Re: (1) AOL Bias
(2) Success of Democracy in Indonesia
Still at Tahoe where I have to rely on a slow dial-up connection, in my case AOL. Anyway, I had for some time noticed a "left " bias in the news stories that AOL presents to its subscribers. AOL doesn't create any stories; it selects which stories to show from all of the major news organizations: AP, Rueters, Wash.Post,etc. During the GOP convention the bias was so blatant that I spent some time and effort trying to register a protest. I got a royal runaround... but that's another story.
I got around to reading yesterdays Wall Street Journal this morning and immediately noticed this article on the apparent success of democracy in Indonesia. (See below) The story can be viewed as having a "political" slant in that many - such as my friend Ed - think we are 'pushing on a string' in trying to bring democracy to Iraq: it's alien to their culture, they don't want it, etc.
Anyway, AOL will give you every story from Friday's Journal EXCEPT the one that follows:
Indonesian Model
In Vast Archipelago,
Unlikely Force Gains
Grip: Democracy
Muslim Nation Is Expected
To Unseat Leader in Runoff;
Undeterred by Bombings
Convicting a Local Legislature
By TIMOTHY MAPES
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
September 17, 2004; Page A1
PADANG, Indonesia -- When Saldi Isra, a college professor in West Sumatra, saw that one of his provincial representatives had traded in his ratty old motorcycle for a flashy new sports car, he decided enough was enough.
His friends in business had complained for months about Indonesia's push, starting in 1999, to hand sweeping new powers to local governments. They worried it had touched off an orgy of bribe-taking among local officials. So Mr. Saldi and a dozen friends looked at the province's 2002 budget and discovered it included hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments to lawmakers with no apparent benefit to citizens.
Students at Mr. Saldi's university quickly joined his protests. Local newspapers ran dozens of news and opinion articles about the controversy. After a yearlong delay, a prosecutor finally filed criminal charges. This May, a court convicted 43 representatives -- nearly the entire provincial legislature -- for misusing state funds. They were sentenced to two years in jail.
"It was a miracle," says Mr. Saldi, a slight 36-year-old, who teaches constitutional law. "I was never certain that the judge and prosecutors were going to take our case seriously." The convicted legislators, most of whom remain free as they appeal, insist they have done nothing wrong and claim they are victims of a political conspiracy.
The case is only one example of how citizens of the world's most-populous Islamic nation are exercising their democratic rights like never before. Just six years after the bloody collapse of President Suharto's 32-year authoritarian regime, thousands of citizens groups have sprung up across the archipelago, fighting for everything from environmental protection to human rights, and challenging Indonesia's tradition of government by a tiny elite. They have been aided by the blossoming of a free and aggressive local media after decades of suppression under Mr. Suharto.
To the Polls
This surge in civic activism is expected to find its ultimate expression next week when voters go to the polls. There they are widely expected to do something rare in the Muslim world and unprecedented in Indonesia: boot their leader out of office in a direct election. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a former security minister, seems nearly certain to unseat incumbent Megawati Sukarnoputri in their two-way runoff.
THE ARCHIPELAGO ADVANCES
Major steps in Indonesia's march to democracy:
• May 21, 1998: A severe economic crisis and violent pro-democracy protests force authoritarian President Suharto to resign after 32 years in power. Vice President B.J. Habibie is appointed successor, promising sweeping democratic reforms.
• June 7, 1999: Most open and fair legislative elections in 44 years. Party led by opposition leader Megawati Sukarnoputri wins most seats, but fails to get majority in Parliament.
• Oct. 20: Muslim leader Abdurrahman Wahid wins presidency, defeating Megawati in a vote in the People's Consultative Assembly, Indonesia's highest legislative body.
• July 23, 2001: Assembly impeaches Wahid over allegations of corruption and incompetence. Megawati, his deputy, becomes president.
• April 5, 2004: Indonesia conducts biggest one-day election in history, choosing members for national, provincial and local legislatures. Support for Megawati's party falls sharply; voter surveys show dissatisfaction with lack of progress during her three-year administration.
• July 5: Former security minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono wins first round of direct presidential election but fails to get majority support. Megawati finishes second to qualify for Sept. 20 runoff.
"Indonesia is today the most democratic country in Asia, including Japan," says Tim Meisburger, director for democratization and election programs for the San Francisco-based Asia Foundation in Jakarta. "There's been a remarkable democratic transition in Indonesia over the past few years, and it has gone almost completely unnoticed outside the country."
While Indonesia's decentralization drive initially unleashed a wave of corruption, it also held the seeds for democratic reform. Undertaken to frustrate the ability of another dictator to take power, decentralization has given citizens the ability to make a difference and fight corruption in their local governments. Now, it's having an impact on the national stage, as voters hand stinging defeats to sitting officials and shrug off the directions of community leaders to make their own decisions about candidates.
In April, the country held what independent observers called the world's largest and most complex one-day election ever. (India, the world's largest democracy, holds its elections over several weeks.) Some 155 million registered voters selected representatives to their local, regional and national parliaments from a slate of 24 parties and 7,700 total candidates. Ms. Megawati's political party was hurt badly by widespread dissatisfaction over her failure to curb corruption and improve the economy. It lost its status as the largest party in parliament.
In July, Indonesia held the first round of the presidential election -- the first in which Indonesia's president will be chosen directly by the people instead of members of parliament.
Voter participation in these elections has averaged above 80%, compared with around 50% in the U.S. Indonesia's two largest Islamic organizations have been enthusiastic participants, helping to organize a network of more than 100,000 people to serve as election monitors around the country.
