History

 

Indonesia's modem history begins with the arrival of Dutch trading ships in the archipelago at the end of the sixteenth century. For many decades the Dutch merchants, based in the west Java port town that they named Batavia (now the Indonesian capital of Jakarta), were only one of a number of com­peting centers of power. The kingdom of Mataram, for example, effectively controlled most of Java throughout the seventeenth century. By the mid-eighteenth century, however, the Dutch East India Company was the domi­nant power on Java.

 

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the government of Netherlands India, which had replaced the bankrupt company, consolidated its rule on Java and extended it to what became known as the Outer Islands: Sumatra, Kalimantan (Borneo), Sulawesi (Celebes), Papua (western New Guinea), and thousands of smaller islands in between. A European-financed export-oriented plantation economy, specializing in sugar in east and central Java, coffee and tea in west Java, and tobacco, rubber, and palm oil in east Sumatra, flourished. Petroleum products began to be exported in quantity in the 1890s. When in 1901 Queen Wilhelmina announced from the throne a new policy to enhance the welfare of her native subjects, her colony was at the threshold of its greatest administrative and economic successes.

 

Netherlands India did not enjoy a long or tranquil life, however. In the twentieth century indigenous inhabitants of the archipelago, under the banner of Indonesian nationalism, forged a new identity, political move­ments opposing colonial rule, and finally an independent state. The con­text of this nationalism and many of the social forces influencing it were Dutch. The idea that all the people living in the territory stretching from Sabang on the northern tip of Sumatra to Merauke on the southeastern coast of Papua constituted a single nation had not occurred to anyone be­fore the Netherlands Indian boundaries were drawn. The conception of na­tionalism-a people occupying a territory governed by a sovereign state­was taken from nineteenth-century European political intellectuals and movements, and the very name "Indonesia" was a technical term borrowed from European anthropologists. Finally, the carriers of the idea, the na­tionalist leaders, were drawn largely from the pool of western-educated Indonesians created by the Dutch colonial government for its own admin­istrative purposes. The principal result of the queen's new welfare policy, as it turned out, was to speed the collapse of her empire Indonesian nationalism was not, however, a carbon copy of the European original. In the hands of skillful and resourceful political entre­preneurs- especially the charismatic and ideologically eclectic Sukarno, an engineer of mixed Javanese-Balinese parentage, trained by the Dutch but without experience abroad- it was quickly indigenized. The earliest orga­nizations formed by the educated elite tended to be either local, like Young Java and Young Celebes, or sectarian, like Sarekat Islam (Islamic Association). In 1927 Sukarno and other leaders created the first Partai Nasional Indonesia (Indonesian National Party) in a deliberate attempt to overarch these differences, and the next year delegates to a broadly repre­sentative Youth Congress declared their loyalty to satu nusa, sate bangsa, satu bahasa (one territory, one people, one language).

 

For the next fourteen years, until the Dutch were expelled by the Japanese at the outset of World War II, the nationalist movement was politi­cally ineffective and organizationally badly split. Dutch repression had a lot to do with this, but so did the reluctance of many Indonesian individuals and groups to agree on a single definition of their collective purpose. Nonetheless, a nation building threshold had been crossed. After the late 1920s, the idea of Indonesia was the commonly accepted frame within which conflict took place. Increasingly, too, bahasa Indonesia (the Indonesian language), the unifying language proclaimed by the Youth Congress, provided the common vocabulary of an emerging political culture.

 

Bahasa Indonesia was both a convenient and a brilliant choice as a national language. Its origin was as the low form of Malay, the indigenous language of the Malayan peninsula but of few Indonesians, the lingua franca of traders throughout the ethnically diverse archipelago, and the language in which Dutch and Indo-European officials talked down to their indigenous staff. In the 1930s and later, it became the medium of elite political discourse and of high literary culture, sparking an explosion of novels, short stories, poetry, and theater in which new Indonesian men and women struggled with the meaning of a modem identity. Since independence it has been the medium of instruction in all schools and the sole language of national public life.

 

During their brief rule from 1942 to 1945, the Japanese were even more repressive than the Dutch, but their policies strengthened the nationalist movement. Sukarno and other leaders were pressed into service as propagandists for the Japanese war effort, which enabled them to spread their own message and to link up with nationalists throughout the archipelago. The Japanese also created a self-defense force, with Indonesian officers up to battalion level, which would become an important part of the Indonesian army after the war. The Japanese surrender in August 1945 offered an opportunity which the nationalist forces, led by Sukarno and the Dutch-educated Sumatran economist Mohammed Hatta, quickly seized upon to declare the independence of the Republic of Indonesia.

