The Australian government has laid criminal charges against Witness K and lawyer Bernard Collaery over their exposure of the bugging of the East Timorese cabinet. The first court hearing has just been postponed until 12 September in Canberra. If the two are convicted, the maximum sentence is two years’ jail.
This a case of a wounded imperialism lashing out at home because it can’t do it to the people who humiliated it: the leaders and people of Timor-Leste. The Australian government also sees it as a warning to others who might dare to expose the criminal activity of the Australian state. But don’t underestimate the resentment of the humiliation and defeat that Australian imperialism has experienced at the hands of Timor-Leste.
While the Timor-Leste government was negotiating with the Australian government over the oil and gas reserves in the Timor Sea – and over the maritime border – the Australian government was listening to Timor-Leste’s strategy discussions, using bugging devices implanted by Australian Secret Intelligence Service agents pretending to be part of an Australian aid programme. Witness K and Collaery are accused under the Intelligence Services Act 2001 of conspiring to make this activity known to the media.
Timor-Leste had been left impoverished by 25 years of military occupation by Suharto’s army, and with a third of its population dead as a result of the occupation. Still the Australian state and its politicians were determined to ensure that their 25 years of imperialist plotting and scheming would not be undone by the newly independent country.
The Australian government, first under prime minister Whitlam and then Fraser, followed later by Hawke and all his successors, were complicit from the start in the devastation of Timor-Leste wrought by Suharto’s military occupation. After the Portuguese revolution, when it became clear that the social and political forces in Timor desiring independence would triumph, Jakarta prepared an invasion. 
Whitlam and the Australian embassy in Jakarta indicated their agreement, as did the US government. All the parties were afraid that the Revolutionary Front for the Independence of East Timor (FRETILIN), which was radical and left wing in 1975, would make East Timor a pocket of popular democracy right next door to the 10-year-old Suharto dictatorship. They saw this as potentially destabilising.
The Australian government, however, had an additional interest. It knew there were substantial oil and gas resources in the Timor Sea. It knew also that most resources were on the Timorese side of the median line between Timor and the Australian mainland. 
An formally recognised border did not exist between Portuguese Timor and Australia. It would have to be negotiated: but with whom? The Australian government decided it was more likely to get a better deal from Suharto than from a FRETILIN-led independent Timor. Canberra was having success in getting a very favourable outcome in negotiations with Suharto on the Indonesia-Australia maritime border.
Thus, from the beginning, Canberra’s complicity was driven by lust for oil and gas. It was a “blood for oil” policy. And Canberra got a great deal for the Australian government and oil companies from Suharto. Suharto agreed to a weird maritime border that suddenly and inexplicably shot northwards towards Timor as it approached the oil and gas fields. 
The oil and gas resources all turned out to be on the Australian side of the new and unfair border. Indonesia would get some royalties – plus the fanatical political and diplomatic support of Australia for the invasion and occupation. Australia was the only country in the world to defy the United Nations resolutions confirming Timor’s status as a yet to be decolonised possession of Portugal. Australia gave de jure recognition to East Timor’s incorporation into Indonesia.
Gareth Evans, foreign minister under the Hawke Labor government, finalised the deal; he and Suharto’s foreign minister Ali Alatas flew over the Timor Sea to sign the deal and clink champagne glasses for the cameras. Australia would get 50 percent of all revenues from oil and gas not even in its territory. A part of the area was to be controlled by Australia totally.
What a great deal! In return for being Suharto’s international defender (with some army assistance and training thrown in for a time), the Australian government and companies would gain billions of dollars. Oil! Gas! All theirs. No wonder the glasses clinked.
But the Timorese fought back. They won the support of more and more of the people of Australia and Portugal, and of liberal elements in the United States and Europe and of the left wing of the democracy movement in Indonesia. In Timor they fought the Indonesian army, despite being completely outgunned. They mobilised for demonstrations, despite being massacred. They jumped fences of foreign embassies in Jakarta, finally also doing so with their Indonesian solidarity activist comrades.
