Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

B. J. Habibie and the Transformation of Indonesian Politics

2021; Volume: 112; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/ind.2021.0006

2164-8654

R. William Liddle,

Asian Studies and History

B. J. Habibie and the Transformation of Indonesian Politics R. William Liddle (bio) Abstract Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie, then vice-president of Indonesia, succeeded to the presidency on May 21, 1998, when the autocratic President Suharto resigned. The occasion was the most severe economic and political crisis in Indonesian history since 1965, when Suharto had wrested power from his predecessor, Indonesian founding father Sukarno, who had also ruled autocratically from 1959–1965. During his brief tenure, from May 1998 to October 1999, Habibie made three decisions that transformed Indonesian politics. He conducted the first national and local democratic elections since 1955, when Indonesia was briefly a parliamentary democracy. He devolved administrative and fiscal authority to district and municipality governments for the first time since the 1950s. Finally, he enabled the people of East Timor to choose independence from Indonesia. The first two of these actions gave significantly more political power to Indonesian citizens than they had previously enjoyed. The third restored the nation-state to the original conception and commitment made by its founders. Introduction In their editors’ introduction to the best study to date of Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie’s presidency (1998–99), Dewi Fortuna Anwar and Bridget Welsh write as follows: “Different opinions are offered on whether Habibie was a reluctant reformer, forced to carry out fundamental changes by popular pressure, or whether in fact he had been a strong believer in democracy from the time he lived in Europe, and thus seized the opportunity to carry out the necessary reforms the moment he had the opportunity to do so.”1 Neither of these characterizations is accurate. Habibie was not a reluctant reformer under pressure, nor is there persuasive evidence to suggest that he had been a true believer who seized an opportunity to democratize. I argue instead that he was a transforming president who stretched constraints in three central aspects of the Indonesian political system related to the national decision-making process, national–local governmental relations, and the inclusiveness of the nation itself. [End Page 31] Moreover, I argue that he deserves considerable credit—difficult to quantify, but much more than the half allotted by Machiavelli for the positive exercise of his free will, that is, for consciously choosing the strategies that brought about these outcomes.2 He effectively developed and deployed his individual resources or virtu to overcome the constraints imposed by fortuna on achieving his goals.3 He also took advantage of favorable fortuna and turned constraints into positive resources. I make this claim despite the fact there is little evidence that Habibie consciously intended these changes before he became president on May 21, 1998. Then vice-president, he succeeded to the presidency when the autocratic President Suharto suddenly resigned.The evidence, rather, is in the public reasons he offered at the time, beginning in the first days of his presidency, and the corroborations by others of those reasons. The availability of public reasons is a critical means for holding democratic leaders accountable. Habibie’s conscious intentions were both strategic (he calculated correctly that these choices were the ones most likely to win him the presidency in his own right) and principled or moral (he valued liberal democracy, local-level democracy, and a unified Indonesia for their own sakes). Again, the evidence is in the public reasons offered during his presidency. On the transforming nature of his presidency, first, Habibie directed the national-level democratic transition, which included holding the first free election since 1955 and the related freeing of the press, political parties, and other associations, revoking the antisubversion law, separating the police from the armed forces, desacralizing the presidency, making the central bank autonomous, and taking the first steps toward amending the 1945 Constitution to make it a suitable foundation for a modern democracy. Habibie also initiated the process of decentralizing government authority from the center to the regions, including the then twenty-six provinces (not counting East Timor), but most significantly the then approximately three hundred districts and municipalities. This single act, in conjunction with the national-level democratization, vastly increased the amount and degree of equality in political resources enjoyed by most Indonesians. Finally, Habibie conducted a vote enabling the people of East...