Asia Times: Indonesia prepares black sheep for sacrifice


	October 27, 2001	atimes.com

Southeast Asia

Indonesia prepares black sheep for sacrifice
By Bill Guerin

JAKARTA - House of Representatives Speaker and chairman of the Golkar Party, 57-year-old Sumatran-born Akbar Tandjung, is rapidly approaching the end of his political career. With President Megawati Sukarnoputri's approval on Thursday for Attorney-General M A Rachman to question Tandjung over the alleged unlawful disbursement of 40 billion rupiah (US$4 million) from the State Logistics Agency (BULOG), the scene is set for another bitter and protracted, highly public political wrangle.

While few Indonesians would look on Tandjung's downfall as a big deal and would prefer that his party collapses, there are much wider ramifications afoot, and if there is no compromise, the corridors of power are likely to be stained with blood, not all of it Tandjung's.

The main thrust to remove him from the leadership of the party started a few weeks ago far away in Indonesia's eastern regions, in Irmasuka, (synonym for Irian Jaya, Maluku, Sulawesi and Kalimantan). This faction has a powerful voice, controlling as it does nearly 35 percent of the votes in the party. They want him to make way for younger blood, and cleanse Golkar of the lingering "taint" of the New Order era of deposed dictator Suharto.

To them, Tandjung has outlived his welcome, leading the party since July 1998, at a time when Golkar was in the midst of deep soul-searching following widespread public anti-Golkar sentiment at the time of the elections.

The massive clashes between opposition supporters and those of the ruling Golkar party on the final day of campaigning before the elections are a bitter memory for those so accustomed to power. Their party was discredited and distrusted for its corruption and abuse of power during the 32-year rule of Suharto. Tandjung said at the time that Golkar had abandoned its role as an instrument of authoritarian rule and was dedicated to democratic reform and human rights.

Despite his usual public face of reason and calm, Tandjung is running just a little scared. He has played an important role in ousting Indonesia's first four presidents - Sukarno, Suharto, B J Habibie and Abdurrahman Wahid - and, as such, is worthy of respect and he remains a man to watch. However, knowing just what is going on, he has called on Megawati's husband, Taufik Kiemas, for help in blocking the House special committee (the dreaded Pansus), which 50 legislators have demanded.

Tandjung played down the meet, saying that Taufik Kemas ("I only own a few petrol stations") had been at his house just for a silaturahmi (brotherhood meeting). But Roy B B Janis, a senior legislator in Megawati's Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-Perjuangan), was at the meeting and happy to tell the media, "At the meeting, Akbar sought our support that the scam would not be brought to a House special committee."

Rahardi Ramelan, former minister of industry and trade who was then also head of BULOG, spilled the beans earlier this month, admitting to investigators that 40 billion rupiah had been disbursed to Tandjung, who had said it was for the Social Safety Net program. Ramelan had sent a memo to the deputy of BULOG to disburse 54.6 billion rupiah of non-budgetary funds. Forty billion rupiah of this went to Tandjung and 10 billion rupiah to the then military chief General Wiranto, who needed money to finance his controversial plan to recruit civilians to help provide security for the presidential election at the People's Consultative Assembly.

The remaining 4.6 billion rupiah went to PT Goro Batara Sakti (formerly owned by Hutomo "Tommy" Mandala Putra, Suharto's youngest son) in connection with a land swap deal.

Considering the extremely tense situation at the time, the public would hardly have grudged the money to Wiranto. Similarly, Tommy Suharto's PT Goro Batara Sakti's "borrowing" of 4.6 billion rupiah from BULOG in cancellation of a land swap has been pursued through the courts. This leaves Tandjung out on a limb.

Tandjung, who registered his personal estate as being worth 33.4 billion rupiah with the Public Servants Wealth Audit Commission (KPKPN) in May, is buying time to get the behind-the-scenes power-plays under way.

"I will explain everything at the appropriate time," he told reporters, saying that he had allowed the agency to hand over the funds directly to the foundations that had been recommended by related ministries. However, asked which foundations, without batting an eyelid, he said, "I have forgotten."

Teten Masduki of Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) confirms the widespread public suspicion that the money was used to finance the efforts to keep former president B J Habibie in power through a special session of the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) in 1999.

Feelings have been running high in Wahid's National Awakening Party (PKB) ever since the MPR ditched the then president on July 23. Party deputy chairman Mahfud, Wahid's defense minister and completely loyal to Wahid, knows a thing or two about Tandjung. The diminutive Mahfud revealed that he had additional evidence relating to the case and said, "I believe that these corruption allegations are genuine and not merely a political maneuver."

Wahid was pilloried because of 35 billion rupiah taken by Wahid's masseur from the same state logistics agency. Tandjung was, at first, very wary of getting involved in the moves to impeach Wahid, and there was much talk of a pact between the PKB, Wahid and Tandjung himself, which meant that Tandjung would agree to back off any support for the anti-Wahid movement in parliament, and Wahid's party would keep mum about what they already knew about Tandjung's involvement, with his party, in money politics.

Tandjung reneged on his part and Wahid was impeached and ousted. As for BULOG, it was set up in May 1967 by Suharto's New Order experts and has for long been seen as a well bred cash cow which nourishes and sustains the elite, the anti-reformists, who to this day remain powerful and continue to block reform.