When the Indonesian student movement, articulating the vast mass sentiment against Suharto, after a long struggle forced Suharto to resign and ended the dictatorship, students in Timor also mobilised openly for independence.
Under escalating international pressure, spearheaded by public mobilisations in Portugal and Australia, president Habibie of Indonesia initiated a referendum on independence in East Timor. The Timorese mobilised again, in the face of mass brutality and violence, including large massacres, and voted overwhelmingly for independence, which they had proclaimed in 1975.
Even greater violence against the Timorese followed the referendum. Even greater international public pressure manifested, with many calling for an international peacekeeping force. Habibie announced that Indonesian military forces would withdraw and would hand over Timor to a UN-sponsored military force.
This was a great victory for the Timorese and a defeat for the Indonesian army. But it was not only that.
It was a huge defeat for Australian imperialism, despite the fact that the Australian Army made up the bulk of the UN force that went into Timor. The primary goal of Canberra’s support for the invasion and occupation of East Timor from 1975 onwards was to avoid negotiations with an independent East Timor and deal with the more amenable Suharto.
The Australian prime minister John Howard, and his foreign minister, Alexander Downer, who had done everything they could to prevent or delay independence, quickly changed their rhetoric in the face of this defeat and falsely claimed that they played a role in securing Timor’s freedom. 
Besides getting back on side with the Australian public, they knew that their agreement with Suharto on the border and on the oil and gas would be up for renegotiation. They were hoping to woo the Timorese leadership. They would also offer aid to the new country, which would be used later as a cover to bug the Timorese government’s cabinet offices.
Canberra’s 1975 assessment turned out to be correct. It has been harder to get the deal it wanted with an independent East Timor than with the dictator Suharto. Even with the Timorese leadership refusing to encourage public protest against Canberra’s bullying attempt to keep the Suharto era agreement in place, the first deal between Dili and Canberra resulted in the Australian government receiving a significantly smaller share of royalties than under the deal with Suharto.
The Timorese had forced Canberra into a tactical retreat. Canberra was still getting revenues to which it had no right; its imperialist bullying still had Timor-Leste forced to give up its sovereign rights, but the deal it got was nowhere near as good as the old deal. It had been forced back, despite, too, its bugging of the cabinet room. But this was to be followed later by another retreat.
The imperialist bullying at the time came with unadulterated arrogance. Almost as soon as Timor-Leste won its independence, Australia withdrew from the international convention under which maritime borders are regulated. It refused to agree to a border between Timor-Leste and Australia based on the internationally accepted regime of a median line drawn half way between Timor and the Australian mainland. This has become the normal procedure where countries are 500 kilometres apart or less. The first agreement signed between Australia and Timor-Leste, while reducing Australia’s royalties significantly, still did not settle on a maritime border. It was left unresolved; that was a victory for Australia.
But another defeat was to come, another humiliation. Australia was forced into arbitration at the UN by “little” Timor-Leste, where the whole agreement was renegotiated. The royalties for Australia were reduced even further, and a median line border was agreed. Royalties on Greater Sunrise would now be 80-20 percent in Timor-Leste’s favour, and Timor would have 100 percent of any future upstream revenue. The division was 70-30 percent of refinery activity based in Timor-Leste. The original deal with Suharto gave Australia 50 percent of revenues in shared areas and total ownership in others. (And the other 50 percent went to Indonesia, not to East Timor.)
This is where revenge against Witness K and Bernard Collaery comes into it. Witness K, an agent with ASIS, had been a part of the bugging operation. He was morally offended by the operation when he saw that foreign minister Alexander Downer and the top bureaucrat in the Foreign Ministry later took lucrative consultancies with the oil company that had benefited from the negotiations. Working through the official channels available, and with Collaery as his lawyer, he raised his concerns.
Eventually, the Timor-Leste government also learned of the bugging. It angrily concluded that the first negotiations had not been carried out in good faith by Canberra. It moved to annul the existing agreement and force Australia into arbitration – where Australia was driven back further.
