Asia Times: Indonesia and Dr Mahathir's worries



	October 08, 1999	atimes.com

Editorials

Indonesia and Dr Mahathir's worries

While in New York at the end of September for the UN General Assembly, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad spoke to a group of businessmen and politicians on his country's political scene. An alliance of opposition parties including the PAS (Islamic Party of Malaysia), he said, was ''noted for misusing and misinterpreting Islam to its political advantage''. He added that, ''While there are hordes of Malaysians who are eager to be in the vanguard of IT and the multimedia age, there are also quite a number who believe television sets should be thrown into the river because they are instruments of Satan.''

Such statements are inevitably interpreted as reflecting Mahathir's concern over the outcome of coming elections and the possibility that the opposition composed of the followers of jailed former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim and the PAS might make significant inroads against his Umno bloc. That there are such immediate electoral concerns need not be doubted, but the Malaysian leader's uneasiness with fundamentalist Islamic tendencies in his country and the potential for social and political instability deriving from them is hardly recent. In the 1980s when he proposed a ''Look East'' policy for Malaysia, meaning an orientation toward Japan, then widely touted as the coming number one economic superpower, Mahathir is said not only to have had a turning away from the West (America, Europe), but from the closer west (the Islamic ''Middle East'') in mind. He was deeply worried that radical Islamic forces then on the ascendancy would take a foothold in Malaysia and undermine its secular orientation, with severe consequences for the future of the country's multi-ethnic society.

This is an abiding concern and unquestionably is being reinforced by developments in Indonesia over the past year as well as in the run-up to the October 20 presidential election. And Mahathir is right in wanting to shield his nation from what he and some of his top advisers see as a highly possible turn toward Islamism in Indonesia as the old ''New Order'' forces (including the military) are continuing to be discredited while secular-democratic forces suffering from lack of leadership find it difficult to establish themselves.

Both the election of Muslim leader Amien Rais as Speaker of the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) and of Golkar head Akbar Tanjung as the Speaker of the House of Representatives (DPR) reflect the Muslim parties' newly gained political initiative and strength. For the time being, they are perfectly happy to collude with the old Golkar to defeat Megawati Sukarnoputri's secular Indonesian Democratic Party. They can easily reckon that Golkar will not be able to mount a serious challenge against them in the future.

It remains to be seen now whether this trend and the winning ways of the Muslim forces continue through the presidential poll. With the official announcement of Abdurrahman Wahid (Gus Dur), leader of Indonesia's largest Muslim organization, that he is running for president and the endorsement by Amien Rais of his bid, the strong possibilty of a Muslim cleric's leading the new, post-Suharto Indonesia now exists. Megawati's ability to rally enough support to defeat Gus Dur's bid is in most serious doubt.

None of this is to say that Indonesia will turn Islamic in a radical sense. Gus Dur is known as a moderate who initially supported Megawati. And, of course, he isn't elected yet either. But surely the potential for an Islamic Indonesia is there. In New York, although Dr Mahathir talked Malaysian politics, those who listened to him are well-advised to interpret his warnings not just as narrow electoral rhetoric foreshadowing a crackdown on opposition parties. His warnings of the dangers of radical Islamic tendencies are of broader significance.