Page 82 - SCANDAL AND DEMOCRACY

Chapter Four

Reformasi

Press freedom is a line in the sand.
—Bambang Harymurti, editor in chief of Tempo ,
“Media: Pressing for Their Freedom”

On May 21, 1998, facing rising public anger and international pressure, Presi-
dent Suharto resigned and ceded power to his vice president, B. J. Habibie. Even as
Indonesia reeled from riots and arson that left over 1,200 dead, euphoria quickly
spread. With the start of this transition, known as reformasi , for much of the
country—from the upper classes to the unemployed—everything suddenly seemed
possible. Labor unions and nongovernmental organizations could organize openly.
The hundreds of political prisoners jailed under the New Order had new hope of
freedom. Public denunciations of corruption, collusion, and nepotism signaled
new resolve to curb these practices that were undermining both good governance
and economic progress. With this resolve came hopes for economic recovery and
new opportunities. For those denied due process under Suharto, his removal offered
possible legal redress. Even those living in provinces torn by separatism had cause
for optimism as the curtain of silence shrouding the regime’s human rights viola-
tions began to lift.
The open climate also emboldened people to test the government’s new tolerance
for critical speech in myriad settings, but most visibly in the news and entertain-
ment media. Correspondingly, among the many reforms needed after three decades of
authoritarianism, freedom of speech was an immediate focus for reformasi leaders and
supporters, who feared a sudden reversal of this liberalization and other gains.
At the start of any democratic transition, reformers must confront forces favor-
ing reversal, whether simple inertia or reactionary resistance. In its first year, Indo-
nesia’s democratization was beset by conservative opposition in multiple forms.
Initial exuberance overcame much of this pressure for reversal, and in the rush to
get on the right side of history, even Suharto’s former allies were declaring them-
selves “pro- reformasi .”
Among the broader coalition that had backed the New Order, however, members
of the once-tethered media, now freed from authoritarian controls and bolstered by
an expanding civil society, were among the only institutional actors to resist democra-
tization’s reversal over both the short and long term. This inclination, though uneven
across outlets, was evident throughout the transition’s first year in two distinct forms:
mobilization in the press community to defend and institutionalize new freedoms;
and the exercise of these freedoms to expand the boundaries of permissible speech,
impose transparency on the reform process, and further the contestation necessary to
the democratic circulation of power.