No doubt in the eyes of Australia’s imperial-minded politicians and bureaucratic hacks, their new humiliation was partly to be blamed upon Witness K and Collaery.
Imperialism humiliated can be very vengeful.
Vigorous solidarity with Witness K and lawyer Collaery, who have done the right thing on this issue, may – let’s hope – deliver a further humiliation to this imperial arrogance through the dropping of the charges.
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First published at <a href="https://maxlaneonline.com">https://maxlaneonline.com</a>.

Max Lane

Australian government lashes out over East Timor spying scandal

21 May marked the 20th anniversary of the fall of the dictator Suharto, who ruled Indonesia from 1965 until 1998 – 33 years; a very long time. This 33 years constituted a massive percentage of the time Indonesia has existed. The leadership of the national revolution proclaimed independence on 17 August 1945, but the colonial power, the Netherlands, was not forced to take its soldiers and bureaucrats home until the end of 1949. Its capitalists remained dominant there until they were expelled between 1956 and 1958. The effort to consolidate a new nation and a new state began only in 1950.
The challenge of consolidation in the first years was greater for the nation – a new community – than the state itself – the congealed power of a (capitalist) ruling class, which faced no immediate threat from any other organised class force.
In Indonesia’s case, the process of creating and then consolidating a nation had begun late. The period of gestation began at the turn of the 20th century – the subject matter of the historical novels by Indonesia’s greatest novelist, and revolutionary thinker, Pramoedya Ananta Toer. 
Prior to this, civilization in the Malay Archipelago, known as Nusantara in the region, was a mosaic of societies at many different levels of social development. The development of the embryo of the new community out of the myriad of differing societies advanced only in the 1920s – just 30 years before the proclamation of Independence. 
Propelled by the evolving material conditions throughout the Netherlands East Indies, producing a common economic life, a common language and literature and a new common culture, embodied primarily in its politics, the process of nation-creation was further enriched as the ideas of three revolutions – the bourgeois revolutions of Europe; the anti-colonial revolutions of China, the Arab nation and the Philippines; and Russia’s social revolution – were fused. 
With varying degrees of consistency, these ideas were taken up as the national revolution’s ideological weapons. It was a powerfully creative process, enough indeed to forge a new community with a new culture, while also being eclectic, uneven, messy and unfinished.
Thus the challenge faced by Indonesia’s social classes in 1950 to consolidate a nation was extraordinarily daunting. Furthermore, in 1950, it was still unresolved which class would lead that process: the underdeveloped capitalist class borne of colonialism or the equally underdeveloped proletariat, a miniscule proportion of the population compared to the ocean of poor peasants who were embedded in a huge variety of differing exploitive agrarian social relations. 
The period between 1950 and 1965 was one of deepening contestation over this question of which class would lead the nation creation-consolidation process: a process which the country’s preeminent political leader, Sukarno, called revolutionary “character-building” and “nation-building”.
Suharto came to power in 1965, in events that brought this contestation to an end by burying it via a genocidal wave of systematic mass killing and terror, repression and a drastic dictatorship over historical memory. The 33 years of Suharto’s rule, therefore, in some ways represents 100 percent of the existence of the nation-state now known as Indonesia. 
Of course, this 100 percent is not 100 percent true. There are buried legacies in the memories of past struggles, many recorded in literature and political writings, and indeed also in the string of struggles since 1965, especially that of 1989-98, which ended the dictatorship. Buried legacies that need to be dug up: are being dug up.
With this history, it should surprise nobody that it is only after 20 years that we might be seeing the first, very early signs of a resumption of the contestation buried in 1965. Even the word resumption disguises the reality: it is really beginning anew. New radicals, especially among the youth, must explore to discover even where to dig up the legacies they need. 