Mr. Yudhoyono took a huge lead over his rivals -- including Ms. Megawati -- in the initial round of voting by promising to work harder than the aloof incumbent to provide jobs and security to citizens. A former general, Mr. Yudhoyono also made fighting corruption, which has flourished during Ms. Megawati's administration, a central part of his campaign. He broke new ground by snubbing Indonesia's largest political parties and presenting himself as an independent who is untainted by politics as usual.
The democratic transition hasn't been slowed by a series of terrorist bombings over the past few years. Those attacks, including one last week that killed nine Indonesians outside the Australian Embassy in Jakarta, have attracted attention in the West but have been largely shrugged off by Indonesians themselves. Nor have Indonesians been paralyzed by the country's long list of other problems, including growing unemployment, declining foreign investment and separatist insurgencies in outlying parts of the nation.
Secular Interests
Both Mr. Yudhoyono's rise and Mr. Saldi's spreading anticorruption crusade show how Indonesian voters are more interested in secular issues like jobs, security and fighting corruption than the Islamic theocracy called for by Indonesia's small but vocal minority of Muslim conservatives. While Mr. Yudhoyono and Mr. Saldi's campaigns have developed real followings among the people, parties calling for Islamic law to be incorporated into Indonesia's constitution have fallen flat in two rounds of elections so far this year.
"It's extremely impressive that this emerging democracy has been able to develop an Indonesian-style election system that to date has worked in a free, fair and extremely peaceful fashion," says Ralph Boyce, the U.S. ambassador to Jakarta. "It's an excellent example that democracy and Islam are not incompatible."
For Mr. Saldi and his friends -- who call themselves the Forum of Concerned Citizens of West Sumatra -- the collapse of the Suharto regime created an opportunity for the people of Padang to participate in their government for the first time.
Mr. Suharto, a former general, seized power with the backing of the U.S. during the anticommunist struggles in Southeast Asia in the 1960s. He presided over an administration in which political and economic power was centralized in the capital of Jakarta and often wielded by a tight circle of close friends and family who used their positions to enrich themselves.
Mr. Suharto's regime fell in 1998, after a financial crisis brought the economy to the brink of collapse. But the country's first free election in a generation -- held in 1999 -- proved to be a major disappointment for Mr. Saldi's friends in Indonesia's reform movement.
Few of the activists who had helped to overthrow the Suharto regime were chosen to serve in the provincial or local parliaments in West Sumatra. Worse, moves to transfer power to the regions had created huge problems for local businesses. Nearly every official was now demanding payments, often for approvals and licenses that were never needed before.
"We were fed up with what was happening," recalls Ruzmazar Ruzuar, who operates gasoline stations and an investment company in Padang. "We can't afford these high costs any more -- they're destroying our competitiveness."
While bribe-taking was the group's main complaint, members quickly realized that it would be difficult for their small band of private citizens to assemble the kind of facts that a prosecutor needs to file charges. So the group decided to change tack and focus on the province's publicly available budget for 2002.
It wasn't hard to find problems. Payments earmarked for lawmakers totaled more than all the spending planned for state development projects. Among the dubious items were about $600,000 in payments to representatives for housing, transport, insurance and something called "people's funds."
"That's the people's money," says Charles Simabura, a law student at Padang's Andalas University who helped organize demonstrations. "If expenses for representatives are larger than for development of the whole region, it's very unfair."
Masfar Rasrid, the deputy chairman of the West Sumatra legislature, insists that all the allowances for lawmakers were legal. "I'm confident we have never committed any corrupt acts," he says. He says the case against himself and his colleagues is "an act of political engineering" by people who oppose increased authority for his legislature. Mr. Masfar adds that he believes he and his colleagues will be exonerated by a pending appeal.
The protests against the budget began with just a few dozen students in early 2002. They swelled into the thousands within months after lawmakers refused to revise their budget plans. Mr. Simabura and several of his peers camped for 10 days in the legislature's parking lot. They collected signatures for a 30-yard-long petition calling for the spending plans to be changed. Some draped a banner reading "Den of Thieves" from the sharply pointed roof of the statehouse.
Big Break
Meanwhile, Mr. Saldi and his colleagues prepared a dossier for prosecutors about the budget and how it violated the law. Their big break came when one member of the local parliament, frustrated by his colleagues' reluctance to change the budget of the house, decided to give evidence to the prosecutors.
Initially, the local prosecutor was reluctant to follow up on Mr. Saldi's claims because he had never seen a similar case. Pressing charges against politically powerful lawmakers also posed a huge risk for his career. But after the protests mounted, he decided to proceed.
"It is not easy to face them," says Muchtar Arifin, the chief prosecutor of West Sumatra. "The people are critical: Their push was very important in this case."
Indeed, Mr. Arifin's prosecutors cited the popular demonstrations in court as evidence to show that the people felt the budget violated their "sense of justice," as well as laws regulating the activities of legislators.
Repercussions from the guilty verdicts are still being felt across the country. Mr. Arifin's office alone is pursuing seven other cases involving local governments in West Sumatra, including the city council of Padang. Prosecutors in several other parts of Indonesia are pursuing similar cases against provincial and local lawmakers.
For Mr. Saldi and his friends, the anticorruption drive is just the start of a long campaign to improve the effectiveness of Indonesia's government. "We hope this case can send a signal to all in government that they cannot just do what they want with the people's money," he says. "They are no longer above the law."
--Rin Hindryati contributed to this article.
Write to Timothy Mapes at tim.mapes@wsj.com
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