BY BOB AIKEN AND PATRICK O'NEILL
JAKARTA - Despite an extremely slow count in the weeks
following June 7 elections in Indonesia, it has become clear
that the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle will top the
polls. The PDI-P, now with about 36 percent of the vote, is
the party of the main pro-capitalist opposition figure,
Megawati Sukharnoputri, the daughter of Indonesia's first
president, Sukharno. In the elections candidates from 48
parties stood for 462 seats in the House of Representatives,
with a further 38 seats reserved for military appointees.
The ballot took place just over one year after Suharto, the former president, was forced to resign amidst massive student-led protests against his dictatorial, military based, rule. It occurred as working people across Indonesia, hit by the impact of a devastating economic crisis, seek to use new political space to fight for union rights, wage increases, and land rights. Struggles for national self-determination also continue to deepen in Aceh, West Papua, and East Timor.
The election campaign featured huge, celebratory parades by PDI-P supporters. Many working people used these, and other election rallies, to express their deep opposition to the ruling Golkar party, headed by President B.J. Habibie.
More a machine for the dispensation of patronage and power than a political party, Golkar routinely "won" 62-75 percent of the vote in the tightly controlled elections held during Suharto's 33-year rule. Working people's contempt for those stage-managed elections was reflected on June 7, when many gathered to watch the ballot counting. Osid, a leader of a peasant land struggle in the Agrabinta district of West Java, who monitored the vote in the town of Cibinong, told the Militant June 22 that it was "a fair election [there] compared with previous elections" when, "if people didn't vote for Golkar the counters would rip up" their ballots.
Suharto came to power in a bloody 1965 coup. Hundreds of thousands of workers and peasants were slaughtered by the military and rightist thugs as their struggles were crushed in the coup and the wave of repression that followed. The Suharto regime was marked by the "dual function" of the military - begun by Sukarno and continuing to today - which gives the military a central role in the government apparatus down to the village level, and widespread participation in business. The Suharto family and their close associates also used their control of the government to enrich themselves on the backs of the toilers while pushing aside rival capitalists.
As the economy and banking system went into a tailspin following the collapse of the national currency, the rupiah, in mid-1997, Suharto lost the long-standing backing of the imperialist powers. He was forced to "step aside" in May 1998 when mass protests against his rule erupted. Indonesia's People's Consultative Assembly is scheduled to elect a new president in November. This undemocratic body is made up of the House of Representatives, plus a further 200 appointees.
Suharto's party discredited
Reflecting the concern in imperialist circles that the
return of a Golkar-led government would spark widespread
riots and protests, Martin Anidjar, an "Asian debt analyst"
at J.P. Morgan, told Reuters June 3 that in his view, "The
best result would be a majority vote for the opposition, not
because I think the Golkar party would be bad, but because
there is already too much hope in the population for an end
to this ... regime."
The five main capitalist parties got about 90 percent of the vote June 7 and will thrash out the make up of the new government in the coming weeks and months, along with the military top brass. While a Megawati presidency is the most likely outcome, it is by no means assured.
Golkar is running second with 22 percent of the vote. It fared badly in Java, the island where 60 percent of the country's 210 million people live, especially in the cities, but remains a significant force in many rural areas and in other islands less shaken by the crisis. In Sulawesi, for instance, the ruling party is claiming a majority of the vote. Charges of electoral violations and corruption have centered on such areas.
Though the Indonesian economy officially declined 13.68 percent in 1998, some exporters of raw materials and crops reaped windfall profits - in rupiah terms - from the collapse of Indonesia's currency, helping to strengthen the governing party's apparatus and vote. The allotment of parliamentary seats is weighted in favor of the less populated outer island provinces, where many of these exports come from, giving Golkar a disproportionate number of seats in the House of Representatives.
IMF `bailout' squeeze
Stanley Fischer, the International Monetary Fund's deputy
chief, met with leaders from all five major parties following
the elections, to confirm their continued support for the
IMF's conditions for a $45 billion bailout package begun in
late 1997. "There are no great differences in economic policy
among the people and parties we have met," he said June 19.
