Table of contents
1. Indonesia Leader Won't Claim Victory
2. Indonesia Changed, but Who Deserves the Credit?
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1.
June 13, 1999
Indonesia Leader Won't Claim Victory
Filed at 1:51 p.m. EDT
By The Associated Press
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -- Opposition leader Megawati Sukarnoputri,
the popular favorite to be the next president, has dropped from sight as
her party leads the vote count from Indonesia's historic parliamentary
elections a week ago.
Rival parties, including the long-ruling Golkar Party, have conceded
defeat, but Megawati has declined to claim victory for her Indonesian
Democratic Party for Struggle.
Even with the most votes, the party isn't expected to win a majority of
seats in Parliament, and it and Golkar are competing to put together a
governing coalition with smaller parties.
Aides for Megawati, the notoriously media-shy daughter of Indonesia's
late founding President Sukarno, said Sunday she had left Jakarta and
had no immediate plans to make a statement.
``We have confidence that we'll win. But we will not declare victory until
70 percent of the votes are counted,'' said Dimyati Hartono, the party's
deputy chairman and a law professor at the University of Indonesia.
Vote counting continued at a snail's pace Sunday due to complex
procedures and poor organization.
About 45.8 million votes had been counted, not quite 41 percent of an
estimated 113 million votes cast June 7. Authorities said at least 1 million
Indonesians would return to the polls over the next week because of
election rule violations in some districts.
Despite allegations of some irregularities, international observers say the
election was the most open and democratic ballot held in Indonesia in
44 years.
Megawati's party held 36 percent of the unofficial tally, followed by Golkar
at 20 percent.
Whether Megawati or Golkar succeeds in forming a governing coalition will
be a crucial factor in a complicated process to select a head of state by
year's end.
Newly elected legislators will join 38 lawmakers appointed by the powerful
military and 200 government appointees in a special assembly that is to
choose a president in November.
Opinion polls, a new and untested practice in Indonesia, make the
52-year-old Megawati the popular frontrunner in the competition to select
a president for a five-year term.
Golkar, which propped up the 32-year authoritarian rule of former President
Suharto, is backing his handpicked successor, President B.J. Habibie.
Habibie's popular support has been dogged by his close links to Suharto,
who was forced to quit amid riots and protests in May 1998.
Despite her party's lead in the vote count, Megawati's presidential candidacy
is far from a sure thing.
More than 90 percent of Indonesia's 210 million people are Muslim and some
conservative Islamic clerics have publicly opposed Megawati's bid for the
presidency on the grounds of gender.
Alwi Shibab, deputy leader of the National Awakening Party, which is a
crucial ally of Megawati's party, warned that some of its members might
refuse to support a woman for the top job, the Indonesian Observer reported
Saturday.
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2.
June 13, 1999
Indonesia Changed, but Who Deserves the Credit?
By SETH MYDANS
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- "People say I look like a monkey," the president of
Indonesia, B.J. Habibie, told an audience of schoolteachers not long ago.
"But I don't care."
It was a strange moment of lese-majeste, described with a bemused shake
of the head by Habibie's minister of education, Juwono Sudarsono. But this
man, at once utterly un-self-conscious, effervescent, impulsive,
scatterbrained,
hyperactive and charming, is one of the most puzzling ever to rise to the
forefront of public life in Indonesia, and one of the least understood.
This is the man who in the short space of one year overturned much of the
repressive legacy of his predecessor and mentor, Suharto, and brought
Indonesia galloping toward free elections and a new era of democracy.
Or is he?
Is Habibie responsible for freeing the press, bringing new respect for human
rights and allowing dozens of political parties to compete on a newly open
electoral playing field?
Or was he simply running scared, a weak leader helpless before a tidal wave
of reform that swept all the country's politicians along with it?
Last Monday's parliamentary election was the capstone on a year of
far-reaching transition that followed Suharto's forced resignation in May
1998.
Already, people here seem to be taking their new freedoms for granted.
The outcome of Monday's vote is still unclear, with vote counting painfully
slow.
Whatever the result, Habibie is very likely to remain one of the leading
candidates for president in an electoral assembly that will meet later this
year,
although few people, even in his own party, are touting him as a great
reformer.
Most Indonesians seem rather to think that reform belongs to them, not to
Habibie -- that it is a huge national movement born out of decades of
frustration
and that no one leader can lay claim to it.
