The Ironies of Instability in Indonesia

Indonesia seems perpetually condemned to “live in interesting times,” as the famous Chinese curse goes. The past decade has seen the country attract global notoriety as a land of recurrent economic shocks, ethnic confl icts, terrorist bombings, separatist rebellions, and natural catastrophes. Political authorities have appeared too corrupt and inept to respond effectively. Thus, when Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY), a retired general, scored a landslide victory in Indonesia’s fi rst-ever direct presidential election in September 2004, the political rise of a military man was widely portrayed as a small blow for stability in a highly unstable nation. This essay ventures the argument that—at least at the level of elite politics—precisely the opposite is true. The recent behavior of Indonesia’s parties, parliaments, and presidents reveals that elite politics has been characterized by too much stability rather than too little. This is because the elite fi gures who belatedly connived in the toppling of former presidents Suharto in 1998 and Habibie in 1999 managed thereafter to construct something of a political cartel (Slater 2004). Like a cartel of private companies, this cartel of political elites has served to protect its leading members from outside competition. Indonesia’s pre-eminent political fi gures have remained practically irremovable through the electoral process, even though elections themselves have been commendably free and fair. Unafraid of being removed from power, political leaders have faced little impetus to govern. From this perspective, the government has failed to deal with Indonesia’s ongoing social and economic crises not because political elites could not get their act together, but because they could. That elite stability has fostered Indonesia’s festering socio-economic instability is the fi rst irony I explore here. The second is that the election of a much stronger individual fi gure as president has ironically destabilized, not stabilized,