While the International Monetary Fund, wanting BULOG abolished for monopolism, and the constitutionalists, who argue that Article 33 of the constitution obliges the state to control the supply of basic commodities, were arguing the toss, those who had milked enormous amounts of money from their cash cow had more time to cover up their misdeeds.

Tandjung is also under attack, it is rumored, from Ginandjar Kartasasmita, the former coordinating minister of economy, finance, and industry. This is ironic considering that BULOG did not make decisions alone and those with authority at the time of the alleged scam included the chief of the National Planning Board (Pappenas), Ginandjar Kartasasmita himself, doubling up as the coordinating minister.

Also this week, Golkar assistant secretary-general, Muchyar Yara, who looked for the entire world like someone preparing Tandjung for a ritual sacrifice, told Metro TV that Tandjung had most likely "fudged the truth" about the beneficiary of the funds in question, adding, for good measure, that the economic crisis and the necessity for disbursing food aid had subsided by the time Tandjung received the funds, in March and April 1999.

Heaven help the millions of impoverished Indonesians for whom the crisis is worsening, not subsiding, if Yara represents the voice of Golkar, trying so hard to establish some credence in the eyes of the people.

But wait a minute. Yara's other main mission in life, and source of income, is defending the upper echelons of Golkar from character assassinations by attorney-general investigators bold enough to ask them around for a chat. Ginandjar himself is a case in point.

Wahid's attorney-general, the ineffective Marzuki Darussman (also deputy chairman of the Golkar Party) finally bowed to public pressure and at the end of March this year arrested Ginandjar in connection with a corruption case resulting in losses to the state estimated at $24.8 million. Ginandjar, in the latest form of trendy defense, said that he was merely following instructions from then-president Suharto.

Marzuki Darussman, however, was said to have seen Ginandjar Kartasasmita as one symbol of Golkar's links with the New Order that is tainted with corruption, collusion and nepotism. "That is why New Golkar ... must wean itself off the Ginandjar Kartasasmita group," said one analyst, who added that Ginandjar has been able to free himself from detention and has proved that he has a strength of his own, and describing Ginandjar as "cunning in twisting the concept of rule of law to become rule by law".

Ginandjar's arrest may also have been an attempt by then president Wahid to crack down on political enemies, especially from Golkar, over financial scandals alleged involving himself. It could also have been related to Wahid's request in 1998 to Ginandjar to keep open Bank Papan Sejahtera, in which Wahid, not yet president, held shares.

The government considered the bank unhealthy and it was closed. The elite pact believed in honor among thieves, but to them it meant the security of knowing the tree was protected, from top to bottom - no danger of some wild card spilling the beans. Andi Ghalib, then Habibie's attorney-general, might have been the first to crack. The evidence against him was overwhelming, but the wagons circled round, and he disappeared into his new life as a novelist, with the money said to have been misappropriated still in his banks. The pact protected the corruptors of the past from prosecution, let alone punishment,

And so it will be now. Tandjung, if his party set him up as the kambing hitam (black sheep) can, and will, bring down scores of the protected elite, leaving the country without an opposition, and Megawati's PDI-P with a clear run to the 2004 elections.

Indonesia doesn't have experience with multiparty systems or the coalition forming that makes democratic progress more predictable. With only four other leaders besides current President Megawati, democracy has had little chance to grow.

This "white" Golkar promised much but delivered little. The essential component missing from the Indonesian political arena is a meaningful opposition. Golkar promised to take up the challenge but, in the end, under Tandjung, has failed dismally.

Real democracy, where the people really do play a part in the process through their freely elected representatives, needs such an opposition to monitor and evaluate policies or stances proposed by a government, to ensure public debate and give a measure of due diligence to the process of governing.

Golkar legislator Ferry Mursyidan now foolishly threatens all and sundry not to pursue the investigation. "Akbar Tandjung holds people's trump cards; don't push him to play those because it would anger many people and create another political crisis."

Golkar's support is crucial to Megawati. It controls a quarter of the seats in parliament against the PDI-P's 33 percent or so but Megawati will see such threats as a red rag to a bull. Her party, whose logo is indeed a bull, has no choice now but to take up the baton of clean governance and anti-corruption once again, and run with it this time. This will put her in direct conflict with dozens of powerful figures, inside and outside the parliamentary process.

Golkar redefined itself as a political party, rather than in its previous life when it had actively cultivated an Islamic image and recruited modernist Muslim activists. Little, if any, Muslim support for Golkar remains, but the aftermath of the events in the US on September 11 are likely to change the Indonesian political landscape in a way no one can predict, any more than they can predict how the sacrificing of the Golkar leader will impact on Megawati's remaining three years in power.

The Wahid-Megawati ticket four months after the June 1999 elections was cleverly contrived to bring together the two new forces of the post-Suharto era - a revitalized Muslim voice and a strong secular movement for reform. However, Wahid's decline meant that Golkar had to have a leader in the national political structure. Tandjung, therefore, was brought into the fold of what was essentially a brand new political coalition

Just before the elections, Tandjung said, "should we lose, we are ready to be outside the circle of government and become a power to balance the government as an opposition".

Golkar believes that the nation can forgive and forget deception so easily, while seeing Tandjung as more concerned with elevating himself. Despite saying many times that Golkar would not field a candidate for Megawati's vacated vice presidential seat, at the end of July, Tandjung, following intense lobbying of other parties and discussions with Taufik Kiemas, fought to the bitter end in a race that he lost to Hamzah Haz.

He will soon pay the price of such deception and delusion, but will the Golkar party?

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