Jockeys for reform 1998-05-19 all developments. The following comments and sketchy analysis incorporates some
information and details, (in what I believe to be chronological order) known by the
writer at the time of dispatch.
Monday 18 May
• Students from assorted campuses plus leaders such as Amien Rais and Ali Sadikin
move into MPR/DPR. Military attempt meekly to resist at one point but did not
press the point to the limit.
• Students demand to meet MPR/DPR Speaker Harmoko to convey views.
• Students surprised that Harmoko agrees to meet and agrees to support the calls.
• Latief1 tries to resign, announced by Mursjid, State Secretary.
• Harmoko announces the he wishes for the President to resign. Calls for special
plenary session of the DPR (not MPR it seems)
• Gen. Wiranto, following an emergency meeting with Soeharto, calls press
conference.
• Gen. Wiranto, flanked by top brass, including head of KOSTRAD and BAKIN,
announces that Harmoko's views were personal and not institutional. No questions
taken.
• Everyone assumes Wiranto's views represent military opposition to succession. I
think the view is correct, even if it remains an attempt by ABRI at fence sitting.
Tuesday 19 May 1998
• Harmoko is understood to be wavering a little. Perhaps a few thousand students in
his office might put some more steel in his back!
• Soeharto press conference turns into confusion when only Muslim leaders are
allowed to stay. The meeting is behind closed doors. Leaders include
representatives from most Islamic streams except Rais'. Included were Gus Dur,
Cak Nur, Emha Ainun Najib, Dr Ali Yafie. Also Dr Yusril Mahendra and Saadilah
Mursjid. Not included were Hasan Basri and, of course, Amien Rais.
• White collars yuppies gather at Stock Exchange for a protest at 12.00. Tanks and
personnel sent to JSX too.
The establishment of a plethora of reform supporting organisations over the past 5
days represents both an attempt by people to have influence over the direction of
these organisations, as well as attempts to trumpet their own initiatives and interests
(perhaps even ambitions) in this regard. In general all are opposed to the looters and
all support the student moves.
I think the ABRI leadership is still trying to threaten the opposition movement by
issuing statements such as “Harmoko's view was only personal” just to see if the
parliament subsequently weakens its resolve. I do not believe this resolve will
weaken, and is more likely to grow as new groups come out to loudly proclaim that {The document was drafted on Tuesday 19 May and completed on the morning of
Wednesday 20 May, one day before the President resigned.
The pace with which events were unfolding, and rumours spreading, was quite
breathtaking. It was becoming increasingly hard not to get lost among the individual
events and lose tracks of the key dynamics. While it was clear that the leadership of
the day was clearly losing the plot, I had no intention of doing likewise! At the same
time it was also not easy not to get so carried away with the events and thereby lose a
capacity to analyse the unfolding events with some rigour.
The footnotes in this document were added on 31 December 2006, as I reviewed the
original document – all with the comforting distance of almost 9 years of hind-sight!
The comments are intended to provide both a little historic context that may now have
been forgotten with time and also to provide some auto-criticism of where I believe
my analysis was flawed or perhaps biased. From the original document I have also
corrected typing mistakes and grammatical errors without changing the integrity and
substance of what was initially written. The footnotes therefore do not represent part
of the original document.}
