Page 97 - SCANDAL AND DEMOCRACY

82 Chapter 4

scandal produced commercial success, collegial solidarity, and political protection.
Attorney General Ghalib’s reputation suffered a serious blow, magnified by later reve-
lations by Indonesia Corruption Watch that he had accepted Rp9.2 billion ($1 million)
in bribes from business tycoons under investigation by his office. In June, Ghalib
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was suspended from his post after the media aired this latest scandal. Panji Masyarakat ,
by contrast, survived to become one of the country’s leading news magazines.

In its first year, Indonesia’s transition faced multiple threats to its long-term viability.
The media, supported by an expanding civil society, were central in resisting reversal
at every stage. This resistance took two primary forms: the exercise of new freedoms
to widen the bounds of allowable speech and inject needed uncertainty into politi-
cal contestation, and the mobilization of members of the media to defend these new
freedoms.
Responding to the rapid liberalization following Suharto’s fall, the media were
aggressive in asserting newly won autonomy and widening the scope of permissible
public discourse. Over a thousand new players obtained publishing licenses, and
print and broadcast media rushed to outdo each other with sensational headlines
on corruption and elite conflicts. Established media players, apprehensive about
the influx of newcomers, extended a cautious welcome. But rather than lobbying
for a return to the protected market ensured by the New Order’s restrictive licens-
ing, veteran journalists, publishers, and editors convened workshops to increase
professionalism and shield the industry as a whole from the reimposition of gov-
ernment controls.
Wary of the ephemeral nature of this climate, media reformers also collaborated
to secure institutional protections for their new freedom. Sixteen months into the
transition, they won passage of the 1999 Press Law. This new legislation, described
by Janet Steele as “arguably the crown jewel of Reformasi,” offered twenty-one arti-
cles that fulfilled nearly every demand of media activists. Broadcast representatives
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worked to pass the similar 1997 Broadcasting Law, which opened their industry to
over one hundred television stations (from six under Suharto) and 2,600 radio sta-
tions by 2010.
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Key to understanding the media’s role in democratization, however, is not the
extent of liberalization, nor even legal guarantees for new freedoms, but what the
media do with these freedoms. In Indonesia, the exercise of freedom served mul-
tiple functions, but the most consequential advanced democratization by expand-
ing the boundaries of permissible speech and, critically, provoking confrontations
with the state.
In any society seeking to maintain freedom of expression, such pressure is vital in
normalizing speech that is threatening to those in power. Without it, freedom itself
becomes an abstraction. In democratic transitions, boundaries must be actively tested
and stretched because the state will naturally push them back, often a precursor to
reconstituted authoritarian rule.
Boundary testing that provokes confrontations with the state, however, can
advance a transition beyond expanding de facto limits of tolerance to de jure protec-
tions more critical in establishing a legal framework that can permanently protect
journalists. After decades of insufficient protection from the constitution’s vague guar-
antee of “freedom of expression” in Article 28, such clarity was particularly important
as reformers set out to codify specific rights and responsibilities, such as the right to
protect sources and the obligation to serve the public’s right to know.