Page 129 - SCANDAL AND DEMOCRACY

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indication that Golkar would accept defeat in an electoral contest and relinquish its
long control of the executive. It signaled, moreover, a real restraint on the ruling
party’s capacity for maneuver—a counterforce created by a more independent media,
a vocal public, and empowered elements in opposition parties.

Habibie’s Final Bid
None of these events eliminated President Habibie from the race, much less assured
an opposition party’s win. Megawati and her cadres still lacked the will and the skills
to build coalitions with other parties, and without such support, neither PDIP nor any
other party would be able to form a government. This situation left the door open for
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rivals, including Golkar, to strengthen their own positions via coalition building.
Once the new parliament convened to elect Indonesia’s next president on October 1,
just four days after Habibie’s announcement, other parties started horse-trading, and
PDIP’s vulnerability soon became clear. Within days, Megawati’s party lost two top
posts in a deal between Golkar and the Central Axis coalition of Muslim parties.
While Golkar threw its support behind the leader of the Central Axis, Amien Rais
(head of the National Mandate Party), winning him the powerful position of chair of
the parliament, his followers, in turn, helped Golkar’s Akbar Tanjung become Speaker
of the DPR.
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With these two damaging defeats showing PDIP’s weak position, Habibie, despite
all that had come before, remained the front-runner. But on October 14, before his
long-anticipated accountability speech to the MPR, much of the new assembly stayed
seated when he entered the hall, and some even booed—shows of disrespect incon-
ceivable in Suharto’s time. The speech that followed failed to win the assembly over.
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“As expected,” David Jenkins wrote, “speaker after speaker rose to assail the Presi-
dent, zeroing in on the Suharto, East Timor and Bank Bali issues.”
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Simultaneously, public pressure on delegates—from media coverage and the cell-
phone-toting protesters who were following events via live broadcasts—was also
far more direct than any previous session. At least four times during the president’s
speech, Wimar Witoelar recounted, “Parliament members interrupted the proceed-
ings saying that they [had] just received cell phone calls that students were being
clobbered and Pak [Mr.] Wiranto can you please tell your guys to lay off.”
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While the country followed the deliberations on television and radio, delegates
found it hard to ignore the expectations that were building. “For the first time,” FEER
correspondents said, “national television [was] broadcast[ing] party factions’ sharp
criticism of a sitting president, as the cameras watched Habibie’s face for reaction.”
One Golkar legislator close to Habibie added, “It was shocking . . . but I think this is
really good for democracy.”
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As it grew clearer that Megawati might not get the presidency, Witoelar recalled,
“a lot of people . . . questioned how backroom politics could alienate the politics of the
streets.” This disconnect “wouldn’t have been on the public’s mind if the media were
not there to follow every step of the debates in the MPR.” He compared the imme-
diacy of this feedback to the insulated MPR session the previous November “when
people were actually getting killed, and it was only Wiranto who I knew was talking
on his handphone to his snipers up in the Hilton apartments.” During the “Black Fri-
day” crackdown that had followed, the MPR session had been “totally secluded from
the outside.” In this 1999 general session, by contrast, the two “melted” together.
“The catalyst” for this change, said Witoelar, “is again [broadcast] media.”
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