But all the signs are there. They include the resilience of the works of Pramoedya Ananta Toer about the genesis of the struggle for Indonesia; the success of the people’s history oriented monthly magazine HISTORIA; the steady, if still gradual, growth of independent publishers of history and progressive politics and the popularity of their books among restless youth. 
And in April in Jakarta, there occurred the Indonesian Peoples Movement Conference. This was the first large gathering of the social justice and democratic rights activist spectrum – trade-unions, farmers groups, democratic rights organisations, feminist groups. There were over 50 organisations. It was initiated by five of the most active progressive trade unions, many of which emerged after 1998 among that small section of the workforce concentrated in the factories and larger workplaces. 
There was a consensus that a united political vehicle was needed respond to an increasingly effective, if still small, right wing spectrum of forces. There were debates, of course, over the nature and character of any new united political vehicle.
The next gathering in a few months intends to bring more such groups together. While there was no explosive post-dictatorship momentum after 1998, there has been a gradual but steady process of beginning a resistance from scratch. It is too early to say whether this particular initiative will succeed in building momentum, but it is not too early to say that something new is again in gestation.
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First published at ww.versobooks.com/blogs

A new beginning for the struggle in Indonesia?

It seems fairly certain now that Australian Customs and Navy personnel paid the captain and crew of an Indonesian ship carrying 65 asylum seekers, including children and a pregnant woman, to take the Sri Lankans, Bangladeshis and Burmese back to Indonesia.
Sixty-five desperate people, all from situations of misery and repression, who had no doubt spent much of their little cash on the boat ride to New Zealand, were put on two new boats and turned around. This is despite requests by the refugees to be taken on board the Customs and Navy ships.
The Australian state paid the crew to betray their desperate customers and take them back to a society with a per capita income of only US$4,000 per year and mass poverty. No offer was made to bring them to Australia, one of the richest countries in the world (whatever the unjust distribution of that wealth).
Former Labor prime minister Paul Keating introduced mandatory detention. Then Liberal PM John Howard escalated the propaganda about “border security”. His government told the disgusting lie in 2001 that children were “thrown overboard” by asylum seekers in order to force the Navy to rescue them. And it instituted the notorious “Pacific solution”.
Since then, “stop the boats” has become a central platform in the Australian ruling class’s ideological agitation, articulated by both the Liberals and the ALP. It was Rudd’s ALP that came up with the cruel policy that no refugee arriving by boat would ever be settled in Australia, but instead be sent to Papua New Guinea. Abbott added to this with the criminal and inhumane tow-back policy.
But why?
Neither party is opposed to receiving refugees in Australia. In 2012-13, 20,000 visas were issued under Australia’s humanitarian program, according to the Department of Immigration. This is nowhere near enough, but it indicates that the elites here have no in-principle objection to refugees settling in Australia. People arriving in Australia on tourist visas by plane who then seek asylum also face minimal obstacles to their settlement.
Neither are the numbers of arrivals by boat huge: in 2009-13, the average was around 10,000 per year. This is an easily absorbable number of people in a population of 24 million. And it is only a fraction of the total annual migration to Australia (around 200,000 people). So why is the hysterical agitation of “stop the boats” and “illegal arrivals” (they are not illegal) so central?
The idea that it is about “defending sovereign borders” is, of course, a joke. Most boats aim only to arrive at Christmas Island, which is a huge distance from the Australian continent and hardly within real borders. The same is true for Ashmore Reef.
As a huge island continent, Australia has always had porous borders. Until Howard’s Tampa agitation, it was considered only a minor problem to do with small numbers of smugglers. Furthermore, the refugees coming by boat are not trying to sneak into Australia – they report directly and as quickly as they can to Australian authorities.
So why?
There is only once conclusion: the issue fulfils a propaganda need for the Australian ruling class. It uses the issue to undermine any philosophy of collective solidarity. The policies legitimise cruelty and inhumanity towards others in the name of “defending sovereignty”, which has become a code word for an illusory “what we have”. This helps legitimise the idea that the world’s have-nots should “wait their turn” in a “queue” that is policed by the haves. This is the reason that “both sides” of bourgeois politics agitate around this issue.
