INDONESIA: Yudhoyono Makes the Grade

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Fabio Scarpello

JAKARTA, Oct 13 2005 (IPS) - A year after President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) and Vice President Jusuf Kalla (JK) took power, Indonesia seems to be in just about the same dire situation as it was before. Yet, analysts say it is not all bad.

The SBY-JK government was sworn in on October 20, 2004. A month earlier, the two had won an impressive mandate in Indonesia’s first ever direct presidential election. The largely successful democratic process gave rise to unrestricted optimism and expectations on the new leadership were as huge as the task facing them.

Spread over 17 thousand islands, with a population of some 230 million, consisting of over 360 ethnic groups speaking hundreds of languages and following every major world religion, the archipelago has many chronic problems. Some of these were covered during the 33-year long Suharto’s dictatorship but have surfaced since the regime collapsed in 1998.

At first glance, the SBY-JK government has solved none of the problems. The country is still riddled by corruption, threatened by terrorism, tarnished by religious tension, mined by ethnic conflict, and struggling with the economy. To top it all, the Indonesian military is still only partly accountable.

Yet, analysts, who have judged on signs rather then than results, said they are pleased with what they have seen.

”The SBY-JK government has inherited a heavy burden from the past and has been very unlucky. Considering it all, they have done a good job and signals are good,” Salim Said, a political analyst at Indonesia Institute of Science, told IPS.

Last December’s tsunami, a series of infectious disease outbreaks and the skyrocketing price of petrol are only part of the troubles the new government has had to contend with since taking office.

On the bright side, under Yudhoyono-Kalla, Indonesia’s democracy has been cemented. The duo has shown authority but no authoritarian tendency. The press acts freely, civil society is thriving, the parliament is functioning and people have been given the right to protest without ”too big a threat” of being shot at.

The presidential duo has lit a glimmer of hope in the fight against corruption.

Corruption, collusion and nepotism, or KKN as it is called in Indonesia, form a gangrene eating Indonesia from the inside. In its latest corruption-perception index, Transparency International ranked Indonesia 133rd out of 145 countries. Previous presidents paid lip-service to the problem but Yudhoyono has setup a 51-man, strong team to go after the big fish.

”The President has shown sincerity in the fight against corruption and that is in itself an achievement in Indonesia,” said Prof. Said.

Although the war has just started, the tally so far shows Abdullah Puteh, former ‘untouchable’ and governor of Aceh, already sentenced, and 59 high-ranking officials currently under investigation.

The anti-corruption team is also poking its nose into the country’s election commission, the Haj pilgrimage fund and the banking system. Eddie Neloe, former chief executive of Bank Mandiri, Indonesia’s largest lender, faces life in prison in a corruption trial started recently.

When it comes to the economy, experts give SBY-JK the benefit of the doubt. The duo has been criticized for being slow in reacting to last month’s crisis that hit the local currency hard. But they were praised for taking decisive measures in cutting the fuel subsidy, which threatened to reach 14 billion dollars this year, or a third of central government expenditure.

The slash increased the price of gasoline by 87.5%, more than doubled the price of diesel and almost tripled the cost of kerosene, the staple fuel of most of Indonesia’s poor.

Past governments’ attempts to cut the subsidy were met by riots, but this time protests were contained: Partly because SBY is still popular, partly because he did a good job in selling the policy, but mostly because the government compensated the country’s poorest 16 million households, and because the sharp rise was followed by the second Bali bombing.

Anyhow, the cut was due and allowed the President to put his house in order and move forward.

”The budget is now ok. If the government manages to keep inflation under control, the money saved could be used to improve education and health,” Bill Guerin, a Jakarta-based economist, told IPS.

But not everyone is pleased with the new administration. Human rights and environmental activists, for example, say that nothing has moved in the way of reforms and that the Indonesian Military (TNI) is still out of control.

”With regard to human rights and the rule of law, the situation is stagnant. There is a good law dealing with reform of the military, but little has been done,” Agung Yudhawiranata from the Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy (ELSAM) said.

Yudhoyono and Kalla can take credit for having ended the 30-year-long Aceh conflict, but internal problems are still grave in Papua where the TNI is accused of large scale human rights abuse.

During the last year, military personnel have also maintained their aura of impunity in regards to past crimes. As reported recently by Human Rights Watch, no senior Indonesian officer has been held to account for war crimes and crimes against humanity in East Timor in 1999 or other serious violations elsewhere in the archipelago.

In July, an appeals court overturned all convictions in the first test-case of accountability for Suharto-era crimes; the 1984 Tanjung Priok massacre, which left at least 33 civilians dead.

Chalid Muhammad, executive director of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment, has drawn the attention to the lack of progress in protecting the country’s forests.

”Nothing much has happened. Illegal logging is still rampant, while the Buyat case remains unaddressed,” he told the Jakarta Post. The Buyat case refers to the alleged pollution of North Sulawesi’s Buyat Bay by the local arm of the US mining firm PT Newmont.

Yudhoyono seems to have also turned a blind eye to the growing threat of religious intolerance in the country. Indonesia, with its 196 million Muslims, has the world largest Islamic population. Most of them are moderate, but a radical fringe is steadily gaining ground.

As many as 23 unlicensed Christian churches in West Java have been forced to close. Islamic groups deemed heretical, such as the Ahmadiyah sect, or too liberal, such as the Islamic Liberal Network, have been attacked and threatened by radicals who have acted unchecked.

”Problems exist, but the government cannot tackle them all at once. We have to give it some time,” Said concluded.