The IMF and World Bank's "bailout" has focused on salvaging Indonesia's main banks and corporations from the weight of bad debts stemming from the currency crisis. The restructuring of the banks alone is expected to cost US$87 billion, equivalent to 82 percent of Indonesia's Gross Domestic Product. Their prescription for "structural reform" in Indonesia involves cutting price subsidies and opening Indonesia's resources even further to imperialist ownership. Pertamina, the state company that handles all contracts in Indonesia's oil and gas industry, is being privatized, and government officials have cited plans to sell $10 billion in state assets
Workers are being squeezed as the price of basic staples like rice has trebled over the last two years while small increases in the official minimum wage, and even the minimum wage itself, are often ignored by the bosses. Unemployment has soared much higher than the official figure of 15 million.
The rupiah has "stabilized" in recent months, reaching 6,600 to the dollar since the elections, after plummeting by 80 percent to reach 14,700 to the dollar in June 1998. Economics Minister Ginandjar Kartasasmita has predicted economic growth of between zero and 2 percent in the coming year, reflecting hopes that the free fall of the economy has slowed.
Workers, farmers resist effects of crisis
Many struggles by workers, peasants, and young people are
continuing to erupt as this economic crisis grinds on.
Several thousand employees of the state-owned Bank BTN
protested July 5 in Central Jakarta against plans to lay off
more then 1,280 staff in the near future. The same day about
1,000 bus conductors and drivers protested across town
outside the offices of a state-owned city bus company, PPD.
After a two-day strike the bus workers won a promise of a 120
percent pay hike, bringing them up to the minimum wage.
"Workers are becoming more bold because of the reformasi [reform against Suharto]," Popo Hermawan, the director of the Medan Industrial Park in North Sumatra, complained to the June 17 Far Eastern Economic Review. Despite almost four dozen soldiers patrolling the park's 142 factories, nine strikes have erupted there this year.
Likewise in the countryside, peasants are taking up often decades-old grievances over lands stolen by state-owned plantations, other capitalist enterprises, and the military. These reporters traveled to Agrabinta, south of Bandung on the Javanese coast, and met peasants demanding their rights to land taken by a state-owned coconut plantation. They had organized protests of up to 3,000 over three days, April 29-May 1.
Many student groups remain active as part of the opposition to the Habibie government and Golkar. As we were meeting with a student group from Padjadjaran University in Bandung June 21, several activists returned from a protest of 100 students from 11 campuses, typical in size and political thrust of the student protests today. Demands they are raising include putting Suharto on trial for corruption, abolishing the dual function of the military, banning the Golkar party, nationalizing New Order [Suharto family] assets, and supporting autonomy for each province. Short of a "transitional" government that would begin to implement their demands, one of the students, Muladi, said, they hoped for a "civil democratic" government with "no connections with Golkar."
Surya, another student helping to build solidarity with peasants fighting for their land in Agrabinta, told the Militant, "We have to build the political empowerment of workers, peasants, and the urban poor" because last year's student movement [against Suharto] "couldn't make a fundamental change in our society."
The political ferment promises to continue, whatever the outcome of the horse-trading now taking place among the capitalist parties. Many working people expect to see a Megawati-led government, and expect such a government to take some steps to alleviate the crisis they face. Arin Sobarin, a textile worker from Banjaran, near Bandung, told the Militant June 20, "If Megawati is elected president I hope for better economic conditions." Sobarin is the leader of the union at a state-owned textile plant where workers enforced the minimum wage in two strikes during April and May. Osid also backed Megawati. He "hopes the new government will end KKN [the term for the `corruption, collusion, and nepotism' of the Suharto regime] and decrease prices." He also made it clear that the fight for their land is far from over. "We are brave," he said, without a trace of boasting.
Bob Aiken is a member of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union in Sydney.