 

The four-year revolution against the returning Dutch was one of the longest anticolonial wars in Asia and Africa. Three characteristics of the rev­olution stand out in terms of later impact. First, there was unprecedented political and military mobilization, the groundwork for which had been laid during the Japanese occupation. Second, the political leadership and or­ganizational fragmentation of the prewar nationalist movement continued, but with an added military dimension. The new Indonesian armed forces found themselves competing for arms and personnel with a multitude of spontaneously formed guerrilla groups, many of which were affiliated with political parties. There was much conflict among the guerrillas, between them and the official army, and between all of these groups, on the one hand, and the civilian politicians, on the other. The sharpest division sepa­rated the civilian politicians who chose diplomacy from the soldiers and guerrillas who chose physical struggle as the chief means to attain inde­pendence. Third, the state withered. Few Indonesians had attained high bureaucratic positions under the Dutch. There was greater mobility during the Japanese occupation, but the bureaucracy was starved for funds. During the revolution, some officials were killed for pro-Dutch sympathies, many others joined the guerrillas, and normal state functions tended to be sub­ordinated to the military and diplomatic effort.

By the end of 1949, the republic had triumphed over the Dutch. Governing an independent country was another matter, however, requir­ing political and policy ideas, skills, institutions, and resources that turned out to be in short supply. In 1950 the victorious

nationalists adopted a con­tinental European-style constitution establishing a parliamentary democ­racy headed by a prime minister and cabinet with a president as symbolic chief of state.

 

The 1950 Constitution was hurriedly formulated as a temporary com­promise among contending political forces and was meant to be rewritten by a constitutional assembly after national elections. It replaced the revolu­tionary Constitution of 1945. (For analyses of the 1945 Constitution, see the sections on Political Culture and Political Institutions and Process.)

 

From the beginning, political life under the 1950 Constitution was bur­dened by four fundamental weaknesses. These included a fissiparous, divi­sive multiparty system that produced seven cabinets in as many years and a restive President Sukarno, the charismatic father of his country struggling to escape the narrowly confining bonds of his figurehead role. A third prob­lem was a hostile military, convinced of its vital role in winning indepen­dence, its right to run its internal affairs and to play a larger part in gov­erning the country, but internally divided and vulnerable to external interference under a constitution placing civilians over the armed forces. Finally, a weak and divided state bureaucracy was incapable of implement­ing government policy effectively. Free elections were held in 1955, for the first time in Indonesian history. Four parties-PNI (Partai Nasional Indonesia, or Indonesian National Party), PKI (Partai Komunis Indonesia, or Indonesian Communist party), Masyumi (Majelis Syuro Muslimin Indonesia, or Consultative Council of Indonesian Muslims), and NU (Nahdlatul Ulama, or the Awakening of the Islamic Scholars)-split nearly 80 percent of the vote roughly equally among themselves, further immobilizing parliament.

 

Parliamentary democracy was overthrown between 1957 and 1959 by a coalition of President Sukarno and the central army leadership. Their opponents were the parties in parliament and in the special constituent assembly called to write a new constitution, plus the military and civilian leaders of armed rebellions that had broken out in several regions. On July 5, 1959, Sukarno issued a decree restoring the Constitution of 1945. Parliamentarism was replaced by Guided Democracy, a label for the new regime chosen by Sukarno to underscore the shift from a legislative- to an executive-dominant system.

 

The two main parties in the new coalition, the army and Sukarno, had different and ultimately conflicting goals. Though each wanted more political power than the parliamentary system had given them, the army's chief interest as an institution was in creating and maintaining civil order within the archipelago. Sukarno saw himself as a revolutionary with an unfinished agenda that included the liberation of West h-ian (as Papua was then called), the one colonial territory that the Dutch had not given up in 1949. He also wanted to carve out an international role for his country as a leader of the newly emerging forces, a term he used for the ex-colonial and Communist states combined, in opposition to the old established forces of the west.

 

Sukarno's goals, his desire for an independent power base, and his vaguely radical world view led him in the early 1960s to court support from the Indonesian Communist party, whose bitter enemy he had been during the independence revolution. Guided Democracy became a political balancing act, with Sukarno as the high-wire artist leaning left toward the Communists or right toward the army, depending upon the issue and his own power needs of the moment. From about 1963 on, most army officers believed that he was leaning consistently left and that the country was in danger of falling into the hands of the Communists. The tension was heightened by the president's worsening health and by a neglected and declining economy no longer capable of meeting the needs either of the official class or of the people as a whole.

