by: PRD
On the 13th-15th of June 2001, as Megawati was allying with the remnants of the New Order (Golkar and the TNI) as well as the Central Axis in order to seize power, around 50 000 workers from various industrial suburbs in Bandung held a general strike in the heart of the city, demanding the abolition of new labour ministry regulations (No. 78 and No. 111 year 2001) on retrenchment which would have advantaged the employers. This action was coloured by clashes in the streets as the workers suffered repression from the police and military. Several worker and student activists were jailed. At the same time, on the 13th of June, 10 000 workers in Jakarta and 25 000 workers from various trade unions in Medan struck with the same demands. Hundreds of thousands of workers in industrial areas in East Java (Sidoarjo, Mojokerto, Driyorejo, Tandes, and others) also spilled into the streets on the 13th of June with the same demands. If the workers rally had managed to avoid repression from the military, surabaya would have been occupied by around 750 thousand workers.
On the 3rd of October, 2001, 5000 workers from the state firm Dirgantara Indonesia Incorporated marched on the Presidential Palace to demand that the government clean up corruption in the management of the above-mentioned state firm. They said that corruption was ruining the employees.
Throughout the months of November and December 2001, thousands of teachers marched on government offices in Jakarta to demand back paid higher wages, that should have already been paid. Meanwhile tens of thousands more protested in the regions with the same demands.
At the end of November 2001, 5000 workers in a factory that produced Nike shoes in Tanggerang struck demanding a wage rise and a holiday allowance of 250% of normal wages.
Near the end of the year, on the 12th-14th of December 2001, 2000 workers from Matahari Putra Prima Incorporated from all over Jabotabek (Jakarta-Bogor-Tanggerang-Bekasi) area struck demanding a wage rise, food allowance and transport allowance. They marched on the firm´s office in Karawaci, Tanggerang, then went to the Labour Ministry in Jakarta. This action was marked by police violence and arrests.
At the end of December 2001, 4000 plantation workers from state plantations in North Sumatra marched on the office of the North Sumatra governor to demand a wage rise and protest lay-offs.
On the 26th December, 5000 farmers from Rawa Sekaran (Lamongan) demonstrated to oppose their eviction from their land for a local government project. Several activists were arrested by the police.
For three dats, starting from the 12th January 2002, 5000 workers from Great River Indonesia Inc. held a total strike demanding the payment of the Bogor municipal government´s minimum wage rate, that is 590 000 rupiah per month. They occupied the factory and marched on the Bogor municpal government office.
On the 27th of January around 3 million workers from Central Java and Yogyakarta state firm Telkom marched on the presidential palace and Telkom national office to oppose the planned …‘asset-swap´ with Indosat Incorporated, another name for fuller privatisation of Telkom.
On the 29th of January, 900 workers from Bank Internasional Indonesia (BII) in Medan, Surabaya and Jakarta, demanded insurance, along with the replacement of the provisional management team named by BPPN (the government body charged with controlling failed banks) to manage the bank.
In mid-January, tens of thousands of workers in Pontianak, West Kalimantan, held an action at the provincial parliament demanding a wage rise. Like the action in West Kalimantan, tens of thousands of timber workers in various cities of East Kalimantan held a total strike for more than one week demanding the implementation of the provincial minimum wage. The government, through an agreement with companies, had arbitrarily reduced the value of wages that had been set previously.
Throughout the last weeks of January, thousands of masses from various sectors, students, workers and urban poor, took to the streets to reject fuel price rises and price rises.
At the beginning of February, the union for KAI Incorporated (Indonesian Railways) workers in Jakarta and West Java threatened a mass strike if the government-appointed director (Omah Berto) contined to run KAI Incorporated. He had a bad track record in terms of maintaining the prosperity of KAI Incorporated employees, including being responsible for several train accidents in 2001-2002.
On the 5th of February, 500 representatives of Bank Commercial Asia (BCA) workers protested at the national parliament to reject the sale of BCA´s assets to foreigners, and threatened a mass strike if the sale process went ahead.
On the 12th of February, thousands of flood victims in Jakarta protested at the National Monument demanding that Governor Setiyoso take responsibility for the disaster. Two days later on the 14th of February, 500 poor victims of the floods protested at the presidential palace demanding that Megawati take responsibility for the disaster.
On the 12th of February 500 mothers, including street-cart traders and wives of laid off workers in protested at the East Java provincial parliament in Surabaya. They protested against the rise in fuel prices and demanded that the government lower the price of goods.
