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Indonesia THE NEW ORDER UNDER SUHARTO
The transition from Sukarno's Guided Democracy to
Suharto's New
Order reflected a realignment of the country's political
forces.
The left had been bloodied and driven from the political
stage, and
Suharto was determined to ensure that the PKI would never
reemerge
as a challenge to his authority. Powerful new intelligence
bodies
were established in the wake of the coup: the Operational
Command
for the Restoration of Security and Order (Kopkamtib) and
the State
Intelligence Coordination Agency (Bakin). The PKI had been
crushed
on the leadership and cadre levels, but an underground
movement
remained in the villages of parts of Java that was
methodically and
ruthlessly uprooted by the end of 1968. Around 200,000
persons were
detained by the military after the coup: these were
divided into
three categories depending on their involvement. The most
active,
Group A, those "directly involved" in the revolt, were
sentenced by
military courts to death or long terms in prison; Group B,
less
actively involved, were in many cases sent to prison
colonies, such
on Buru Island in the Malukus, where they remained under
detention,
in some cases until 1980; Group C detainees, mostly
members of the
PKI peasant organization, were generally released from
custody. (As
late as 1990, four persons were executed for involvement
in the
coup. Although the delay was explained as due to the
length of the
judicial appeals process, many observers believed that
Suharto
wanted to show that the passage of years had not softened
his
attitude toward communism.)
Communists aside, Suharto generally dealt with
opposition or
potential opposition with a blend of cooptation and
nonlethal
repression. According to political scientist Harold A.
Crouch,
Suharto's operating principle was the old Javanese dictum
of
alon alon asal kelakon, or "slow but sure." Thus,
he
gradually asserted control over ABRI, weeding out
pro-Sukarno
officers and replacing them with men on whom he could
depend. The
army was placed in a superior position in relation to the
other
services in terms of budgets, personnel, and equipment.
Nasution,
Indonesia's most senior general, was gently pushed aside
after he
left the post of minister of defense and security to
become
chairman of the DPR in early 1966. Although he later
retired from
public life, Nasution remained a potential rival to
Suharto
although he never publicly spoke out or exploited his
favorable
popular image.
Like Sukarno's Guided Democracy, the New Order under
Suharto
was authoritarian. There was no return to the relatively
unfettered
party politics of the 1950-57 period. In the decades after
1966,
Suharto's regime evolved into a steeply hierarchical
affair,
characterized by tight centralized control and long-term
personal
rule. At the top of the hierarchy was Suharto himself,
making
important policy decisions and carefully balancing
competing
interests in a society that was, despite strong
centralized rule,
still extremely diverse. Arrayed below him was a
bureaucratic state
in which ABRI played the central role. Formally, the armed
forces'
place in society was defined in terms of the concept of
dwifungsi. Unlike other regimes in Southeast Asia,
such as
Thailand or Burma, where military regimes promised an
eventual (if
long-postponed) transition to civilian rule, the
military's dual
political-social function was considered to be a permanent
feature
of Indonesian nationhood. Its personnel played a pivotal
role not
only in the highest ranks of the government and civil
service but
also on the regional and local levels, where they limited
the power
of civilian officials. The armed forces also played a
disproportionate role in the national economy through
militarymanaged enterprises or those with substantial military
interests.
Although opposition movements and popular unrest were
not
entirely eliminated, Suharto's regime was extraordinarily
stable
compared with its predecessor. His success in governing
the world's
fourth most populous and, after India, ethnically most
diverse
nation is attributable to two factors: the military's
absolute or
near-absolute loyalty to the regime and the military's
extensive
political and administrative powers. In the mid-1980s,
approximately 85 percent of senior officers were Javanese
(although
the percentage was declining). Suharto wisely averted a
problem of
many military regimes: the monopolization of the higher
ranks by
senior military officers who frustrate the aspirations of
their
juniors. In 1985 he ordered an extensive reorganization of
the
officer corps in which the Generation of 1945, who had
taken part
in the National Revolution, was largely retired, the
younger
generation promoted into command positions, and an
extensive
reorganization accomplished in order to promote efficiency
(see Leadership Transition
, ch. 5).
Other factors in stability include the establishment of
a large
number of corporatist-style organizations to link social
groups in
a subordinate relationship with the regime. These included
organizations of a social, class, religious, and
professional
nature. Rather than imposing cultural and ideological
homogeneity--
a virtually impossible task given the society's
diversity--Suharto
revived the Sukarno-era concept of Pancasila. Suharto's
approach to
political conflict did not reject the use of coercion but
supplemented it with a rhetoric of "consultation and
consensus,"
which, like Pancasila, had its roots in the Sukarno and
Japanese
eras.
Data as of November 1992
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