Asia Times: History, destiny, ballots: Indonesia and East Timor



	August 04, 1999	atimes.com

Southeast Asia

History, destiny, ballots: Indonesia and East Timor
By Theodore Friend*

The Indonesian election of seven weeks ago has been nearly ignored in the U.S., perhaps because it is still unresolved. And the East Timor ballot of four weeks from now is little regarded, perhaps because the deeper issues there look unresolvable.

But both are extraordinary pollings. Look away from our own long pre-presidential primary obsessions. Consider the future of others, for whom determining national destiny by ballot is a never-before, or once-in-a-lifetime matter.

Indonesia had not had an open, unrigged national election since 1955, until the one of June 7th. Over 122 million voters turned out - far more than in any American election. And the percent of eligible voters active was far higher than in our Kennedy-Nixon election of 1960. Yes, it was an "emergency election" in the sense that the fall of President Suharto in May 1998 required that something be done beyond swearing in his Vice President, B.J. Habibie. Yes, it was an ill-prepared, clumsily defined procedural contraption, in which voting for 462 seats in a national congress stood as surrogate for a presidential election. The popular results may be controverted by the fact that to compose a national parliament there will be 238 seats added which are not directly elected: 135 regional and 65 "functional," to be determined on indistinct principles by the National Election Commission, and 38 military to be designated by the army's chief of staff.

The Indonesian elections, nevertheless, took place in a free, peaceful, and orderly way. In many places, joyously, with voters staying until a public count, and cheering every ballot held aloft by officials as another free exercise of franchise (with booing in Jakarta districts of votes for Golkar, the Suharto-Habibie party). Former President Jimmy Carter left Indonesia saying, for the joint National Democratic Institute/Carter Center team, that in all the elections he had observed in thirty nations, this was the "most fully committed [and] overwhelming." Yet, he said, all conclusions were preliminary. A small core observer team would remain. The final results could not be evaluated for 150 days - until the election of a president by the MPR in November.

It is still too early to say that Indonesia is the third largest democracy in the world, after the USA and India (though an Indian election observer said to me, "This energy! More than my country! More than I see anywhere in Asia!"). Many Indonesians are keeping the indelible ink - in which they had to dip a fingertip to prevent multiple voting - not just because it is hard to wash off (pumice stone? nail polish remover?), but because it signifies a great moment still incomplete. Army officers waggle clean fingers ("Neutral!"). A famed journalist wiggles a purplish-black digit on a visit to Washington six weeks after the election, both as a happy talisman, and as a fateful reminder that the game is not over.

The count, delayed by multiple certifications ("an understandable over-meticulousness," said Carter), was only completed on July 26th. Many small adventurer parties and sour grapes losers refused to sign off on it. But the proportions are clear. If you add the results of the "reform" parties (PDIP, PKB, PAN) together, they are 54%. The legacy parties of the past dictatorship, Golkar, and PPP, total 34%. The rest on the ballot are serious small Islamic parties or earnest but marginal parties of various character. A point has to be made about Megawati Sukarnoputri, Abdurrahman Wahid (Gus Dur), and Amien Rais (in the order of their parties' vote-winning percentages). Despite joint statements last November and again in May, these reform leaders, because of contradictory principles or irascible constituents, have not yet produced a firm coalition, nor even a tactical united front.

From this follows some rude arithmetic. Power-bargaining and seat-buying from now on can change the reform majority in popular vote into a minority of the parliament. This is not an American presidential system. Nor is it an English system where a government may fall on a parliamentary vote. An Indonesian coalition of factions or money-based amalgamation of interests will choose a constitutionally powerful president for five years. And Golkar has the most money.

So: after a giant, emotionally uplifting and purgative popular election, Indonesia faces the routine compromises and betrayals of coalition politics. But even such clotting disappointments, if they occur, will be a vast improvement over political strangulation under Suharto.

Into all this now plays the (twice briefly delayed) balloting in East Timor on August 30 on integration or independence. Indonesia would not allow this to be styled a referendum, and requires that it too be submitted to the new parliament, as a "popular consultation." The history of this area can be suggested by Saddam Hussein's asking why, if Indonesia could make East Timor its 27th province, could he not make Kuwait his 19th province? Force is at issue. Following the overdue collapse of the Portuguese empire in 1975, the Indonesian army marched into East Timor. From combat casualties, disease and hunger, perhaps 200,000 of 700,000 East Timorese died, mostly in the first few years, at the same time as Pol Pot's policies were exterminating a similar proportion of Cambodians.

The intractable Timorese opposition and increasing international embarrassment moved Habibie, on January 27th of this year, to offer East Timor the option of autonomy within Indonesia, or independence. The options are clear: join up or jump out. But objective ballot-casting has been complicated by independent field operations of the Indonesian army, funding local militias that have integration as their aim and terror as their means. They are incomparably more evident in field and town than Falantil, the armed independence group of the jailed Xanana Gusmao. Increasing UN, World Bank, Australian, Japanese, and American political and financial pressure are aimed at turning hostages into refugees, refugees into returning householders, and a restabilized, relatively unfrightened population into voters. The weeks remaining to do this are precious few. The outcome is uncertain.

Fifteen members of the Indonesian cabinet together recently visited Dili - which may have been received as more ominous than reassuring. But since then, one of the reform political leaders, Gus Dur, has gone there to talk with Bishop Belo. One can hope this meeting of a universalist Muslim ulama with a Nobel Prize-winning Catholic priest signifies the willingness of both, and of new consciousness throughout the archipelago, to accept any outcome.

It is hard for Indonesians to absorb understanding of the murderous years of impact of their government in East Timor. Even that realization has ultimately to take second place to understanding of the half million killed in the anti-communist spasms of 1965-66 which consolidated Suharto's power. All this undigested past can produce unpredictable nausea in the future.

Indonesia has now experienced the thrill of a free election. However that turns out, there remains a need for truth and reconciliation such as Chile sought after Pinochet, and South Africa after apartheid. It will not suffice for Indonesia to try to claw apart the Suharto family fortunes, while watching his cronies buy back their own devalued assets.

Indonesia needs truth and transparency, now and hereafter. The political environment will remain obscure and constrained without truth about the past. And forgiveness where possible.

*Theodore Friend, former President of Swarthmore College and President Emeritus of Eisenhower Exchange Fellowships, is a Senior Fellow at FPRI. At work on a book for Harvard University Press, he recently spent five weeks in Indonesia and covered eight cities from North Sumatra to East Timor.

(Foreign Policy Research Institute)

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