Indonesia, a beacon at the polls
As the world's largest Muslim nation struggles with democracy, its latest election offers encouraging news, says journalist WARREN CARAGATA
By WARREN CARAGATA
Comment Section: July 9, 2004
The winner in Indonesia's first direct presidential election since postwar independence is already apparent despite the fact that the ballots from the July 5 vote are still being counted: Indonesian democracy is the clear victor.
The world's largest Muslim country is a relative newcomer to democracy. From the time it broke free of more than 300 years of Dutch rule at the end of the Second World War until the fall of president Suharto in 1998, the country had known only a brief period of political freedom, and that was back in the 1950s. Sukarno, the country's founding president, and his successor, General Suharto, both governed the equatorial archipelago with an autocratic fist.
So when Indonesia tossed Gen. Suharto aside in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis in 1998, few observers would have predicted that six years later, the country is still together and democracy has put down roots. Enthusiastic roots. While only about 60 per cent of Canadians voted in the federal election, turnout in Indonesia was about 82 per cent.
Some Canadians think that the country is just another unstable Muslim land, which matters little alongside war-ravaged countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, Indonesian democracy matters deeply for Canada and the West.
Canada has commercial reasons to be attentive. Although trade flows are modest, Indonesia is the largest single destination of Canadian investment in southeast Asia, with Inco's Sulawesi nickel mine leading the way.
But Indonesia should also command more strategic interest because of its large Muslim population, its position astride the sea lanes between East Asia and the Middle East, its large natural-resource base, and its role as the largest country in southeast Asia.
More than 80 per cent of Indonesia's population of about 220 million are Muslim. While the terrorist bombings in Bali in 2002, and Jakarta in 2003 have left an impression that Indonesia is a hotbed of radical Islam, that's far from the truth. Despite its strong Muslim majority, it remains a secular state. Campaigns to enshrine sharia law, even for Muslims (as exists in neighbouring Malaysia), have fallen flat. Still, in the democracy that Indonesia has become, fundamentalists can now raise their voices without fear of the repression that greeted most expressions of political Islam under Gen. Suharto.
Indonesians, including Muslims, are a generally tolerant people, as I was reminded when I went to a Jakarta mosque shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. The mosque was supposedly one of the most radical in the city, and I fully expected the men I interviewed after Friday prayers would be uncompromising in their views. Should women wear headscarves, I asked? Everyone in the small group agreed, but the next question elicited a more surprising response. Do your wives and daughters wear headscarves? Oh no, they said. They don't like them. They're too hot. Should sharia be the law of the land? All said no: That would upset Indonesian Christians.
There are fundamentalists, to be sure, but they are on the margins. The firm establishment of democracy in Indonesia can be a beacon to the rest of the Muslim world, demonstrating that Islam and democracy are not incompatible. Aid money in great quantities flows to supposed democratic incubators like Iraq and Afghanistan, but Indonesia's democratic experiment, to judge by its track record, is far more likely to succeed.
Indonesia is not without problems. The economy is growing, but at rates too feeble to provide jobs for an ever-increasing labour force. Independence movements are active in Aceh in the west and Papua in the east. The governments that followed Gen. Suharto have been long on talk and short on wisdom. Corruption, which like everything else in Indonesia was highly controlled and centralized during Gen. Suharto's reign, has spread.
Indonesia is now among the most corrupt countries in the world, and the issue may be the most corrosive one facing whoever wins the presidency when the final ballots are counted. Corruption has been democratized and no organization, no institution has been untouched. Even journalists and NGOs -- supposed watchdogs -- are too often on the take. The courts -- as Manulife discovered in 2002, when its profitable Indonesian subsidiary was declared bankrupt -- are cauldrons of corruption. The army and the police battle each other to control protection schemes, sometimes at the cost of the lives of civilians caught in the crossfire.
If Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono wins the runoff election on Sept. 20, corruption may well be the issue that propels him to the presidency. A retired general with strong reformist credentials, SBY, as he known, has a reputation for honesty, his promises to clean house initially won strong support among the Indonesian middle class and educated young people in the cities, and he has so far managed to build from that power base. It now appears he will face the incumbent, Megawati Sukarnoputri, in the second round.
For her part, Megawati, the daughter of founding president Sukarno, has governed with strong support from the military, and has allowed her ministers (and her garrulous husband, cut from the cloth of a Chicago ward heeler), free rein to accumulate the spoils of power. Although her government has stabilized the economy, she has ruled as though she were a 16th-century Javanese princess with a 21st-century aptitude for shopping.
Indonesia's ultimate success in moving from democratic transition to a stable, economically prosperous democracy will have several prerequisites. One is political leaders as decent as the country's long-suffering population. Another is luck and the active support of international friends, including Canada, to champion the cause of reform and help the country weather the normal storms of such a fundamental transition.
Canada -- respected in Indonesia for what it is (a prosperous democracy that has successfully managed its own regional strains) and for what it is not (the United States) -- can play a much more active role than it has in the past. Doing so would earn the gratitude of Indonesians and help make the world, and the Muslim world in particular, a safer and more democratic place. As Prime Minister Paul Martin plans his government's foreign affairs agenda, he should ensure that Indonesia is not again relegated to second rank.
Warren Caragata, a former journalist with Maclean's and Asiaweek, lived in Jakarta from 1999 to 2003.