Blood-stained
ladder to Indonesia's presidency
By Gary LaMoshi
DENPASAR, Bali - The tragic events of July 27, 1996, were instrumental in
Megawati Sukarnoputri's path to the Indonesian presidency. With the release of
official results from the July 5 elections on Monday showing her in second
place, Megawati hopes that the events of this eighth-anniversary week will pave
the way to her re-election. But this year's proceedings simply outline how far
Megawati has strayed from her imposed heroism in the waning days of former
president Suharto's reign.
Back in 1996, Suharto decided to replace Megawati as the head of the Indonesian
Democratic Party (known by its Indonesian initials, PDI), one of the two
political parties officially sanctioned to oppose the ruling Golkar Party. It
should have been a simple matter to get Megawati to resign, but Suharto had
recently lost his wife Tien, whose skills in Javanese mystical arts were widely
thought to have aided Suharto's rise from obscure colonel to virtual monarch
and guided his reign. With Ibu Tien gone, Suharto began a string of
political misjudgments that culminated in his downfall.
Rather than quietly easing out Megawati, Suharto chose to do it publicly. Even
for a self-effacing housewife with no previous political ambitions - but a rich
knowledge of Javanese mythology in which power seeks worthy princesses, rather
than the other way around - the loss of face was too much for Megawati to
accept. Moreover, her ouster, which came in June of that year, provided a
rallying point for opponents of Suharto. After more than three decades in power
with increasing corruption and nepotism, the no-longer-New Order had no
shortage of opponents in search of an excuse to express their dissatisfaction.
This energized opposition movement centered on PDI headquarters in Jakarta,
where Megawati and her supporters were occupying the complex in defiance of
Suharto's new PDI leadership. On July 27, the military under General Sutiyoso
attacked the headquarters to eject the occupiers. Megawati was not present, but
hundreds of her supporters were. The attack left five dead, 23 still
categorized as missing, and 149 more injured.
Megawati's ladder
The July 27 incident became a further, blood-stained unifier for opponents of
Suharto, catapulting Megawati to national stature as a symbol of opposition to
a regime that had reiterated its nakedly oppressive side by attacking unarmed
foes over a purely political matter.
In the 1999 legislative elections, the first fair and open vote in more than 40
years, Megawati's party - renamed the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle
(PDI-P) - was the leading light for reformasi (reform) and received the
largest slice of the vote, eventually taking her to the office from which
Suharto had ejected her father Sukarno. It's fair from a historical point of
view to say that Megawati climbed into Merdeka Palace on the pile of PDI
casualties from July 27, 1996.
Once she reached the presidency, however, Megawati seemed to forget that those
stepping stones weren't mere rocks but the bodies of her supporters who paid
for her rise with their flesh and blood. Since that day, her administration has
been no more receptive to calls for an independent investigation of the July 27
incident than the Suharto regime was. And she hasn't just cohabited with many
elements of the New Order power structure, she has positively embraced them.
Political power play
One of the few instances in which Megawati has chosen to expend political
capital in public involved last year's vote by Jakarta's city council for the
region's governor. The Golkar Party incumbent was thoroughly reviled for his
alleged corruption and proven incompetence, and PDI-P city council members had
the votes to elect the governor of their choice. However, Megawati personally
intervened to insist that her party faithful re-elect the incompetent - er,
incumbent. She threatened to expel party councilors who disobeyed the order and
followed through against the handful that did.
This blatant political deal was presumed to be part of a pact relating to this
year's voting. But in April's election for national and local legislators,
Golkar and PDI-P polled miserably in Jakarta. The Prosperous Justice Party,
with Islamic roots and an anti-corruption, reform platform that once won votes
for Megawati, took control of the Jakarta city council.
The name of the Jakarta governor who benefited from Megawati's rare show of
bare-knuckled political muscle? Sutiyoso, the general who led the attack on PDI
headquarters on July 27, 1996.
Unhappy anniversary
The eighth anniversary this week of the July 27 incident also marks a key
moment for Megawati's re-election fortunes. Monday's release of official
results from the July 5 presidential election undoubtedly confirm that Megawati
took second place in the voting and will now move on to face former general
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in a September 20 presidential runoff. Megawati took
about 26% of the vote in round one, bettering PDI-P's 19% in the April
legislative vote. Yudhoyono collected just over a third of the vote, about the
same total that PDI-P won in 1999.
This week Megawati's party is widely expected to announce an election alliance
with Golkar, Suharto's ruling party, whose presidential candidate, former
General Wiranto, finished third in the July race. Over the past three years,
Megawati's government has veered away from any semblance of its reformist roots
to become just another player among the political elite that treats public
office as an opportunity for enrichment rather than an obligation to serve. An
alliance with Golkar isn't an alarming departure for PDI-P so much as it's a
sad confirmation of a long-standing state of affairs, as if a disloyal spouse
has decided to stop sneaking out for assignations and instead has moved his
lover into the spare bedroom.
"PDI-P supporters are already disappointed with the party leadership and
Megawati," political commentator Andi Mallarangeng says. "But they understand
that to get Megawati re-elected, they have to make this deal. The question is
whether it's going to be sufficient to get her re-elected, whether Golkar
supporters will follow the leadership at the grassroots."
Commemorating the July 27 anniversary through an alliance with Golkar may not
succeed in making Megawati president a second time, but it has succeeded, once
and for all, in determining the status of the 1996 PDI headquarters' victims:
Megawati's actions have converted them from heroic martyrs into mere fools.
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