Page 80 - SCANDAL AND DEMOCRACY

Suharto’s Fall 65

that eventually felled the regime. As Edward Aspinall argues, however, this nascent

opposition lacked organization and offered “no credible democratic alternative” to the
collapsing regime, making it diffi cult to explain how the subsequent democratic tran-
sition gained footing and proved resilient against forces of reversal. The students who
led the movement, for their part, had developed only a nebulous critique of the regime
and presented a relatively slender agenda for a post-Suharto transition.
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While many elements are relevant to understanding the transition’s trajectory,
the 1994 newsweekly bans and the media reform movement they set in motion were
key. The bans blocked news outlets from imposing transparency, thereby leaving
the country vulnerable to the shock of the Asian economic crisis that undermined
Suharto’s legitimacy. Protests they sparked unleashed new defiance, knitting bud-
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ding activist groups into multiplying alliances and producing a political synergy that
was mediated and inspired by dissident journalism. Through these alliances, the new
movement, while breaking ground for the eventual reformasi revolution, served as an
organizational webbing that held a loose community of media activists, nongovern-
mental organizations, and political oppositionists in resistance to a regime that tried
to isolate and close down all such activities. During the seemingly quiescent years
from 1994 to 1997, moreover, the students who led the anti-Suharto charge were
also influenced by the drama of the bans. One of their widely shared priorities was
the unshackling of public speech—in the media, on the streets, and within college
campuses.
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As they advance to new phases, movements, which are by nature ephemeral,
can be both principled and pragmatic in maintaining coherence and commitment.
By articulating a critique and a common agenda for change, the dissident journalists’
movement in Indonesia created a community with a shared commitment to abstract
principles and concrete policy reforms—above all, freedom of speech. In a period when
demands were essentially negative, expressing opposition to the regime, repressive
laws, and a politicized military, one of the few positive programs for change that could
guide reform in the postauthoritarian era was a broad faith in transparency, fairness,
and freedom of speech as correctives for the many problems blamed on the Suharto
regime. Though the student-led reformasi movement was inherently short-lived, a
commitment to institutionalizing freedom of speech and effecting electoral reform
endured long after Suharto’s fall, making both goals defining issues of the transition.