Clouds Haven’t Lifted in Post-Suharto Indonesia

Whiplashed by economic and political forces that seem beyond any control, Indonesia is a nation torn asunder by desperation and hunger in these first dark months of the post-Suharto era.

The World Bank says no country in recent history “has ever suffered such a dramatic reversal of fortune.” In hardly more than a year, a generation of growth has simply been wiped away, as if the miraculous transformation of Indonesia into a modern society was nothing but a cruel illusion.

Once a star performer among the so-called economic tigers of Southeast Asia, the world’s fourth-most-populous country has seen its per-capita income drop below that of Bangladesh. Its malnutrition level is higher than Somalia’s. Its currency has fallen faster than the dollar did in the Great Depression. Forty-seven million Indonesians are facing a food shortage; 60 million have dropped below the poverty line.

“How can we survive?” asked a farmer near the central Javan city of Yogyakarta. “My family has cut back to one meal a day, and what little rice we have we don’t dare leave outside to dry anymore. Neighbors will steal it. Never before did neighbors steal from neighbors.”

And here in the capital, a recently laid-off bank clerk, bargaining for tomatoes in an outdoor market, said: “I’m living off the month’s severance pay I got. When that’s gone, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

As uncertainty grows, so does unruliness. Since President Suharto was forced to resign in May amid public outcries for economic and political reform, Indonesia has had 69 riots nationwide and 1,714 protests, the government says. Farmers, students, transit workers, homemakers, the unemployed and the hungry have all taken to the streets at various times.

Shrimp ponds have been plundered in West Java, coffee plantations cleaned out in East Java, trucks laden with onions hijacked in Central Java, 15,000 chickens carted off from a farm outside Jakarta. Shops owned by Chinese merchants have been attacked, and a golf course was torn up by farmers who used the expanse to plant vegetables.

“No days pass without a demonstration,” said Roesmanhadi, the national police chief. “Basic essentials and land are looted, and violence is on the rise. We are dealing with a serious situation.”

Suharto’s abrupt departure after 32 years in power, analysts say, left a gaping void. He had designed laws and institutions and a political structure to meet the needs of his family and cronies, and when he left, the system went with him. His successor, former Vice President B.J. Habibie, inherited a withering economy, a crippled political apparatus and a nation in need of a leader with vision and a plan--things that have never been Habibie’s strong suit.

Habibie has been unable to escape the stigma of being a longtime Suharto loyalist but seems unfazed by the depth of public resentment toward everything belonging to the past. When crowds besieged him recently in the city of Surabaya demanding lower food prices, Habibie brushed their anger aside. “They weren’t protesting,” he said. “They were trying to shake my hand.”

Ironically, however, Habibie has instituted reforms unimaginable just four months ago. He has started investigations into Suharto’s wealth and the army’s role in the May protests, released key political prisoners and let the media become one of the liveliest in Southeast Asia. He has promised free elections next year.

To prepare for the elections, a team of seven respected academics is drafting the framework for what would be Indonesia’s first genuinely representative government since independence in 1945. On Nov. 10, the People’s Consultative Assembly will debate the proposed reforms, which call for elections in May and the seating of a new government the following December.

“If Habibie did not have a long legacy of close and enthusiastic cooperation with and support of Suharto’s authoritarian ‘new order,’ ” said Jeffrey Winters, an Indonesia expert at Northwestern University, “it would be easier to admit that recent changes in Indonesia policy reflect a genuine commitment to reforms.”

Given the public’s restlessness, it remains unclear how much time the Habibie government has to find a remedy for economic paralysis. Every day, 15,000 Indonesians lose their jobs, inflation is running at 70%, and by year’s end, no more than four banks out of the 200 that did business here in 1997 may remain. Nor is it clear if economic restructuring can take place before political reform roots out corruption and opens up the system to democratization.

In a televised speech Wednesday, Habibie warned that looming anarchy could wipe out economic and democratic reforms, and the government said it may use a harsh anti-subversion law to enforce order.

“Anarchism will not solve the crisis and will not spin the wheel of development toward achieving a just, prosperous, peaceful society,” Habibie said.

“At this stage, I’m afraid we don’t have the luxury of separating economics and politics,” said economist Sri Mulyani, who, like most Indonesians, expects things to get worse before they get better. “The government doesn’t have enough power to isolate them, so every problem is a mixture of economics and politics.”

The only economic card Indonesia can afford to play is the one held by the International Monetary Fund. The first installments of its $43-billion rescue package have produced no apparent results, but the IMF strategy is the only one anyone has come up with. Habibie, for instance, has never held a Cabinet meeting to formulate an economic plan for recovery, much less for survival.

During the crisis, the Indonesian military--whose power until May was surpassed only by Suharto’s--has played an uncharacteristically passive role. It has contained demonstrators but done little to indicate that it is shaping the reform process or is capable of blocking a slide toward anarchy.

The reason, military analysts say, is because the army has been weakened and discredited by reports of its involvement in riots, abductions and torture. “The military is still a player, but it hasn’t been this weak since the early 1950s,” Winters said.

“Right now, there is not a single group that can claim to be the main defender of the constitution and the nation,” said Mochtar Pabotinggi, political analyst with the Indonesian Institute of Sciences think tank.

“It used to be [the military], but it’s clear they were the perpetrators of crimes against the Indonesians,” Pabotinggi said. “The present government is very much an extension of the old regime. The president is weak. That leaves a lot of power in the hands of people clamoring for change, people who have overcome their fear of making their voices heard.”