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NEWS & LETTERS, October 2004Our Life and Times by Kevin A. Barry
Indonesia
elections
Former
general Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono won by a landslide over incumbent Megawati in
September’s presidential elections. Within the context of the Indonesian
political-military establishment, Yudhoyono is a relative liberal. He has
promised greater autonomy to minority regions, as well as moves against
corruption. He has also vowed to reform the military, which ruled the country
under U.S.-backed dictator Suharto from 1965 to 1998. While
Yudhoyono did support the overthrow of Suharto, his own past includes two stints
as an officer in East Timor, where Suharto’s military committed genocide. East
Timor is finally independent, but the Indonesian government has refused to
extradite or seriously prosecute its war criminals. In August, courts voided
almost all of the few convictions obtained over the 1999 carnage in East Timor.
In that year, 15,000 were killed and 250 driven from their homes, in a last
fling of bloodletting as East Timorese voted for independence in a United
Nations-sponsored referendum. In
2003, as Megawati’s security minister, Yudhoyono faced the question of how to
deal with the independence movement in Aceh, another long-suffering province,
where thousands have been killed by the military. At first Yudhoyono seemed to
favor compromise with the resistance, but he soon caved in to military pressure
by declaring martial law. In his campaign, Yudhoyono promised greater autonomy
for West Papua, another region whose people have faced military repression. Indonesia
also faces the challenge of radical Islamism, as the world saw in the horrific
bombings that killed nearly 200 people in Bali in 2002. Eleven days before this
year’s election, another attack by fundamentalist suicide bombers on the
Australian Embassy killed nine people, all of them Indonesians, and injured 150.
These movements have targeted Indonesia, whose 228 million people make it the
world’s largest predominantly Muslim country, but so far with only limited
success. The country’s biggest challenge concerns capital and labor. Strong labor organizing since 1998 has succeeded in raising the average wage in Jakarta by over 50%. It is now higher than that in Shanghai or Hanoi, but still a shockingly low $75 per month. In response, corporations have threatened layoffs and relocation abroad, while the International Monetary Fund has demanded economic "reforms" that would benefit international capital at the expense of workers. |
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