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| Southeast Asia |
| Leftists barred from participating in Indonesian elections |
| 2004-03-26 |
| Soldiers, religious leaders, businessmen and heirs to political dynasties are among major candidates running in Indonesian elections, but one key democratic element is missing: the left. As the world's biggest Muslim country gears up for April 5 parliamentary elections--its second free ballot since the fall of ex-dictator Suharto in 1998--the political elite is refusing to abandon the strongman's ban on the communist party and other left-wing groups. ``There is no place for ideological conflict in Indonesia,'' declared Justice Minister Yusril Mahendra, who heads the Islam-based Crescent Star Party. ``Communism is not relevant to our situation here.'' The prohibition was introduced by Gen. Suharto in 1966 when he seized power from independent Indonesia's first president Sukarno after accusing him of involvement in an alleged communist coup attempt. At the time, the military was engaged in a wholesale slaughter of leftists, trade unionists and other political opponents of the dictatorship. At least 500,000 people died and the party was annihilated. The continuing prohibition, which in practice extends to all left-wing parties and trade unions, highlights the lingering influence of groups that formed the dictatorship's main pillars _ like the Golkar Party and the military. ``It shows how entrenched their power and interests still are,'' said Dede Oetomo, a professor at Airlangga University in Surabaya. The lack of left-wing parties also has caused many Indonesians frustrated by endemic corruption and dramatic contrasts in living standards to flock to religious extremists--including militant groups like the al-Qaida-linked Jemaah Islamiyah network. In fact, the main hotspots of religious radicalism on the sprawling archipelago of 210 million people, including the city of Solo in central Java, were Communist Party strongholds before the massacres of the mid-60s. The killing of up to 40,000 of Indonesia's 90,000 schoolteachers as part of those purges left an education vacuum that was quickly filled by radicalized Islamic schools and preachers. At the time, anti-communist fervor in the United States was at its height, and Washington supplied Indonesian generals with thousands of names of known leftists and trade unionists. Most were arrested and executed by troops, historians say. All this changed in the wake of Suharto's overthrow six years ago, when communist books and T-shirts began appearing throughout the former Dutch colony. Indonesia's first freely elected president Abdurrahman Wahid appealed to the legislature to rescind the ban on communism, describing it as antidemocratic. But a backlash from Muslim radicals immediately followed, supported by Golkar and the military. Frightened by threats of violence from army-backed militia gangs, stores quietly withdrew their books on Marxism-Leninism. Last year, Wahid's successor President Megawati Sukarnoputri, Sukarno's daughter, again sought to legalize the party, but the country's highest legislative body rejected the proposal because communists were atheists and did not subscribe to Indonesia's state doctrine, which mandates belief in God. ``We must restore political rights to former PKI (communist party) members and their families, but there is no need to legalize the party itself,'' Amien Rais, the legislature's speaker, told The Associated Press. Political analysts say that communism as an ideology does not enjoy a significant following in today's Indonesia, and it is difficult to gauge the extent of voter support that a secular, left-wing party would garner. Still, the political choices remain limited to religious, nationalist and conservative parties. No left-wing groups are on the ballot after the national electoral commission barred the tiny, pro-socialist People's Democratic Party from fielding candidates. ``They are preventing people from having their choice, and until this is changed you cannot say Indonesia is a democratic country,'' said Martin Aleida, a retired journalist who spent a year in jail during the dictatorship. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #1 [Off-topic or abusive comments deleted] |
| Posted by: Anonymous TROLL 2004-03-26 8:58:49 PM |