Source APC Newsgroup: act.indonesia

Written by: tapol@gn.apc.org
Date: 08 Nov 1998 06:09:12
Subject: The Day Civil War Simmered in Indonesia

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From: tapol@gn.apc.org (TAPOL)
Subject: The Day Civil War Simmered in Indonesia

From Joyo:

The Sunday Times [London]
Sunday, November 8, 1998

Photo caption: Anarchy rules: while rioters took over the streets of Jakarta
before Suharto's fall, the army formed into two sides that nearly went to war
Photograph: Achmad Ibrahim

The day civil war simmered in Indonesia

by Michael Sheridan
Jakarta

FOR a man with the unenviable job of leading the 200m people of Indonesia
through a dangerous political upheaval and a terrible economic crisis,
President Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie looked like a politician at the peak of
his confidence yesterday.

In an interview with The Sunday Times at the presidential palace in Jakarta,
Habibie said a civil war between units of the Indonesian army was narrowly
averted last May when President Suharto fell from power after riots that left
more than 1,000 people dead.

He also made it clear he did not want to be president after December 1999,
when Indonesia is due to get a new leadership after free democratic elections.

Habibie, pictured, is facing a critical week. Jakarta has been shaken
by noisy demonstrations in protest at a special parliamentary session that is
supposed to write the rules and set a date for the elections, expected next
May. Thousands of extra soldiers in combat gear have been drafted onto the
streets and the Indonesian rupiah has again weakened against the dollar as
nervous traders sell on the renewed political uncertainty.

"Any newly arrived visitor to the Indonesian capital these days can be
forgiven for believing he has landed in a city at war," the Jakarta Post
newspaper said in an editorial yesterday.

Sitting amid the airy splendour of the Dutch colonial palace bequeathed to
Sukarno, the country's flamboyant first president, Habibie - who is only the
third man to hold the highest office in 53 years of independence - described
how Indonesia nearly slid over the brink into civil conflict and
hyperinflation earlier this year.

Asked whether he had feared a conflict between troops loyal to Suharto's son-
in-law, Major-General Prabowo Subianto, and units answering to General
Wiranto, the chief of the armed forces, Habibie said: "Yes. I was very aware
of it. It was in this room, to tell you the truth."

The president said he had slept only two hours a night for the first 10 days
after Suharto handed over office. "There was the problem of Prabowo and his
group," he said. "There was the problem of the demonstrations, politics were
wild, we were entering hyperinflation."

The president said that on the night Suharto stepped down, May 21, the
military confrontation had arrived on his own doorstep. "My house was
surrounded by two lots of troops," he said. "One, the ordinary troops
responsible to General Wiranto, who ordered a cordon to protect me, and one
lot belonged to the Kostrad [the army strategic reserve], which was
responsible to Prabowo."

The Kostrad troops, Habibie said, had also wanted to "protect the new
president". Western diplomats say Prabowo had evidently intended to place
Indonesia's new leader under his own power, which would have risked a violent
showdown. "The next morning I solved it," said Habibie with a laugh. "I called
in Wiranto and instructed him to replace Prabowo and to bring the Kostrad
troops back to barracks."

Prabowo was subsequently transferred, cashiered and now faces an investigation
into alleged abuses of human rights. Many Indonesian democracy activists still
fear Prabowo's subterranean influence but the president dismissed the former
general as a political force.

"The president can fire any general and any member of the cabinet," he said.
"We have seen in history powerful generals, as soon as they are not in the
system, fading out."

That early test of Habibie's nerve under pressure seemed to have whetted his
appetite. "I am never nervous," he laughed.

At 62, with triple bypass heart surgery and many years as Suharto's close ally
and technology minister behind him, then as Suharto's chosen deputy, Habibie
has finally found his own niche in history.

Opposition parties and radical students stigmatise Habibie as a puppet of the
former ruler who participated in corruption and cronyism during the so-called
"new order".

The president, who appeared to be exhilarated by the pace of change he has
unleashed, has no time for such arguments. "I have done what had to be done -
a relaxation phase," he said.

"Today we have registered over 100 political parties. In the shortest time
there will be a fair election. I have to give everybody in this country the
freedom to form their own party, the freedom to express their ideas, thoughts,
opinions, freedom of the press, freedom of organised labour."

Asked if he thought Golkar, for years the all-powerful Suharto political
machine, could survive as a dominant party, Habibie simply laughed. "You know,
I'm neither God nor a prophet!" he said.

Indonesia's sudden political ferment after 32 years of repression has led many
of the Javanese elite, who dominate the country, to question whether it is
ready for democracy. Did the president think his people understood what
democracy was really about?

"No!" he said firmly. "They are in the process of understanding. But the
Indonesian people are very tolerant by nature, and tolerance is one of the
basic elements of democracy."

He accepts he will not rule for decades like Suharto, saying that according to
his timetable, on December 21 next year "the people of Indonesia will get a
Christmas present, their new president and vice-president".

But for the moment he is living Indonesia's crisis day by day. "I had a phone
call of congratulations this morning," he confided cheerfully. "The IMF
[International Monetary Fund] board met in Washington last night and
unanimously agreed. We will get about a billion dollars on Monday."

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
TAPOL, the Indonesia Human Rights Campaign
111 Northwood Road, Thornton Heath,
Surrey CR7 8HW, UK
Phone: 0181 771-2904 Fax: 0181 653-0322
email: tapol@gn.apc.org
Campaigning to expose human rights violations in
Indonesia, East Timor, West Papua and Aceh

Join us to celebrate TAPOL's 25th anniversary on
20 October 1998. Contact us for ticket details.
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