Indonesia’s Volatile Mix: New Poverty, Old Regime

On a good day, Jaeni Nurdin can take home 30,000 rupiahs--about $3--driving his three-wheel motorcycle taxi. But Sunday was a bad day. He braked to a noisy halt outside the one-room house he rents in a crowded alley and put a 10,000-rupiah note in his wife’s hand.

“Not enough to buy food,” she said. “I know,” he replied. “But it will have to do.” He paused for a moment and added: “The students are right. Times have never been worse. They can demonstrate. And us, the poor? We can do nothing. No one hears us.”

Ten miles away, classical music and sunshine filled the two-story, skylighted home of Julia Suryakusum, a widely known feminist and writer. She has never imagined herself protesting in the streets.

But not long ago, there she was, with 40 women representing “The Voice of Concerned Mothers,” marching and shouting. It was, she recalled, “the first time women ever hit the streets in Indonesia, and a lot of people found it inspiring.”

An impoverished taxi driver, an affluent writer, both dissatisfied with the country’s President Suharto--they are but two in a cast of 200 million who face an uncertain future as once-prosperous Indonesia lurches from economic crisis to political crisis, still haunted by the events of 33 years ago when 500,000 of their countrymen died in a transfer of power.

Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous country, has changed presidents only once in 52 years. That was in 1965, when Suharto swept away both the Communist Party and Indonesia’s founding father, Sukarno, amid a witch hunt for leftists, real and imagined, that resulted in one of the bloodiest chapters in the modern history of Southeast Asia.

While the country enjoyed steady growth and impressive development through most of the 1990s, Indonesians tolerated--or at least did not dare question--Suharto’s authoritarian, corrupt, nepotistic rule, which brooked no opposition. But public opinion began turning against him last fall, when the economy crashed in Asia’s economic crisis, and today it is so critical that it is hard to find anyone outside his own inner circle who supports him.

“Our patience is wearing thin after 30 years of repression,” Suryakusum said. “We’ve ended up with a monarchy of unspeakable corruption. It’s an ironic situation. With the depreciation of the rupiah, we’ve become one of the world’s poorest countries, and our president remains one of the world’s richest men.”

Even taxi driver Nurdin, contemplating the student protests that have dragged on for three months, said, “I’ve never done anything like that, but if things don’t get better”--and his voice trailed off.

“We must no longer consider our students as an inexperienced lot which could be used by others to service their malicious purposes,” editorialized the Indonesian Observer, normally a pro-Suharto newspaper. “They have come of age and have the best interests of Indonesia at heart.”

Students on Internet

On Sunday morning, two graduate students, Sangkalo and Abdul, both leading organizers of the growing movement that is challenging Suharto’s regime, met in the courtyard of the University of Indonesia’s Salemba campus. They had already exchanged information with other student dissidents throughout the country on the Internet.

Sangkalo lighted a Lucky Strike. “First, we are trying to avoid a clash with the security forces,” he said. “Violence is not our goal. We want a free and open government, and I think people are starting to hear our voice. Reform is still possible within the system.”

“In the weeks ahead,” Abdul said, “we want all the universities--students and teachers--to speak with one voice. We want to broaden our support to include the middle class, the working class. Eventually, I think even ARBI [the military] will join us, because soldiers are ordinary people whose families are suffering too.”

The students are portraying themselves as a moral force challenging the injustices of the regime. Their demands and tactics are similar to the ones students used in the 1960s to help topple Sukarno--except that then, the students were on the side of, and manipulated by, the military.

“I don’t see a repeat of 1965 in the making,” said political commentator Wimar Witoelar, who was a student leader in the campaign against Sukarno. “That was a very emotionally charged time. You had the issues of communism, left-wing militants, religion. You don’t have those issues today.

“Today, you’ve got instant TV, the Internet, the press. This has replaced marching in shaping public opinion. One of the results is that you have an amazing number of citizens groups springing up in support of the students.”

So far, the Indonesian middle class and other groups have not taken to the streets in large numbers in support of the students, and “people power” remains little more than a popular but misused slogan. As in most Asian countries, obedience to authority, along with a fear of the military, still runs deep.

Capital Looks Normal

To all outward appearances, despite the protests--some of which have involved violence--Indonesia is not a country teetering on the brink of revolution. Life is for the most part normal in Jakarta, the capital, where on Sunday the streets were crowded, youths played soccer in Senayan Square, and a vocalist backed by a four-piece combo entertained shoppers at the Plaza Mall.

But beneath the surface, a growing clamor from every quarter for political change has made “reform” a buzzword.

Reform, however, means something different to every group. To the students, it means democracy and restructuring society. To the Cabinet, made up of Suharto’s cronies, it means tinkering with a few laws. And to Suharto himself, it means uttering platitudes but maintaining the status quo.

“It is quite evident Suharto is not getting the message,” said Jeffrey Winters, an expert on Indonesian affairs at Northwestern University. “He is surrounded by yes men, and he is getting a very distorted sense of the rapidly changing conditions around him.

“Suharto has made it clear he finds the whole idea of reform an affront. You’ve got to remember that he was a product of the Cold War. He cut his political teeth in the 1960s and ‘70s, and he interprets any challenge to his rule as latent communism and left-wing radicalism. The irony is that the Indonesian opposition is supremely moderate and reformist in its composition and demands.”

Most political analysts believe that the current standoff between the regime and the people could continue for months. Few dare predict the future, though the role of the 420,000-member military will be critical in determining what may well be the last chapter of the 76-year-old Suharto’s presidency.

What seems certain is that Indonesia, where people now equate their misfortune with government mismanagement, is at a crossroads and that the legacy of Suharto--a onetime bank clerk and former general who amassed one of the world’s great fortunes--will be forever tarnished.