On the 18th of February, hundreds of doctors protested at the Health Department of Yogyakarta Special Region, demanding wage rises and a rise in the pension.
On the 11th of March, BCA (Bank Commercial Asia) workers made good on their earlier strike threat by mobilising 5 000 workers in Jakarta and thousands more in the regions.
Everywhere, in every corner of Indonesia, the oppressed classes are opposing anti-popular policies.
It´s the People who are forced to pay.
The series of events mentioned above are only a few examples of the rise in struggle across Indonesia opposing various economic and political policies that are increasingly anti-popular. Protest actions and mobilisations in all forms have involved workers, farmers, students and urban poor who have organised themselves to defend themselves from violent attacks and policies that have caused their poverty and unemployment. The Central Statistics Bureau estimates that around 80 million people were living below the poverty line in 1998. Indeed the World Bank itself has stated that the number of poor in Indonesia, according to the standard international poverty line – namely, those who receive under US$2 a day – is 60% of the population, or around 122 million people. These two statements are only collections of figures, the reality of the people´s lives in poverty can be better felt directly by activist comrades who work side by side with the people.
At the beginning of this year, the Megawati-Hamzah regime began a project which will plunge the people into more extreme poverty. On the 1st of January 2002 the basic electricity rate was raised by 24% and will be raised again by around 5-7% every three months so that in a year the basic electricity rate will rise by 40%. And on the 16th of the same month the price of fuel also rose by 29%. Furthermore, at the beginning of February 2002 telephone rates rose (15%), railway fares (30%) and Jakarta transport fares (25-30%). These various subsidy cuts have caused rises in the prices of other goods and services. For example, the price of building materials has risen by more than 10%, medicine by 10-20% and manufactured goods by 10%. The fact of these prices rises must be contrasted with the fact that the provincial (Jakarta?) minimum wage has risen by only 30% to 591,000 rupiah, while the minimum basic needs of a worker in Jakarta in 2000, before counting the price rises mentioned above, were more than 800,000 rupiah. Indeed the wage rise of 30% has not been implemented by many capitalists, and those who haven´t implemented it have suffered no punishments from the Megawati-Hamzah regime.
So, how can the Megawati-Hamzah regime be this criminal? Firstly, while this government and the imperialists (through their puppets the IMF, World Bank, WTO, and agents within the Indonesian state) manage the nation´s economic affairs, the excesses which have emerged only obscure the horror of prolonged poverty. Public debt has reached around 110% of GDP. In the 2002 national budget more than 30% of state funds are to be used to pay this debt and bank recapitalisation bonds. Almost all new borrowings, and half of foreign exchange earnings from exports, are used to pay the debts of the leader of the New Order and the conglomerates of his corrupt cronies. Meanwhile, in 2001 the burden of payments on the debt plus interest had reached 89.2 trillion rupiah, from a total state spending figure of 295.1 trillion rupiah. In the 2002 budget the debt repayment figure has reached more than 100 trillion rupiah.
Secondly, with a state debt (both internal and foreign) of around 1,401 trillion rupiah, without debt relief the state will be paying off its debt until judgement day. The impact on the budget has been made worse by the drop in the oil price and the world economic crisis, even though Indonesia´s economic policies are more oriented to exports, particularly exports to the US, Japan, the EU and Singapore. Once again, without the abolition of the foreign debt and nationalisation of corrupt officials´ and crony conglomerates´ assets, social welfare payments will increasingly shrink. As an example, the education sector´s portion of the budget for the year 200 was less than 1% of GDP. One year beforehand it had been cut by 30%. In one year, 2000, 2.1 million pupils were unable to finish their compulsory 9 years of schooling. That was 528 thousand more than in 1998, when 1, 562,000 children dropped out of school. And 902 thousand more than in 1997, when …‘only´ 1,198,000 dropped out.
A bourgeois state
State and private banks with problems, who have an enormous and inefficient debt, stand on the brink of a precipice, waiting for just a push to fall into a greater disaster. Private capital has continued to go offshore, made easier by the liberalisation of foreign exchange rules. According to the Deputy Governor of the Bank of Indonesia, Anwar Nasution, from 1997 to 2001 capital flight reached 10 billion US dollars per year on average.
