Page 119 - BUKU A CENTURY OF PARLIAMENTARY LIFE IN INDONESIA

A CENTURY OF PARLIAMENTARY LIFE
IN INDONESIA

Arguably, in the 1950s, intellectuals held political
power. Intellectuals here refer to high school or
Western-university graduates who had consti-
94 percent of tuted the country’s political elite during the post-
revolutionary period. This fact could be seen at
ministers, 91 percent least from the biographical research by Soelae-

of parliamentarians, man Soemardi.

and all civil servants The research showed that high-school and uni-
had received a versity graduates constituted 83 percent of the

Western education. 146 cabinet ministers between 1945 and 1954;
59 percent of the 234 parliament members in
1954; and 100 percent of the 61 highest-ranking
civil servants in that period. He also found that 94
percent of ministers, 91 percent of parliamentar-
ians, and all civil servants had received a West-
ern education.

The Indonesian national revolution was led by such intellectuals, who had
taken advantage of Western liberalism and radicalism and possessed the
technical ability to take over a modern country and adequate knowledge
of Western languages, Western law, and administrative procedures.

Intellectuals came to exercise power as an independent group. Never-
theless, although dominant in quantity, no intellectual could monopolize
social control, even at the elite political level.

Their strength lay not in understanding how the modern state functioned
but rather in limited political skills, in the ability to mediate and organize
the politically governed masses, and to influence lower-level party lead-
ers and mass organizations, or in other words, the technocrats.

One can then observe Indonesia’s post-revolutionary political elites as
divided into two main categories of leaders, intellectuals on the one
hand, mass leaders on the other. Weak organization, lack of mass mem-
bership, and lack of internal cohesion, combined with the relatively im-
portant role of parliamentary representatives, defined most Indonesian
parties as a weakly articulated group during this period. But at the
same time, parties and party-linked organizations were already playing

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