“The revolution will start, but there will be a lot of blood. It will be very messy. There is no ideology. Angry mobs will turn on Suharto and the Chinese.”
The Indonesian academic who delivered this warning confidently predicts that the “revolution” will begin in April.
Indonesia’s economic collapse began last July after a run on the currency. Between July and November the stock market fell by 40%. Almost all companies and banks in Indonesia are technically bankrupt with $74 billion owed in private debts.
The dollar was worth 2,500 rupiah in July 1997 – seven months later it stands at 8,200 rupiah. The fall in the rupiah has caused food shortages and price rises. Indonesia imports all its wheat and 10% of its rice.
The price of rice has soared by between 30% and 100% in the last two months. In the same period the price of another staple, chicken, has also skyrocketed.
It is increasingly clear to everyone that the crisis is no longer just economic. It is a political crisis resulting from Suharto’s refusal to relinquish power and his determination to protect his family’s and cronies’ billions. On
10 March Suharto will be re-elected, by a body which he has appointed, for another five-year term. This can only fan the flames of revolt.
Suharto’s personal fortune is estimated at $40 billion. Meanwhile, thousands of Indonesians are dying from hunger.
The targets of the recent riots have been the ethnic Chinese. Three million, out of a population of 200 million, are ethnic Chinese. Many are small shopkeepers and traders. Some have become very rich. But all have become targets of the famished rioters. The rioters have painted slogans on the walls: “money hungry, Chinese fools”, “destroy the Chinese”. Other shopkeepers try to save their property by painting “Muslim” above the door.
The Suharto government is only too happy to see others turned into scapegoats for the crisis. A February Human Rights Watch report stated:
“Senior officials . . . have tried to deflect blame for the economic crisis onto prominent members of the ethnic Chinese community”.
There are reports of local police and army units standing by while Chinese shops are burnt out. Some ethnic Chinese businessmen are now paying soldiers to guard their property.
The rioting is moving closer to the capital, Jakarta. Forty towns and cities have witnessed rioting in the past month, mainly around the central and western provinces of Java.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) had promised a $43 billion package to bail out the economy. It is now threatening to cancel the deal. The reason is Suharto’s refusal to implement key aspects of the IMF plan.
He has been unwilling to dismantle monopolies and cartels, particularly those which benefit his friends and family. Last month he announced a plan to peg the rupiah to the dollar. The government would set a rate of exchange and use its reserves to defend the currency at that rate.
This was widely seen not as an attempt to support the rupiah, but as a means by which Suharto could protect the business interests of his family, who might otherwise face bankruptcy.
The US, IMF and the other “Tiger” countries were all opposed to the plan, given Indonesia’s political instability. Suharto has shelved the plan but not before sacking the governor of the central bank who dared oppose it.
He is clearly preparing for confrontation. Last month, he told military leaders to “take stern action against those who act unconstitutionally, especially any action that could lead to national disintegration”. On 22 February the government announced a 25-day ban on street protests.
Meanwhile, all the legal political parties and the leadership of the army support Suharto’s re-election. The bourgeois opposition remains silent. Once a serious popular movement against Suharto begins, they may well emerge from their shells (see Workers Power 219).
Indonesia is on the brink of a major political upheaval. The question is, in the unfolding crisis, can a revolutionary alternative to the existing opposition be built?
Workers, students and poor peasants in Indonesia must turn to formulating the demands and building the organisations that can answer “yes” to this question. They must move quickly to channel the anger of hungry millions away from anti-Chinese chauvinism and towards the real enemies in the Suharto regime and the IMF.
The scale of the crisis and the desperation of the masses for a solution mean that even a small revolutionary nucleus – armed with a clear programme for workers’ power as the answer to Indonesia’s turmoil – could rapidly develop mass support. If that happens then a revolutionary alternative to Suharto can be built and can ensure that the revolution does have an “ideology” – socialism.n