Indonesia, the ISO and sectarianism
By Graham Matthews
BRISBANE — "Indonesia: the revolution continues" was the subject of a pubic meeting organised by the International Socialist Organisation here on April 13. The speaker, ISO leader Terry Symonds, was billed as an eyewitness, having spent 14 days in Indonesia earlier this year.
Symonds began with a factual account of recent developments in Indonesia: the economic crisis, heightened student agitation, the fall of Suharto last May and the further rise in student demonstrations in November against the Habibie regime and its undemocratic election proposals. He then discussed the perceptible shrinking of student demonstrations this year and the increased student activity in election monitoring organisations in the run-up to the June 7 election.
The main problem, Symonds alleged, is that the "most left" party in Indonesia, the People's Democratic Party (PRD), sowed illusions in elections among revolutionary students by building Megawati Sukarnoputri support groups and defending Megawati when her party, the Indonesian Democratic Party, was under attack by Suharto in 1996.
While noting that the PRD's election campaign slogan is "The elections are a sham — vote PRD", Symonds claimed that the damage was already done, that revolutionary students are now mired in parliamentarism because of the PRD.
Symonds went on to argue that, because one major Indonesian newspaper recently published an article advocating the un-banning of the Indonesian Communist Party and noting that communist ideology included some good things, the PRD should now declare itself a revolutionary socialist party and campaign directly for a socialist revolution in Indonesia. The fact that the PRD has not done this, Symonds said, is due to the masses' illusions in parliament.
In the discussion following his speech, Symonds casually pronounced that the fall of Suharto made the 32 years of anticommunist indoctrination by Indonesia's New Order regime irrelevant. In asserting that the PRD allied itself uncritically with Megawati for a time, he strongly implied that the PRD believes a revolution in Indonesia would need to be led by the bourgeoisie.
Other ISO members present argued that the PRD's call for the abolition of the "dual function" of the military in Indonesia was insufficient because it did not build the socialist consciousness of the masses. They belittled both the repressiveness of the military at every level of Indonesian political life and the centrality of the PRD's demand to achieving genuine democratic reform. (The role of Indonesia's military was compared to Bob Hawke's use of the military to break the 1989 Australian pilots' strike!)
While claiming to support the building of a revolution in Indonesia, the ISO refuse to support the only revolutionary democratic party in Indonesia. Their criticisms of the PRD are a product of the ISO's own schematism and lack of regard for the objective situation confronting revolutionaries in Indonesia rather than any limitations in PRD strategy.
The ISO's sectarianism towards the PRD, far from being constructive, only confuses and demoralises Australian leftists at a time when the Indonesian democracy movement needs all the solidarity we can offer.