Page 105 - SCANDAL AND DEMOCRACY

90 Chapter 5

kin and cronies began to turn against his regime. Now the same stations, though
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conveying condolences over the latest casualties, persevered in supporting both the
students and the current regime, using variations of the dominant message celebrat-
ing students’ sacrifice while casting them as victims of larger forces. In one iteration,
students were represented as well-meaning but overwhelmed by “brutal” stone-
throwing crowds and “uncontrollable masses” who provoked the crackdowns that
claimed student lives. In the darkest iteration, a shadowy third party was said to be
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manipulating the students and the masses in an effort, as President Habibie said, to
“topple a legitimate government.”
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This coverage was not uniform. While TVRI and RCTI were fairly consistent in
sympathizing with security forces and parliamentarians, Indosiar, SCTV and ANteve
aired more critical content favoring the protesters’ perspective. On November 13,
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ANteve aired arguably the most damning portrayal of the assembly—a video montage
showing legislators dozing off and chatting on their cellphones inside parliament while
decrees were being passed and students were dying outside. Yet even these stations
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reported that security forces had been “forced to fire shots” to disperse thousands of
unruly students. By evening, all stations used the dual theme of a military cornered by
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students and growing crowds who were, in turn, being exploited by some third party.
Constructing the students as victims of larger forces undercut their leadership in
rejecting the session and their status as the voice of the reform movement. Newscasts
further damaged students’ credibility through a fourth and final shift in the narrative:
the claim that parliament was in fact heeding their demands, which made the session
and its resolutions “legitimate.” A key voice affirming these points, ironically, was
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Amien Rais—one of the Ciganjur Four, but also reliably pliant in concurring with tele-
vision interviewers, particularly those from RCTI and TVRI. On the session’s bloodi-
est day, TVRI announced that Rais had declared that the session’s results reflected the
people’s aspirations, then warned students that attempts to repeat the events of the
previous May would likely lead to a military takeover, “to the collapse of everything
we have been building.”
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That same night, RCTI cohosts Adolf Kusuma and Desi Anwar elicited more com-
mentary from Rais in which he discredited the ongoing demonstrations, prompting
him first to describe a “mass hysteria that . . . produces a dissatisfaction, a feeling
of disappointment, . . . maybe also a mass sadness now . . . exploding here in the
capitol.” When Kusuma remarked that “earlier provocation actually coming from
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the people” might have compelled the military to take “a repressive attitude,” Rais
noted that blame also lay with the military-recruited civilian militia and their “orga-
nizers,” but ended by criticizing the students. “I think people like this don’t have . . .
sympathy towards the military,” he said. “[The armed forces] also are children of this
nation,” and if they suddenly lost all their seats, “they would . . . be angry because
they would feel humiliated [literally, “knocked down”].” Viewers were left with a
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message validating indignation at the students’ persistence, particularly their demand
for the elimination of military seats.
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Opinions of the other Ciganjur Four were noticeably absent from these inter-
views, as were those of the students, who received little airtime to defend their con-
tinued mobilization. In one of the few opportunities students had, their logic became
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clearer. Responding to an SCTV reporter’s claim that the demand for elimination of
military seats from parliament “has already been accommodated in an MPR decree,” a
student countered, “In reality, [the military’s] presence as a percentage of parliament
just increased from 7.5% to 7.68%.” This, along with other reasons for rejecting
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