 

The political crisis came to a head in the early morning of October 1, 1965, when six senior army generals were taken from their beds and assassinated. This event was the first in a chain that led by 1967 to the ouster of Sukarno and his replacement by Suharto, an army major-general who had been in command of strategic troops in Jakarta on October 1. Ex President Sukarno died while under house arrest in 1970. The military authoritarian regime established by Suharto, called the New Order, lasted until 1999, far longer than had either its parliamentary or Guided democracy predecessors.

 

The murdered generals were the victims of a conspiracy apparently or­ganized by members of President Sukarno's palace guard, an army unit, to­gether with leaders and members of the Communist party. I say "appar­ently" because nearly 40 years after the event this remains a controversial subject. The New Order government stated flatly that the Communists were fully responsible. Some foreign scholars believe that it was essentially an in­ternal army affair, which a few Communist leaders were duped into joining. Questions also have been raised about the involvement of Sukarno and Suharto. Did either have foreknowledge but failed to act to stop the assas­sinations? Was either a more active participant, perhaps even the leader of the conspirators? (The best analysis of these various interpretations is in Crouch 1988.) The limited available evidence is that Suharto was not one of the plotters and had no foreknowledge of their plans.

Under Suharto's leadership, the New Order was both admired and re­viled at home and abroad. It was admired for the success of its economic de­velopment policies, which raised Indonesia in little more than two decades from a low- to a middle-income country. It was reviled for its frequent resort to armed force, beginning with the massacre of between one hundred thou­sand and half a million Communists and fellow travelers between 1965 and 1967. In subsequent years Communists, political Muslims, and pro-democ­racy students were frequent targets of repression. Carefully orchestrated parliamentary elections'were held roughly every five years from 1971 to 1997, followed in each case a few months later by the indirect election of the president and vice-president by the People's Consultative Assembly, a kind of super-Parliament consisting of the members of Parliament plus a large number of appointees. These democratic-appearing procedures were designed to disguise the authoritarian nature of the regime. Behind the mask Suharto held virtually all of the reins of power, starting with the armed forces. The judiciary was subservient to the president, political parties and other mass organizations were brought under state control or banned, and the press was closely watched and frequently sanctioned.

The New Order was internationally notorious for its 1975 invasion of East Timor, a former Portuguese colony, which it continued to occupy in defiance of United Nations resolutions until 1999. Outside observers esti­mated that as many as 200,000 Timorese, a third of the 1975 population, lost their lives as a result of the war with Indonesia (Taylor, 1991, p. ix). In August 1999, under President Suharto's successor, B. J. Habibie, East Timorese voted overwhelmingly in a U.N.-supervised election in favor of in­dependence. Angry pro-Indonesian militia and Indonesian troops then put much of the small country's infrastructure to the torch. More than 1,000 Timorese are reported to have been killed. Nearly 200,000 fled or were pushed across the border into Indonesian West Timor. U.N. troops were called in to restore order, and the country was placed under temporary U.N. administration until it is able to govern itself.

 

The murdered generals were the victims of a conspiracy apparently or­ganized by members of President Sukarno's palace guard, an army unit, to­gether with leaders and members of the Communist party. I say "appar­ently" because nearly 40 years after the event this remains a controversial subject. The New Order government stated flatly that the Communists were fully responsible. Some foreign scholars believe that it was essentially an in­ternal army affair, which a few Communist leaders were duped into joining. Questions also have been raised about the involvement of Sukarno and Suharto. Did either have foreknowledge but failed to act to stop the assas­sinations? Was either a more active participant, perhaps even the leader of the conspirators? (The best analysis of these various interpretations is in Crouch 1988.) The limited available evidence is that Suharto was not one of the plotters and had no foreknowledge of their plans.

 

Under Suharto's leadership, the New Order was both admired and re­viled at home and abroad. It was admired for the success of its economic de­velopment policies, which raised Indonesia in little more than two decades from a low- to a middle-income country. It was reviled for its frequent resort to armed force, beginning with the massacre of between one hundred thou­sand and half a million Communists and fellow travelers between 1965 and 1967. In subsequent years Communists, political Muslims, and pro-democ­racy students were frequent targets of repression. Carefully orchestrated parliamentary elections were held roughly every five years from 1971 to 1997, followed in each case a few months later by the indirect election of the president and vice-president by the People's Consultative Assembly, a kind of super-Parliament consisting of the members of Parliament plus a large number of appointees. These democratic-appearing procedures were designed to disguise the authoritarian nature of the regime. Behind the mask Suharto held virtually all of the reins of power, starting with the armed forces. The judiciary was subservient to the president, political parties and other mass organizations were brought under state control or banned, and the press was closely watched and frequently sanctioned.

