Indonesia Sees Steady Growth Despite Authoritarian Restraints

The symbol of Golkar, Indonesia’s ruling party, is the banyan tree, offering protection under its broad branches--and, incidentally, shading the country from the heat of partisan politics.

Two decades after a violent political eruption here, the military-dominated Golkar and other architects of the New Order remain bent on maintaining stability through authoritarianism.

Many Indonesians chafe at the restraints, but the government has delivered steady economic growth. In 1985, for the first time, the country raised enough rice to feed itself. Now, Golkar’s strategists expect to win 70% of the vote in next April’s parliamentary elections, and they may be underestimating.

The campaign will be limited to 25 days, and the rhetoric is expected to be positive.

Development to Be Issue

“According to the rules of the game,” explained Minister of State Sudharmono, the Golkar chairman, “the campaign subjects to be offered to the people should be . . . development programs.”

In 1988, the elected members of Parliament will join with government-appointed delegates in an assembly to draft national policy for the next five years, and to decide, as Sudharmono phrased it in an interview, “who will be the trusted man” to lead the country along those guidelines.

For two decades, that man has been Indonesia’s low-profile but politically cunning president, Suharto, now 65. In October, he officially answered Golkar’s call for a fifth term.

He spoke with Javanese humility, saying he was no different from any other citizen, that he had asked himself “whether I’m capable of shouldering this task.” If he proved incapable, he said, the people should replace him--constitutionally, without chaos.

Suharto Former General

This was the man called ruthless by his critics, a former general who came to power after a failed Communist coup of 1965 and who, ever since, they say, has pursued national unity on his own terms, stifling dissent.

“Our system does not have opposition in the sense of the regular parliamentary system,” Sudharmono, a top member of Suharto’s Cabinet, agreed. “But that does not mean that critics are not allowed. Even Golkar can criticize the government. But we always do it constructively.”

Slamet Bratanata, a one-time Suharto Cabinet member and now a sharp critic of the government, says 20 years of the New Order has produced only “the paraphernalia of democracy”--a Parliament and elections. He argues that the government has fallen short of delivering a fully open system, in politics, business and other sectors.

The government and Golkar, Bratanata said, have co-opted the only two parties besides Golkar allowed to contest elections, the Islam-oriented Development Unity Party and the Indonesian Democratic Party, an amalgam of Christian and nationalist groups. All parties are required by law to adhere to the uniquely Indonesian ideology of pancasila , which embraces the concept of belief in one god, humanitarianism, national unity, democracy and social justice.

Sees a Stacked Deck

“Even to form a bridge club, you must have approval,” Bratanata, who was once minister of mines, joked in an interview in his Jakarta home. He insisted that the deck is stacked: “Golkar is government and government is Golkar.”

Sudharmono concedes the statistical case.

“It happens that 90% to 95% of civil servants are members of Golkar,” he agreed. All Cabinet members belong to Golkar, which its leaders call a “functional group,” not a political party.

Furthermore, the military, the key support of the Suharto administration, is heavily represented in the halls of power. Sudharmono, himself a retired general, explained that the military by law fills a “dual function” in Indonesia, in both the security and social realms. In practice, that means active-duty and retired military men holding office in Parliament, in the ministries, in state businesses.

Suharto, political analysts here say, leads the military, but listens to it. The army is organized down to the village level, and on “retreats” with the president its members will give him an earful on popular reaction to government policy.

Corruption Charged

Gen. Benny Murdani, the outspoken armed forces chief of staff, is credited with trying to professionalize the services, to weed out bad elements. But the military here has never had a reputation for throwing its weight around excessively--except in dealing with insurgencies in East Timor and Irian Jaya, two territories an expanding Indonesia took over from the Portuguese and the Dutch.

The bureaucracy is another matter. Bratanata accuses government workers of following “a philosophy of plunder.” Sudharmono concedes that public corruption, which Suharto tried to stem in 1985 with an overhaul of the customs service, could be a campaign issue.

Bratanata charged that Suharto is a “hostage of his mistakes.” The power group around the president and “old boy network” of military comrades, is getting smaller, he said.

But he credits the president with political acumen in holding his government together for two decades. “He is playing the game according to his instincts,” Bratanata said.

Suharto Called ‘Father’

A foreign political analyst here pictured Suharto as a poker player--”low stakes, but steady.” The silver-haired president is a hands-on executive, according to his ministers, who call him pak , a diminutive for father. Suharto, they say, is pleased with his identification as the “father of development” in Indonesia.

