| Subject: Notes on the
Indonesian Military and the New Government Notes
on the Indonesian Military and the New Government November 3, 1999 John Roosa
1. The new president Gus Dur has appointed six military
officers to his cabinet of thirty five ministers. They are: Gen. Wiranto Coordinating
Minister for Political Affairs and Security Lt. Gen. Surjadi Soedirdja Minister for Home
Affairs Lt. Gen. S. B. Yudhoyono Minister of Mines and Energy Lt. Gen. Agum Gumelar
Minister of Transportation and Communications Rear Admiral Freddy Numberi State
Administrative Reforms Admiral Widodo Commander of the Military
2. Gen. Wiranto has been removed as from his dual post as
Minister of Defense and Commander of the Military. However, he has been shifted to a very
powerful post, a kind of super-ministerial post that was held by Gen. Feisal Tanjung in
the last cabinet. The post oversees the ministries of foreign affairs, defense, home
affairs, and law. It is an odd and superfluous post that reformists have suggested
scrapping; each ministry can function well enough on its own. That Gus Dur has not only
kept this "coordinating" post but has given it to a pillar of the old Suharto
regime represents his most significant betrayal of the reform agenda. The army, through
this post, monitors the work of the key ministries and is in a position to hinder and even
block their work.
3. The Minister for Home Affairs, also held by an army
officer, controls the appointments and performance of the "civilian"
administration: the village chiefs, district chiefs, governors, etc. The public has hoped
that the many military officers presently holding these posts would be removed and that
the administration would become a truly civilian one. With a retired general in charge of
the ministry, one can expect that this process of reducing the military's presence in the
administration is going to be very slow.
4. The new Defense Minister, Juwono Sudarsono, is a
civilian, at least nominally. He is a Professor of Politics at the University of
Indonesia. He doesn't have a rank in the military and doesn't wear a uniform but he has
been employed by the military before. He was the Vice-Governor (or vice-chancellor one
could say) of the military's think tank and elite officer school, the National Resilience
Institute, for three years, from 1995 to 1997. He once said: "For the next five
years, there will not be any civilian leader that is suitable to accept the central
national leadership as president or vice-president. The national leadership will still
rest on ABRI. The civilians must still prepare themselves. We need national leadership
that has a clear direction and experience. And for the moment, that is from ABRI,
especially the Army." (September 8, 1997; quoted in Forum Keadilan, 7 November 1999)
He has not been an advocate of reform and has been cozy with the Suharto regime and its
cronies. Suharto appointed him Environmental Minister in 1998 (in the cabinet that lasted
a month). Habibie appointed him Minister of Education and Culture. Wiranto suggested Gus
Dur appoint him to be Defense Minister. The fact that Sudarsono is a civilian has only
symbolic importance. Under Suharto, there was one civilian Defense Minister, Sri Sultan
Hamengku Buwono IX (1973-78). He made no difference.
5. The two most lucrative and corrupt ministries -- a)
Mines and Energy, and b) Transport and Communications -- have been put under army
officers. The military is already heavily involved in the corruption and violence of these
sectors of the economy. For the mining companies, which are mostly foreign, the army
evicts the existing inhabitants from the land so the mine can be built and than rents out
its soldiers as security guards once the fences are up and the mine is operating. The
military's own businesses are concentrated in the trucking and shipping sectors. Gus Dur
said in an interview that the military's dual function has to continue for the next five
years because "the double function is related to the personal income levels of
military personnel. First, we have to solve that problem." (Expresso, 23 Oct. 1999)
It appears he has decided to "solve that problem" by ensuring that the military,
the army in particular, has its businesses, investments, and jobs protected by ministers
from the army.
6. The military claims that all of the officers who are
serving in the cabinet, except the commander of the military, will retire from active duty
service. This is a rule the military devised after the fall of Suharto: those in the
civilian government have to remove themselves from active duty. This is only a symbolic
transformation for an officer. The military conceives of itself as a "extended
family" that includes retired officers. As ministers, these officers will defend the
military's political and economic interests. It is not even definite that they will
retire. It turns out that despite the rule Lt. Gen. Hendropriyono served in Habibie's
cabinet without retiring. The rule is the military's own and it is up to the military to
follow it or not.
7. The new commander of the military, Admiral Widodo, is a
Navy officer. Under Suharto the commander was always drawn from the army. This appointment
is a positive break from the past. It accords with Gus Dur's emphasis on maritime matters.
However, one must note that Widodo has been serving as assistant commander (panglima)
under Wiranto. One must also note that the army controls the appointments of navy officers
at and above the rank of colonel. Widodo got to be admiral and Wiranto's assistant by
knowing how to please the army. We should not expect that Widodo is going to seriously
limit the army's present power just because he is from the navy which is filled with
officers disgruntled with the army's dominance.
8. A group of 17 active duty military officers released a
book on October 28 that advocated an end to the dual-function. The officers claimed to
represent a "reformist" tendency within the military. (Jakarta Post, 29 Oct.
1999) One must treat their reformism with some skepticism. While their book does perhaps
mark the first time since 1965 that active duty officers have openly opposed the dual
function of the military, this could well be nothing more than a rhetorical position
designed for public relations purposes. The military has always monitored public discourse
and adapted its own rhetoric accordingly without changing its everyday practice. One of
the 17 co-authors is Col. Cornel Simbolon, the military commander for Lampung district
whose troops shot and killed two students and ransacked Lampung University last month.
While he is putting his name to a call for the military to remove "unworthy"
officers who commit "weird" actions, he has not disciplined the guilty officers
under his own command. Over the past 30 years, the military has been constantly saying it
is reforming and professionalizing itself. Foreign scholars and governments supporting the
military have been consistently claiming there was some reform-minded faction that had to
be assisted, that not all the officers were bad eggs guilty of the heinous crimes the
military was committing. This has been the merry-go-round of reform. Remember when Prabowo
was the reformist? And then Wiranto? Every time their chosen reformist commits crimes
against humanity he turns into a bad egg hardliner; then a new reformist is found and the
culture of impunity continues. For a recent instance of this absurd reformers vs.
hardliners logic, see the op-ed in last week's Far Eastern Economic Review by the former
US defense attache to the US embassy in Jakarta, John Haas. Haas argued the same thing
after the Santa Cruz massacre in 1991. With this logic, every crime that the Indonesian
military commits becomes a reason to continue, even increase, support to it.
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