, Muljohardjo, confirmed on Monday that he had
received three completed dossiers from the Military
Police and was near to settling the appropriate court
jurisdiction with military prosecutors.
The
Alliance of Jakarta Student Executive Bodies (BEM
Jakarta), the Student Action Front (FAM), Student Action
Front for Reform and Democracy (Famred) and
representatives of regional chapters of PDI Perjuangan
from Bali, West Java, Lampung, and East Kalimantan plan
to muster for a two-day protest in the national capital,
Jakarta. On the Saturday, the exact anniversary of the
attack, the demonstrators are to march from the party's
HQ to Megawati's official residence a kilometer away.
PDI Perjuangan (PDI-P), which won 34 percent of
the vote in the 1999 general election, is seen as being
snared by the lure of power, unable to address the needs
of a student-led reform movement that brought it to
power in the first place.
Jakarta Governor
Sutiyoso has claimed that the Indonesian Military (TNI)
has struck a deal with the victims of the tragedy. Many
PDI-P supporters see Sutiyoso himself as an enemy of the
party for his alleged involvement in the incident.
Sutiyoso, the Jakarta garrison commander at the time the
party HQ was stormed, has said that he received his
orders from the president at the time.
Former
Jakarta Police chief inspector General Hamami Nata has
also been implicated in the case, as well as Susilo
Bambang Yudhoyono, the current coordinating minister for
political and security affairs, who is said to have
given the order to disperse Megawati's supporters.
Megawati confounded and angered her supporters
when she backed the re-election of Sutiyoso for a second
five-year term at the expense of one of her own party
members who was nominated by the PDI Perjuangan's
Jakarta chapter. The secretary general of PDI-P,
Sutjipto, has stated publicly that the party had
considered the pros and cons of Sutiyoso's nomination
and would back Sutiyoso for "security reasons", as he
was expected to secure the next general election in
2004.
The president has refused to give a
satisfactory and comprehensive explanation of her
endorsement and the chief lawyer who represents the
victims, R O Tambunan, puts this down to Megawati's lack
of political will to solve the case. "She could have
told her subordinates to speed up the case when she was
vice president, but she didn't do so, moreover today
when she is president," he said.
Several former
military and police officials have been questioned over
a two-year period and include former military commander
General Feisal Tanjung, chief of military sociopolitical
affairs Syarwan Hamid, and former Jakarta Police chief
Major-General Zacky Anwar Makarim, Major-General Hamami
Nata, Inspector General Hamami Nata, and the former
chief of National Intelligence and former Jakarta
military chief, Lieutenant-General (retired) Sutiyoso
himself.
A joint investigative team was set up
in July 2000 at the behest of the House of
Representatives (DPR) and has 70 members from the
Military Police, military prosecutors, the Jakarta
Police detective unit and the National Police detective
unit. Before that a National Police team had handled the
investigation on the orders of former president
Abdurrahman Wahid, who also authorized the joint team to
question the top generals allegedly involved in the
case.
The Jakarta Prosecutors' Office has
complained that witnesses for the prosecution in the
cases of the 10 military suspects and 12 civilian
suspects have given unclear and conflicting testimony.
Civilian suspects include former PDI chairman Surjadi,
former deputy chairman Alex Widya Siregar, former
secretary general Buttu Hutapea, party member Jonathan
Marpaung and an executive of the Pemuda Pancasila youth
organization, Yorrys Raweyai.
Muljohardjo
admitted to the House of Representatives' Commission II
on legal and home affairs that the prosecution would be
focusing on field commanders who were in charge of the
military operation and added, "We will not be seeking
the conviction of the higher commanders as such charges
are hard to prove."
The suspects are to be
charged under articles 170 and 406 of the Criminal Code
on the use of violence. Both articles carry jail
sentences of seven to nine years' imprisonment if the
violence causes severe injuries, and up to 12 years in
jail if deaths are involved.
Whether or not real
justice emerges from the trials remains to be seen but
these recent decisions that have offended the grassroots
of her party also mark the end of any hopes of real
reform under Megawati. Many of the party's executives
seem bent on retaining power by making peace with the
old power players from the New Order, such as the Golkar
Party and the TNI.
Last month's appointments of
two of her favored generals to the most senior positions
in the TNI underpin President Megawati's growing
reliance on the army to support her political power
base, and her insistence on supporting the Jakarta
governor for re-election suggests that the military
continues to control the destiny of the nation through
their ability to protect individuals, parties or
presidents from the consequences of their actions.
(©2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights
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