Bratanata is a member of the so-called Group of 50, some of them former allies of Suharto, who published a petition in 1980 accusing the president of interpreting the pancasila ideology for partisan purposes. The petition was a sharp breach of permitted criticism. None of the signers was arrested, but they are rarely allowed to leave the country and have become non-persons here, their comments ignored by Indonesia’s self-censoring press.

The government, Bratanata said, dealt with the Group of 50 under an old Javan maxim: “We can see him suffer, but we do not want to see him die.”

Sudharmono, the Golkar chairman, said his parliamentary candidates will run on the record of the Suharto government, and he specifically mentioned national development.

As a sign of the political situation here, the two other contending parties may also support Suharto personally, though they may differ with Golkar on policy.

Islamic Aims Mixed

The Islamic party, known by the initials PPP, which won a quarter of the popular vote in the 1982 elections, may be hurt this spring by the withdrawal of one of its principal components, the influential Islamic Teachers League. The league reportedly believes it can be more effective outside of Parliament using its influence directly on the ministries.

Islamic aims here are mixed. Ninety percent of the 160 million Indonesians are Muslims and almost all are Sunnis, not the radical Shia sect. But the religion is important, even here on Java where the purity of Islam has been diluted by traditional mystical beliefs and earlier periods of Buddhism and Hinduism.

The youth of Java, explained R. William Liddle, an American authority currently working in the northern island of Sumatra, are growing up in an increasingly secular world and searching for an identity.

“Islam is there with their system of values,” Liddle said in an interview, “and the young are buying into it.”

Muslim teachers here worry about what Indonesians call kunsumerism, but there are no popular calls for an Islamic state. By all interpretations, that would run counter to the provisions of pancasila.

The government spreads the policy of pancasila so broadly that, in effect, there is no opposition here. “Pancasila talks of opposition as heresy,” said Bratanata, the government critic.

Left Lies Low

The left has not been openly organized since 1965, when the involvement of the Communist Party of Indonesia in the failed coup ended in its brutal repression. Since that bloody episode, in which tens of thousands reportedly died, partisan politics, street demonstrations and other loud manifestations of an open democracy have not been tolerated.

The political center and the right sit under the shade of Golkar’s banyan tree. Consensus politics in the Asian tradition is practiced across the board.

Proposals are made to “Pak” Suharto only after they have been worked out by all interests at the Cabinet level, population and environment minister Emil Salim told a reporter. Sudharmono agreed, pointing out that proposals put to the president usually include alternatives. Also, he said, the initiative for action often comes from Suharto himself.

“This country is stable,” said Liddle, the American expert, and foreign diplomats based here tend to agree.

But the Group of 50 is not the only nettle to the government in its continuing effort for control.

Newspaper Suspended

In mid-October, the regime suspended publication of the country’s second-largest newspaper, Sinar Harapan, for printing what the government called a speculative report. The report dealt with possible government action on import licenses, the subject of heated unofficial discussion here and allegations of favoritism.

The Ministry of Information’s order did not discuss the issues, but said, “If things like this go on, . . . the criticism launched by the paper might drift too far and destructively incite the public.”

It further charged that Sinar Harapan articles about the recent devaluation of the national currency “were not in line with a free and responsible press.”

(The government also was sharply criticized in some foreign quarters in early October when it confirmed the executions of nine Communists found guilty 20 years ago as plotters in the failed coup of 1965. Dutch and Australian ambassadors registered their “concern” with the Foreign Ministry here, and in Strasbourg, France, the European Parliament, noting the executions took place two decades after sentencing, calling them “a flagrant violation of human rights.”

(A military spokesman said the executions were delayed in the pursuit of due process of law, that they were not carried out until all appeal procedures had been exhausted. “We will not take such a decision before studying things carefully,” he said. “This policy is in line with our state ideology, pancasila, that puts humanity and justice ahead of everything.”)

Most political observers agree that the greatest danger to stability is the downturn in the economy, led by collapsed prices for Indonesia’s oil, after two decades of progress.

Pocketbooks are beginning to hurt. The Indonesians have always been willing to tighten their belts, but might bridle if falling living standards put a spotlight on corruption in government.

Nick B. Williams Jr., The Times’ bureau chief in Bangkok, Thailand, recently visited Indonesia.