Harsh Prescription

FOOD riots, ethnic clashes, military crackdowns, Western demands that Indonesia's political and economic systems be framed in a canvas of their own making, coupled with a political surefootedness of a president unchallenged for a seventh term. The news coming out of Indonesia these days points to a volatile conflagration in the making. When a leader has been in power for 32 years, as President Suharto has, the edges are bound to fray, sometimes disastrously so. Yet—even as the country faces the worst economic crisis in 30 years—there is an inherent stability in the Indonesian system that does not seem shaken by the seeming breakdown of the State.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has entered Indonesia, almost like the proverbial bull in the China shop, unsure of itself and what its policies are meant to achieve. Its harsh prescription of currency devaluation, reorganising of banks and fiscal measures only exacerbated the problems of urban poverty and escalated the food riots that have hit 25 towns and cities in less than two weeks.

Inevitably, that rioting also targeted the small ethnic Chinese community—an estimated four million of Indonesia's 200 million people. The Chinese are perceived to be financial Rasputins behind the scenes, and seemingly control the economy. So, when things go wrong, it is the Chinese who are usually targeted. But, in the larger context, when Indonesians take to the streets, it's the Indonesians, not the Chinese, who take the brunt of the damage. When rivers flowed with blood in the antiCommunist pogrom in 1965, almost as many Indonesians were hacked to death as there were Chinese in Indonesia.

The other minuscule ethnic community, the Indians, is relatively safe, though like the Chinese, they are traders. Some are as rich as Croesus, and indulge in an ostentatious display of wealth. But as they aren't involved in direct trade at local shop levels, they are beyond the target of the rioters.

바카라 웹사이트Moreover, the tip of Sumatra is only 90 kms from the eastern-most islet in the Andaman and Nicobar chain of islands. And echoes of India prevail. Here, the Hindu Buddhist Devaraja concept of kingship is the guiding principle of Indonesian governance. Both President Sukarno and his successor, President Suharto, ruled by it. President Suharto is an avid disciple of Hanuman, or Semar, the Indonesian equivalent. Every major policy statement by President Suharto has Semar in the title. And the one dominant statue on the journey from the international airport into town is that of Hanuman making the dramatic leap towards Lanka to rescue Sita.

The man in the saddle is backed by the Indonesian military, which believes it has a dwi fungsi (twin function): defending the country and playing a dominant role in government. There is a symbiotic relationship between the armed forces and the administration. Which ensures the syncretic acceptance in Java—where about 140 million of Indonesia's 200 million people live—of the Hindu-Buddhist past with the Mohammedan faith. The armed forces want as president a Muslim Javanese general who lives by his Hindu-Buddhist past.

바카라 웹사이트The selection of Prof. B.J. Habibie as vice-president, therefore, does not pose too many succession problems. President Suharto's choice is always accepted, despite widespread reporting, as now, of the unsuitability of any candidate. The Indonesian vice-president has much the same role as his counterpart in India; he is not an automatic replacement should there be a presidential vacancy, and only acts while another president is being elected.

PROF. Habibie acquires special significance in the context of Indonesia's economic crisis. A controversial figure, he returned to Indonesia in the 1970s after working overseas where he had risen to become a senior vice-president at the Messermicht aircraft company in Germany. His view that countries like Indonesia can only develop in closed markets and with the right kind of technology clashed with the prevailing orthodoxy. First, by the armed forces which initially saw him as a political rival for presidential attention, then, by the Western-inspired mix of market forces and global capitalism. President Suharto, however, sees in Prof. Habibie an antidote to the Western-inspired system that has brought Indonesia to her knees.

Much of the criticism is generic rather than specific. In its heyday, foreign institutions were only too willing to pay any price to get a foot in the door. The best way in they could find was through the presidential siblings and children, and his capitalist cronies. With the focussing of growth on the Asia Pacific region, and with the Mexican financial crunch in the early 1990s, excess funds were pushed into this region. One Hong Kong-based company lent hundreds of millions in US dollars to a company running a motorised rickshaw company in Jakarta. When the crunch came, both went belly up.

The riots that followed the inept efforts of the IMF—which came in with a $43 billion float that was preconditional on a devaluation—has resulted in general scepticism, especially in the presidential palace Cendana, about these measures.

President Suharto's plan now is to establish a currency board and peg the rupiah to the US dollar—despite an instant response from both President Clinton and IMF managing director, Michael Camdessus, warning against such a course of action. Indonesian central bank governor, Soedradjad Djiwandono, who opposed the plan, was replaced by Sjahril Sabirina, a more amenable governor.

It is a deft political move that President Suharto could well pull off. The objections from Clinton and Camdessus have as much to do with the possible marginalis-ing of the IMF should President Suharto succeed. Significantly, the induction of Prof. Habibie as vice-president also brings to that office an opposition to the IMF's plans for Indonesia.

Curiously, President Suha-rto's currency board option has attracted the same opposition in Western circles as his earlier decision to bring in the IMF, with the same arguments used against it then and now. President Suharto's supreme confidence, his relative isolation in the manner of a Deva Raja, and his strong prescriptive rules of governance, are painted as stand-offish and isolated from the people. And worse, not in keeping with the democratic order emulated in the West.

However, from within Indonesia, support for the president is much in evidence. The capitalist cronies and the Chinese ethnic community are convenient foils when the people want a message directed to President Suharto. And the president seems to have heard it. At a private function recently, attended by not only his extended family, but also cronies and others close to him, he asked: "Where in the Quran does it say that I, as a leader, cannot look after my friends and siblings? And where in the Quran does it say that when my country is in trouble I should ignore the people and continue to support my siblings?".

So, ultimately, the issue is one of perception. What worries the Indonesians is the belief that the 76-year-old president, whose wife died two years ago, is unlikely to survive his fresh term. Indeed, an Indian astrological magazine published from Ban-galore predicted fresh tensions following "the death of the patriarch". With that are echoes of a prediction by one of the Hindu-Buddhist Majapahit empire's better-known kings, Brawijaya, circa 1520. Just before he was stabbed to death, for declining to convert to Islam, he had told his attackers: "Your faith will prosper for 500 years, and then ours will return." The 500 lunar years convert to about 470 solar years, making this benchmark the year 1990.

바카라 웹사이트This belief has the Muslim community and fundamentalist groups worried, for the prediction implies that President Suharto's successor would take a firm line against the Muslims. It does seem that it is not without reason that President Suharto chose Prof. Habibie who, besides his dominant economic and technological presence, is also aligned to a modernist Islamic thinktank, Institiut Cendawan Muslimin Indonesia, (Indonesian Association of Muslim Intellectuals). The current fluid scenario in Indonesia is a changing of the dynastic guard, preceded as it always is, by internal riots and confusion.