The democracy I crave for Indonesia is not liberal democracy such as exists in Western Europe. No! What I want for Indonesia is a guided democracy, a democracy with leadership. A guided democracy, a guided democracy, something which is guided but still democracy.
His inspiration came from the villages, where after long deliberation (musyawarah) a consensus (mufakat) was reached. Two proposals embodied his vision: a cabinet representing all major parties, and a 'National Council' comprising 'functional' social groups, such as farmers, artists, religious leaders, women, the military and others.
The parties were divided on the proposals. The PKI and PNI supported, while the Muslims opposed, them. They feared that the Communists, who, their electoral strength notwithstanding, had always remained out of the cabinet, would acquire unprecedented powers. Military and business leaders felt sidelined in the Outer Islands. Their chief bugbear was the PKI. Islanders were also very religious - both Muslims and Christians - and resented the increasing secularism of Jakarta.
In late 1956 and early 1957, regional military commanders in Sumatra and Sulawesi seized power. The Prime Minister resigned, and Sukarno, taking General Nasution's advice, declared martial law. Nevertheless, in February 1958 the Outer Islanders announced a rebel government. Sulawesi followed suit. On Sukarno's orders, Nasution defeated the rebels : the centre had triumphed, along with Sukarno and the army. In 1958, Nasution made it official.
We do not and we will not copy the situation as it exists in several Latin American states where the army acts as a direct political force; nor will we emulate the Western European model where armies are the dead tools (of the government) or the example of Eastern Europe.
Secure, Sukarno moved towards guided democracy. In 1959, he asked the Constituent Assembly, elected in 1955 to write a new constitution, to adopt the constitution of 1945, which gave the president greater powers than the provisional constitution of 1950. The move was widely supported as the Assembly had failed to write a new constitution. The sticking point was whether the state should be based on Islam or the Five Principles (Pancasila), which referred to 'belief in God', rather than only Allah. After three consecutive failures to secure the needed two-thirds majority, an impatient Sukarno unilaterally revived the 1945 constitution.
Guided Democracy: late 1950s - mid- to late 1960s
Guided democracy was populist, militarist and non-parliamentary. Sukarno presented himself nationally as the international crusader against imperialism and colonialism. He succeeded in this during the struggle for West Irian, but failed in his policy to 'crush Malaysia'. The first united, the second divided, the nation.
Having repeatedly failed in the UN General Assembly to go beyond a simple majority, Indonesia sought self-help to gain West Irian. The Dutch won a pyrrhic victory, and so decided to relinquish the territory. His continuing hostility to the West, immensely popular at home, was summed up as Nefos against Oldefos (New Emerging and Old Established Forces). In 1963, the latter assumed the shape of the contemplated Federation of Malaysia : a union of the independent Federation of Malaya and the British-controlled territories of Singapore, Sabah and Sarawak. He saw in it an attempt by conservative Malayan leaders and the British to preserve the status quo after the latter had left. The popularity of the 'crush Malaysia' policy embarrassed the army : the need to be seen supporting Sukarno conflicted with jealousy of the PKI's growing prestige conferred by the campaign. At the same time, his obsession with symbols of greatness impoverished the nation. By the mid-'60s, inflation stood at over 650%; exports fell, and foreign indebtedness came to $2,400,000,000.
The conflict between the army and the PKI became dominant internally. It climaxed on the night of 30 September - 1 October 1965, when some squads and PKI-affiliated members kidnapped and killed six senior army officers. Nasution escaped. The broadcast message was that a coup by right-wing generals paid by the CIA had been frustrated. The failure to capture General Suharto resulted in his taking full control of Jakarta.
The New Order: mid- to late 1960s - 1998
Students, intellectuals and politically active Muslims aided the army against the communists. The New Order, they felt, meant rescue from the political, moral and economic bankruptcy of the Old. The New Order government set political and economic stability, followed by development (see table above), as its goals. The first goal collided with the expectations of its supporters that they would now rule and establish civilian rule. Suharto took two steps.
First, he magnified Golkar, a hitherto ineffective party set up by the army to counter the PKI, to national proportions. Second, he cut the number of parties from nine to two through mergers : a Muslim, the Development Unity Party (Partai Persatuan Pembangunan, PPP) and a non-Muslim one, the Indonesian Democratic Party (Partai Democrasi Indonesia, PDI). Sukarno's daughter, Megawati, led the latter from '93 to '96.
Epilogue
As epilogue, it may be claimed that Suharto had been unduly harsh in Aceh and East Timor (today known as Timor-Leste). In December 1975, the Portuguese colonial rulers pulled out of East Timor, and the Indonesian army moved in. In the ensuing guerrilla warfare, at least 170,000 died over the next fifteen years (Reynolds, 429). Again, the contrast with democratic India is instructive: India invaded the princely states one by one, and Goa in 1961, with Nehru assuring the people that Mahatma Gandhi would have thoroughly approved the last move (J. M. Roberts, Twentieth Century: The History of the World: 1901 To The Present (London: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 1999), p. 497). Indeed, Indian nationalism proved virulent for minorities: The Economist observed that the Indian Army had killed 200,000 Nagas alone till 2003 (January 18, 2003). This comparison in no way exonerates the Suharto regime, but it does put the matter in some perspective, which has been sorely lacking, with Suharto being seen as the ''dictator who ruled with an iron fist'', as opposed to some ideal of benign democratic government. Indeed, where murder and mayhem are concerned, it may be argued that the world's largest and the world's oldest democracies have a lot in common.
In conclusion, the fact that Suharto's long period of stability was indispensable for economic growth and development cannot be disputed. Here, it is worth recalling the words of the development economist, Adrian Leftwich (Adrian Leftwich, 'On the Primacy of Politics in Development', Democracy and Development, ed. Adrian Leftwich, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996), p. 18)": "....development cannot simply be managed into motion by some idealised system of good governance, evacuated from the world of politics. For neither democracy nor good governance are independent variables which have somehow gone missing in the developing world: they are dependent ones. And whatever their relationship with economic growth and development may be, both are the products of particular kinds of politics and can be found only in states which promote and protect them. Indeed, they are a form of politics themselves and not a set of institutions and rules. ...Indeed, to insist on democratic institutions and practices in societies whose politics will not support them and whose state traditions (or lack of them) will not sustain them may be to do far greater damage than not insisting on them. Moreover, the kind of political turbulence which such insistence may unleash is bound to have explosive and decidedly anti-developmental consequences (italics original)."