The value of the rupiah, which strengthened because of the psychological factor of middle class ignorance and the influence of the mass media when Megwati replaced Gus dur, has begun to fall from the 8000s per US dollar to the 10,000s. The drop in the rupiah´s value is because of pressure to slow the rate of foreign debt repayment, and the drop in domestic savings from 28% to 17% PDB. It can be guaranteed that the rupiah will always plummet when there is a slowing in payment of foreign debt (that according to Bank Indonesia in 2002 is about 20 billion US dollars). The government always dreams that the exchange value of the rupiah will strengthen as long as there is confidence from the markets. However its truly delusional to think the rupiah will strengthen without debt relief and foreign exchange controls. The balance of trade, that is said to always be in surplus, is nothing but a figure on paper. The fact is that many export earnings never enter Indonesia and strengthen national currency reserves. The majority of these exchange earnings are parked in advanced capitalist countries´ banks, such as in Singapore.
The growth of domestic investment has completely stopped. The figure of 4% growth is almost completely from the consumption sector, and is driven by the sale of poor people´s goods (to repeat, the poor are selling their belongings) and government spending. As there are no signs of change in this situation, the majority of what is left of the Indonesian private sector is merely crony companies that grew on the basis of foreign debt during the Suharto government and since the crisis these have been unable to use government facilities as they used to do. The debt of these corporations to banks must be counted again, and the government must allocate more loan funds to guard against the collapse of the banks that are bleeding out credit. The incapacity of the bourgeois powerholders (Megawati-Hamzah) means they are pressuring the debtor conglomerates to become sources of funding for the bourgeois parties themselves, leading to many kinds of new subsidies. This is the material basis for the government´s extension of the time and reduction of interest rates for PKPS (shareholders compulsory payments). The scandal of the discount sale of P.T. Indomobil (also BCA) that smelt of corruption has spread everywhere. Just imagine, Indomobil, one of the assets of the Salim conglomerate that was seized by the government to pay Salim´s debt of 52 trillion rupiah, was valued at 2.5 trillion rupiah when it was handed over to BPPN , but was sold by BPPN for only 625 billion rupiah.
The government´s other option is to allow these banks and corporations to hit the wall, declare them bankrupt, and sell them cheap to whoever (without racialist or nationalist discrimination). What´s more, at the moment the only ones capable of buying them, even at low prices, are foreign firms. And if that takes place, then almost all of the modern sector of Indonesia´s economy will be in the hands of multinational companies (who, to repeat, will have paid low prices). Many of the people´s assets, both BUMN and BPPN, have changed hands to be owned by capitalists, of course, international capitalists. Even this action is carried out by Megawati and the small bourgeois around her, conservative small bourgeois who are looking for profit amidst the tug-of-war between the interests of the old national bourgeoisie and the multinational corporations. This crime is shown clearly in the case of the sale of BCA, whose total assets are valued at 99 trillion rupiah, around 60.1 trillion rupiah of which are subsidised recapitalisation bonds that were given by the government, so that every year the government will have to pay interest of around 8-9 trillion rupiah. Meanwhile, 51% of the shares will be sold – with despicable manipulation that cannot be justified from any perspective – for at most 6 trillion rupiah. And this without withdrawing from the obligations of the recapitalisation bonds of 60.1 trillion rupiah. Although justified with many nonsensical economic reasons, these cases explain the criminal combination between the imperialist´s tool the IMF (who pressure by way of their Letters of Intent) and the World Bank, and the Megawati regime (with its cronies) in grabbing the greatest profit from buying the people´s assets at low prices.
These scenarios – a constant increase in debt or the bankrupting of the banks and companies currently in trouble- will push the people´s economic situation into a deeper crisis. Indonesia has a population of more than 200 million; between 30 and 40 per cent of the people are unemployed or hidden unemployed. Meanwhile, the workforce grows by 2-3 million people per year. Indonesia needs economic growth of 8% per year – an impossible figure in the current situation – just to absorb this growth in the workforce, while the 40 million unemployed would remain unemployed. There is no chance that the number of unemployed could reduce with these increasingly insane economic policies. The threat of a rise in unemployment is increasingly real with the sluggishness of the world market because of the drop in the purchasing power of the people of advanced capitalist countries which are the destination of Indonesia´s exports. For example, world textile production is 20% higher than demand. The USA, which talks about free trade most vehemently, has immediately protected its dmoestic industry by placing an embargo on foreign textile products. Thus, textile companies will have to reduce their productive capacity, leading to mass retrenchments. According to the Association of Textile and Shoe Companies of Indonesia (APRISINDO), this year around 600 000 workers are threatened with losing their jobs, with being thrown onto the street as unemployed. Retrenchment isn´t only taking place in the textile industry, but has also spread to other industrial sectors and service industries such as shoes, electronics, food and beverages, timber and forestry, plantations and various kinds of mining (the retrenchments at Timah incorporated, for example).