If anyone can, perhaps, it may be Suharto himself, who fostered the economic
development that allowed the nation to mature, to learn and then to reject
his
paternalistic form of leadership. In a way, the new post-Suharto era is
also an
extension of the old Suharto era, which ended in a blaze of violent protest
that
forced its maker from office.
Daniel S. Lev, an expert on Indonesia at the University of Washington, said,
"It's hard to point to anything Habibie has come up with on his own."
"All he did, basically, was to recognize a whole bunch of faits accomplis,"
he
said. "Free expression was hardly a gift; there was no way to stop it. He was
under terrific pressure to come up with new laws, to get people out of jail
and
so on. These are concessions more than anything else. The guidance came
from the streets."
The nation's post-colonial founder, Sukarno, was a father figure who gave
Indonesia its identity. His successor, Suharto, developed the bureaucracy
and brought economic growth. It will be the turn of the next president to
begin the process of implanting democratic institutions and the rule of law,
political analysts said.
In the interim, some analysts concede, Habibie may have been the right
man for the moment -- pragmatic, optimistic and well versed in democratic
values from his many years working as an aerospace engineer in West
Germany.
Even his political weakness may have been an advantage, Juwono said.
"In this period of openness, the last thing you want is a strong president.
In a way, you could say his weakness is his strength."
But it is also true that Habibie's weakness is his weakness. By his nature,
Habibie is a hard man to take seriously.
A shocking contrast to his studiously enigmatic predecessor and mentor,
Habibie seems to be bubbling over with ideas that his aides say are
sometimes brilliant, sometimes nutty.
"Habibie's problem as president is that people neither respect him nor
fear him," a Western diplomat said.
This is a particular handicap in a nation that is accustomed to being
governed by a powerful personality.
Juwono, who was also a Cabinet minister under Suharto, seemed still
to be under his spell, speaking of "the density of his silence."
"He would stare you in the face and create a sense of awe," Juwono
recalled in a recent interview. "It was his presence and his stare.
He looked right through you. Every five years, 1,000 people met in a
congress and there was not one who was brave enough to stand up
and say, 'Enough."'
Habibie has another problem. Correctly or not, most people see him
as a vestige of a despised old order who must be pushed aside before
the country can truly move on.
His personal association with Suharto is strong. Suharto virtually
adopted him as a boy and later brought him into public service as his
minister for Technology and Development. Three months before he
resigned, Suharto named his friend to be vice president.
There is an unanswered puzzle here. Though he was one of Suharto's
oldest and closest friends and most obedient servants, it was Habibie
who began almost from his first day in office uprooting the structure
Suharto had built over three decades in power.
Although he remained studiously respectful of Suharto in his public
comments, there may have been a personal rupture at the end. Aides
say Habibie was badly hurt by a public display of disdain when Suharto
presented his vice presidency as a sort of sick joke on the country.
Suharto warned critics explicitly, in so many words, "Watch out. If you
drive me from power this is what you'll get."
The international financial markets responded in kind. It was on the day
Habibie was named vice president that the currency, the rupiah, fell to
its lowest point, 17,000 to the dollar, less than one-sixth of its earlier
value.
Habibie's claims to being a reformer have two weak points, both of them
connected to Suharto's legacy. First, his government has dodged and
prevaricated in the face of public calls for an investigation of Suharto's
stolen wealth. Second, he has allowed the military to evade calls for
thorough investigations of past misconduct, putting only a few low-ranking
officers on trial.
>From one perspective, Habibie has virtually defined his presidency by
overturning the Suharto legacy. But from another, he has shied away
from directly challenging the abuses of the government of which he
was a key member.
As time passes and today's political battles fade, people here may begin
to remember Habibie with affection as an eager and well-meaning man
who met the needs of his day.
If nothing else, he gave Indonesians the freedom to laugh again, particularly
at their president, and he laughed along with them.
Asked about criticisms that Habibie's possible successor as president,
Megawati Sukarnoputri, may not be smart enough, a television commentator,
Wimar Witoelar, offered a witticism that is now repeated everywhere.
"We already have a rocket scientist as president," he said, "and look
where we are now."
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History often repeats twice, the first time occurs as a tragedy,
the second time a farce.
Karl Marx
The third time is a comedy
Unknown
