A Name Not on the Ballot Is the Winner

There was little surprise last month when Indonesia’s ruling party won yet another landslide election victory. The vote was for the national assembly that will have a say in next year’s presidential election. President Suharto, having banned opposition campaigning, had announced beforehand the margin by which his ruling party would win.

The mood leading up to the election was tense, marked by flare-ups of bloody demonstrations, because of Suharto’s crackdown on his critics. Most prominent among them is the daughter of the late President Sukarno and leader of the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI). Megawati (the use of a single name is customary in Indonesia) was maneuvered out of the party’s chairmanship last year by Suharto, who forced her father out in 1966 and has not released his grip since.

Megawati’s chances of being a presidential candidate next year seem slim, but she is not giving up. She has been pursuing her fight in court, both to regain her rightful place as head of the PDI and to restore the party’s parliamentary candidates who were replaced by Suharto followers. Although her public activities are constrained, she has inspired hundreds of women activists who are working for basic rights and freedoms in their country, the world’s fourth-most-populous, with the world’s largest Muslim population.

In an interview conducted by fax recently, Megawati explained her strategy. “I have to go through a legal baffle to educate the Indonesian people of the rule of law,” Megawati said. “I think this is a much more important priority than just thinking about the election.” She intends to hold firm. “I will continue the nonviolent fight for democracy.”

More than 200 lawyers, many of them women, are volunteering their time to Megawati’s legal cause. Nursyahbani, a feminist lawyer and founder of the Indonesian Women’s Assn. for Justice explained, “I felt sorry for Megawati because she was brutalized and threatened. Ironically, the more that Suharto suppresses her, the more of a hero she becomes.”

Megawati, who had been building her party into a serious opposition force, posed the first serious challenge to Suharto, who is 75. As chairwoman of the PDI, she broached taboo topics such as the Suharto family’s corruption (it dominates every sector of industry and is worth an estimated $6.3 billion) and the military’s hovering presence in Indonesian life, even the most intimate aspects; international human rights groups say soldiers have coerced women into using Norplant to meet government population targets.

Last June, Suharto orchestrated a PDI congress where Megawati was voted out as chairwoman. Soon afterward, she promised a crowd of thousands of supporters that she would not back down.

But Megawati and her supporters paid a steep price. On July 27, government troops stormed the PDI headquarters and dragged Megawati’s supporters out of the building. Five people were killed, hundreds injured and arrested. The raid led to the worst eruption of violence Jakarta had seen in 20 years.

Megawati has been catapulted from housewife riding on her father’s legacy to the helm of a rapidly unifying pro-democracy movement. Her future is uncertain, politically. But Suharto doesn’t dare kill her. The last thing he’d want to do is make a martyr of the daughter of Indonesia’s founder. But he and his troops have no qualms about intimidating and arresting other activists. They have charged 13 with subversion, which can be a capital offense, and imprisoned them for nonviolent political activities. Dita Sari is one of the 13, and the only woman. The charismatic law student led the Indonesia Center for Labor Struggles and was arrested after organizing thousands of female factory workers. She was sentenced to six years.

Another woman activist was called in to the attorney general’s office in Jakarta. With her newborn infant at her breast, she was interrogated for nine hours. The woman, who worked in factories since she was 12, now helps lead the Indonesian Prosperity Trade Union, the country’s largest independent union and a major pro-democracy force. She credits Megawati as a role model: “Megawati is showing people that not only can she do what men can do but that she doesn’t have to resort to revenge. She offers us alternatives.”

Some women want more from Megawati. Suraya, a PhD student at UC Berkeley who worked for Indonesia’s largest environmental organization, believes Megawati is the only hope. “Before her, all the political parties were a joke,” Suraya says. But Suraya worries about the future. “It is not enough just to have Suharto step down,” she says. “We and Megawati have to do our homework and begin to think about what kind of system we want. . . . Look at the Philippines after Marcos. A lot of things haven’t changed.”

Other women activists worry that Megawati is spending too much time in the courts and too little on politics. But some women find her naivete appealing. An editor at the Jakarta Post said that even though Megawati may not be adept at the political game, neither is she adept at corruption: “People can choose between a corrupted leader and another one who is clean but still has a lot to learn.”

In a country where so many avenues of expression are closed, and where change has always come through violence, Megawati is using the peaceful routes open to her. If she succeeds, perhaps she will set an example that democracy can be created without bloodshed, and that women can play a key role in that creation. As she says, “I respect the life of every Indonesian, and we should not destroy what we have built.”