 

The New Order was internationally notorious for its 1975 invasion of East Timor, a former Portuguese colony, which it continued to occupy in defiance of United Nations resolutions until 1999. Outside observers esti­mated that as many as 200,000 Timorese, a third of the 1975 population, lost their lives as a result of the war with Indonesia (Taylor, 1991, p. ix). In August 1999, under President Suharto's successor, B. J. Habibie, East Timorese voted overwhelmingly in a U.N.-supervised election in favor of in­dependence. Angry pro-Indonesian militia and Indonesian troops then put much of the small country's infrastructure to the torch. More than 1,000 Timorese are reported to have been killed. Nearly 200,000 fled or were pushed across the border into Indonesian West Timor. U.N. troops were called in to restore order, and the country was placed under temporary U.N. administration until it is able to govern itself.

The sections "Political Institutions and Process" and `The State and the Economy" will offer an analysis of New Order governance that tries to provide a coherent account of both sides of this Janus-faced regime.

 

President Suharto stepped down on May 21, 1998, in the wake of massive demonstrations and riots provoked, ironically, by his inability to resolve the most serious economic crisis that Indonesia had faced since 1965-1966, when he was brought to power in part by economic crisis. The 1997-1998 crisis swept through all of Southeast and East Asia, but the Indonesian economy was one of the worst hit. In a matter of a few months most large companies were bankrupt and the banking system had collapsed. Perhaps the most salient political difference was that in 1965 Suharto was 44 years old, a fresh face who offered hope to his countrymen, while in 1997 he was 76, a tired leader who had governed his country for 32 years and whom many Indonesians thought had stayed in office too long.

 

Suharto was replaced, as prescribed in the 1945 Constitution, by his vice-president, B. J. Habibie, a German-trained aeronautical engineer who had for decades been considered one of Suharto's most faithful ministers before being appointed vice-president in March, 1998. Habibie, in a bid to be considered a legitimate president, announced that a democratic election for Parliament, provincial, and district/municipality legislatures would be held within a year, that political parties and other organizations were free to form, and that the media would not be censored or banned. The election, the first genuinely free election since 1955, was held on June 7, 1999. Forty-eight parties competed, with 21 winning at least one of the 462 contested seats.

 

The five largest parties, with 85 percent of the vote, were PDI-P (Partai Demokrasi Indonesia-Perjuangan, Indonesian Democracy Party-Struggle), Partai Golkar (Partai Golongan Kaiya, Functional Groups Party), PKB (Partai Kebangkitan Bangsa, National Awakening Party), PPP (Partai Persatuan Pembangunan, Development Unity Party), and PAN (Partai Amanat National, National Mandate Party). Two other parties with significant support were PBB (Partai Bulan Bintang Star and Moon Party) and PK (Partai Keadilan, Justice Party). Although the names were different, the new parties were in most cases a continuation of the successful parties of the 1955 election.

 

Indonesia's new presidential democracy may be dated from the June 1999 parliamentary election or from the indirect election in October of the same year by the People's Consultative Assembly (now consisting mostly of elected members) of a new president and vice-president. After rejecting President Habibie's formal account of his stewardship, the Assembly chose Abdurrahman Wahid, the candidate of PKB, as president and Megawati Sukarnoputri, leader of PDI-P and eldest child of the late President Sukarno, as vice-president. Just 20 months later, in July 2001, the Assembly dismissed Abdurrahman from office. Abdurrahman had been accused in early 2000 of corruption for taking money from a state agency and from the sultan of neighboring Brunei. He was ultimately dismissed, however, for challenging the constitutionality of the Assembly's presidential dismissal process and for attempting to mobilize the armed forces against the Assembly (armed forces leaders considered his order unlawful and refused it). He was succeeded automatically by Megawati. The Assembly then elected Hamzah Haz, chair of PPP, as the new vice-president.

 

Analyses of Indonesia's new presidential democracy are offered in the sections "Political Institutions and Process" and "The State and the Economy."

 

In what follows, students may want to remember that Indonesia has been governed since independence by four distinct regime types-two democratic and two authoritarian. These are, using labels commonly applied to them by participants and scholars:

 

•           Parliamentary democracy (1950-1957)

•           Guided Democracy (1959-1965)

•           The New Order (1966-1999)

•           Presidential democracy (1999-present)

 

Parliamentary democracy, to summarize the discussion above, was a genuinely democratic regime (that is, its leaders were chosen in free elections, held in 1955), as is today's presidential democracy (whose first free elections were held in 1999). Guided Democracy, despite its name, was an authoritarian regime. It was headed by Indonesia's first president, Sukarno, who established it by decree with the collaboration and protection of the armed forces. The New Order was also an authoritarian regime, headed by the country's second president, Suharto, a general whose primary power base was the army.