Megawati, Habibie and political alternatives
By Max Lane
JAKARTA — On July 29, Megawati Sukarnoputri addressed a select group of supporters at the national office of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P). The speech was to lay claim to the presidency, which will be decided by the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR).
Megawati, whose PDI-P won 33% of the vote in the June 7 national election, is likely to face off against Golkar's B.J. Habibie, whose "success team" is working hard to crunch the numbers for the MPR. There are rumours that huge sums of money are being mobilised to buy votes.
Sources inside the Habibie camp say the PDI-P will have 190 seats in the MPR, to Golkar's 189, excluding the 38 military seats. This means that who gets the presidency will hinge on the votes of the other 280 or so MPR members, mainly from Islamic parties of different ideological hues.
The initial signs are that the larger "secular" Islamic parties, such as the National Awakening Party patronised by Abdurrahman Wahid, and Amien Rais's National Mandate Party, will support Megawati. There is a considerable push from the media and the population for the presidency to go to the largest party in membership and in votes.
On the streets the sentiment is: "If Habibie wins, why did we bother having an election at all?". The other side of this sentiment is: "If Megawati doesn't become president ... revolution!".
This sentiment for revolt has been reflected in the hundreds of thousands of people, mainly poor workers and petty traders living in the urban kampungs, who have pricked their thumbs and stuck their thumb print on a declaration to mobilise if Megawati is not elected president. In Jakarta, "blood thumb print" booths are springing up in different areas.
The head of the Jakarta PDI-P has stated that the PDI-P is considering re-establishing all of its "command posts" (poskos) in the build-up to the MPR session, scheduled for November. The poskos, usually just a table and a couple of benches, perhaps with a makeshift roof, were set up in neighbourhoods before the June elections and were the main mechanism for mobilising millions of PDI-P supporters for the campaign.
This statement was met with cautious acceptance by the Jakarta police command, who insisted on coordination between the police and the PDI-P. On the same day, however, armed forces chief General Wiranto made a strong statement virtually banning the poskos and insisting that the mobilising of mass support was no longer needed, or allowed.
Banners have begun to appear in some parts of Jakarta supporting Habibie for president. These have been put up in the name of the Kabah Youth, which is apparently linked to the United Development Party or some elements inside it.
If the Habibie group insists on an all-out push for the presidency, an explosion of political unrest is almost certain. This opens up the prospect of a repeat of May, 1998, (when Suharto was forced to resign in the face of social chaos and student protests) but with Habibie in the hot seat. Of course, another scenario is that the army seizes power to "restore stability" and "safeguard the constitutional processes".
The mass sentiment of support for Megawati is a democratic sentiment, a desire to get rid of the old order and against the election results being subverted by manipulation and "money politics" in the MPR. The left will need to orient to this sentiment and unite with any mobilisations aimed at defeating the re-election of Habibie.
However, at another level, the struggle between Megawati and Habibie is a conflict between different sections of the Indonesian social and political elite. The policies of Megawati and Habibie hardly differ, as was clear from Megawati's July 29 policy speech.
The limitations of Megawati's perspectives were outlined in an evaluation of the speech issued by the People's Democratic Party (PRD). The PRD statement noted limitations in the areas of the role of the military, the trial of Suharto, the referendum in East Timor, the situation in Aceh, Ambon and West Papua, and the economy. In all these areas, Megawati falls short of what the people expect and what is required for full democracy.
Megawati supports the idea of a gradual reduction in the role of the military in politics, but offers no stipulations about how or when. The PRD notes her failure to acknowledge the need to dismantle the military territorial command, which places the military at every level of society.
The PRD also notes that Megawati's position on East Timor remains ambiguous. On the one hand, she has said she will not ignore the results of the August 30 referendum on autonomy or independence, but on the other defends the "integration" of East Timor into Indonesia in 1975 and refuses to acknowledge that the invasion was an illegal act.
The PRD says that the current suffering and unrest in Aceh, Ambon and West Papua requires the withdrawal of the military, yet Megawati — apart from bursting into tears when talking about her love for the Acehnese — made no mention in her speech of withdrawing the hated forces from these areas.
The PRD's critique of Megawati's economic policies focusses on her commitment to carry through the International Monetary Fund's restructuring program for Indonesia. In contrast, the PRD called for the cancellation of Indonesia's foreign debt. This issue is becoming a focus for protest actions.
The PRD also condemned Megawati's pledge to continue the privatisation of public assets, albeit at a slower pace than the Suharto regime.
At the moment, there is almost a national consensus that the economy needs foreign loans to escape the current economic crisis. Megawati and other liberal opposition leaders' argument that the key to solving the crisis is a "credible and popular government" is supported by all sectors of the population.
The challenge that may emerge for the PRD and other radical forces is to establish the institutions and mechanisms to explain their critiques of Megawati and similar figures, and to win support for building an alternative political force. Given the depth of the social and economic crises in Indonesia, and the political bankruptcy of the Indonesian social and political elite, the prospects for major advances in this regard over the next few years are enormous.