Up until now, it has been the poor – workers, peasants and urban poor- who have been forced to carry the heaviest burden, and they will pay even more if the crisis gets worse. However, this situation is a green light for the power-holders of the capitalist class – in the words of one analyst: “Many of those who toppled the Suharto dictatorship were young people. They hoped for a better life. If they get the opposite, the result will be a social explosion.” And now, the people are truly suffering hell.
Democracy is retreating
Under the Megawati regime, this economic disaster has proceeded side by side with a political retreat: the democratic rights of the people have started to be restricted again. Arrests of activists have taken place everywhere. The case of the arrest of the head of the Jember and Bondowoso PRD, the arrest of the head of the East Java PRD, the arrest of worker and student activists in Bandung (also in Jakarta, Aceh, Semarang, Medan, Palu, etc.) in Papua (indeed, the murder of Theis, one of the Papuan leaders). Greater authority has been given to the military, for example the setting up of a military command (Kodam) in Aceh. Thus, areas of conflict like Aceh, Papua, Maluku, Poso and others have become a practice shooting range for the TNI´s terrible project.
Cases of human rights violations in the past have not been investigated to conclusion, thanks to Megawati. The formation of a Human rights court for East timor for example was only a ruse, because it has not so much as touched the generals who are most responsible. Indeed the DPR/MPR (Parliament), just as corrupt as the government, has stated that the shooting of students at Trisakti, students and masses at Semanggi in 1998-99 are not cases of serious human rights violations. Whenever there is pressure from the masses on these issues, junior soldiers are made scapegoats. Everyone knows that these soliders acted on the orders of their generals.
These events have been made possible by two things. Firstly, Megawati gained power by way of a reactionary alliance between PDI-P, Golkar, the TNI and police and the Central Axis in parliament. Of course Megawati must pay the price demanded by all of these forces. And their payment includes not trying cases of human rights violations, giving some power to the remnants of the New Order, not trying to conclusion the Buloggate II corruption case involving Akbar Tanjung and Golkar, not trying to conclusion corrupt officials and other New Order conglomerates. From the beginning Megawati was given the choice, did she want to work with the people to destroy the power of the remnants of the New Order, or oppress the people as a consequence of an alliance with them. And Megawati has chosen – she has allied herself with the remnants of the New Order.
Secondly, the increasingly disastrous economic crisis cannot be overcome with economic or political concessions to the people. The pressure of the crisis and Megawati´s conservative nature mean there will be no political or economic concessions. Megawati prefers to cut the people´s subsidies, causing a rise in electricity and fuel prices, transport fares and telephone rates, etc; add military command structures (Kodam) and raise the level of repression to stifle the people´s protests.
With the rise in intensity of anti-poor economic policies, there is also a tendency to increasingly restrict democratic rights. With a conservative petty bourgeois background, Megawati – like Hamzah Haz, Amien Rais, Yusril Ihza Mahendra and the other fake reformers, including those who are waiting for a chance at power – has been advancing the interests of the section of the bourgeoisie closest to her ever since Suharto fell. However, in the struggle to defeat the New Order dictatorship this bourgeois group were the most cowardly. Currently Megawati represents the true bourgeoisie. And the application of the IMF-demanded policies has failed. Megawati has failed, as can be seen by the rise in poverty, unemployment, the numbers of those forced to drop out of school, the floods and their impact, and repression. Who knows how long the Indonesian people will remain in the nightmare of poverty if the Megawati government stays in power. It´s untrue to say that the Megawati government hasn´t been given enough time because however long she is given, her concept of development is anti-people and cannot be justified theoretically. Thus, there is no alternative but to REPLACE THE MEGAWATI GOVERNMENT.
The Megawati regime has responded to the issue of national liberation in Aceh and Papua with murder, for example Theis in Papua and intellectuals and civilians in Aceh. The democratic dmenads of the Acehnese and Papuans can be held back less and less, they are showing clear expressions of opposition to New Order nationalism. This began with mass meetings of tens of thousands of masses, angry over the murder of Theis, from the end of November to the beginning of December 2001, and the general strike in Aceh from the 15th to 17th of January 2002.
