AN EAST TIMORESE TEST FOR MEGAWATI by J. Leandro Elvas Since 1995, pro-democracy movement in Indonesia has stood firm defending Megawati Soekarnoputri from Soeharto's attempts to boot her out of the Indonesian political arena. Today, many still believe Megawati's party is the party of the down-trodden, with a clear agenda for democratic reform. Now Indonesian progressive groups should think better of their judgment. The Party's latest statement on East Timor puts on show Megawati's view as something not necessarily better than that of Soeharto's New Order. In a gathering of 120,000 supporters at Senayan Stadium in Jakarta on February 14, Megawati said, "We became very sad upon hearing that East Timor...will be set free on the 1st of January, 2000." Her advisor, Kwik Kian Gie, explained further PDI's position. "Who wants East Timor to be free?", said Kwik Kian Gie as quoted by The Jakarta Post (Monday, February 15). "Is it the silent majority or the vocal majority? So far the ones we've heard calling for freedom are Ramos Horta who doesn't even live in East Timor and Xanana Gusmao who has been living six years from there". Obviously, it is case of shameless garbling. Mr. Kwik seems to think that Xanana Gusmao's life in a Jakarta jail for six years is a kind of escapist sojourn. He prefers to see Ramos Horta's years of exile as a Club-Med type of vacation. Kwik Kian Gie disingenously puts aside all facts concerning Indonesian military brutality and the continuing Xanana-led struggle against it. I would not take Mr. Kwik's case lightly. A genuine drive for democratic reform requires a sense of allignment with the oppressed. It is a bad sign to see a political leader, whose party is fresh with memories of repression, casually sneering at two men forced to live far away from their own people. One may notice the irony of it. It is not Habibie -- a man Soeharto would expect to be his faithful student -- who follows the Dictator's line on the East Timorese question; it is Megawati who does -- and she claims to be the Dictator's great opponent. A strange, sad, irony may carry a seed of a strange, sad future. In a way, the East Timor question is a test of democratic commitment. In all appearances, Mr. Kwik has failed it. He asked rethorically whether it is "the silent majority" or "the vocal minority" demanding East Timor to be free. Yet he also said that "a referandum is not a good option". Too bad, no one asked how Mr. Kwik would gauge East Timorese preference. His only guide seems to be people of the "12 branches of [PDI in East Timor]" who told him that they did not "wish to be freed". He does not elaborate whether these 12 branches of PDI get real support from the East Timorese -- especially after they have heard Mr. Kwik's paternalizing manner of speaking (saying that East Timorese did not wish "to be freed" -- why not "to be free"?). I am afraid we are dealing with something deeper than mere choice of words. Megawati and Kwik Kian Gie may think that theirs is a legitimate "nationalist" stance, something derived from the famous Soekarno's elan. But there is a notable difference between Indonesian nationalism of the Soekarno kind and that of Megawati, her claim of being Soekarno's loyal daughter notwithstanding. Soekarno's nationalism, born in the years of Indonesian struggle against the Dutch colonialist clutch, was primarily shaped by a Marxist view of European capitalism. Megawati, a child of a different era, has never had the urge to apply Marxist analytical tools to unravel her political universe. She grew up in a period when Marxism was a doctrine of the dangerous outlaws. Thus PDI's brand of "nationalism" is a distorted copy of Indonesian nationalism of the past. It is a nationalism that has lost its original left-wing thrust. It has degenerated into a muscular pretense of patriotism and an automatic defense of "Indonesia's unitary nation-state", of "Pancasila" and "the 1945 Constitution" -- the later being a legal foundation worshipped by the military. Hence the need for a caveat. PDI's supporters, hoasting the red banner of a dark, angry bull, can easily slip into a populist movement with a fierce, but narrow, kind of loyalty. From post-communist Russia we have learned that it is not unthinkable to see a menacing right-wing nationalist party emerging from such a militant group of revivalists -- the faithful who dream of the return of The Great Leader. _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