In one sense, it is a good sign that the elite feel that they need such an issue, and that they have to make it so central to their politics. The need indicates that they fear the Australian public’s sense of solidarity with others would otherwise come to the fore. In a society where the trend is for wealth to be redistributed upwards, while cutting back on the level of social services and culture for the majority, an awakened sense of solidarity among people would be a disaster for the ruling class.
“Aspiration”, the cry, is legitimate – but the rich want aspirations fulfilled only for themselves and their close associates. “Defend our borders” is their code word for defending self-interest, even if it means cruelty to others.
This is an existential issue for late capitalism and its escalating upward redistribution. In a rich country like Australia, with a per capita income of $40,000 per year and already advanced infrastructure, which is in a situation of serious relative abundance, where can society be taken?
There are only two choices: more and more redistribution upwards as we head for some kind of technologically advanced barbarism of walled elites, or using that abundance to improve the quality of life for all human beings.
“Stop the boats”, and similar cruel, anti-human slogans, are one of the ruling class’s weapons to defend their choice. Systematising cruelty is laying the foundation for barbarism.

Stopping the boats is about smashing social solidarity

The University of Amsterdam chancellery building, the Maagdenhuis, has been occupied since 24 February, when students broke down the door and took over the ground floor. Since then, there has been a constant stream of teach-in discussions and organising activity.
The occupation followed a demonstration of more than 1,000 students and some staff. They were protesting the arrest of 39 students who had been occupying the Bungehuis building in protest at its impending sale to private interests. The sale of university property has become symbolic of what is seen as the trend to subordinate education to commerce, abandoning a commitment to the university as a place for critical education.
Discontent over university policy has been brewing for at least two years. A group called Humanities Rally was formed by students after a university plan, Profiel 2016, projected deep cuts to the humanities.
Apart from the increasing use of contract staff, the preparation of the Profiel 2016 and other changes have taken place with only pretend consultation with university employees.
Democratisation of the university – wresting power away from a managerial caste carrying out a neoliberal agenda, and shifting decision-making to the university community – has become a key plank of both the student protests, which are organised as New University, and the academic movement ReThink UvA.
These protests differ significantly from student protests in other countries in that they are joint student-staff actions demanding a total restructuring of higher education. They are calling for the self-organisation of universities, with the aim of fulfilling educational, not financial, goals.
While there was a national day of action on 4 March, the primary focus of the two groups over the last several days has been the communication of their demands to the university’s board. A letter has gone to the university with two sets of demands.
The first set calls for an immediate moratorium on restructuring processes and sale of UvA property, the issuing of a detailed proposal on democratisation and an inquiry by an independent committee into the university’s finances. The students and academics are demanding agreement to these demands by 9 March; otherwise protest actions will escalate.
The second set of demands relates to further democratisation and a major shift away from quantitative output-oriented management of education toward policies based on genuine educational goals. There are also demands for more secure employment for staff.
So far, management has been stalling. It is essentially operating within the neoliberal policy framework supported by the government, which is an alliance of the right wing People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy and the Labor Party.
Members of parliament from the left social democratic Socialist Party, the country’s largest opposition party, have spoken at the protests. So have members from the smaller, more middle class Groene Links and even from Young Labor. The minister of education overseeing the restructuring process is from the Labor Party.
While the focus has been on communications with university management, organising activity has continued. New University protest groups have now emerged at five other major Dutch campuses. Teach-in activities by staff and students are planned for the corridors of the Amsterdam campus starting this week. The aim is to expand student involvement beyond those who have come out of Humanities Rally and the immediate occupation actions.
The Netherlands Trade Union Federation (FNV) branches at the university and other campuses have voted to support the student occupations and the demands for reform. The Health Workers Union has also sent solidarity. Apart from further student mobilisations, staff have started discussing the necessity of strike or other industrial action. The FNV is still dominated by the Labor Party, but there are more and more Socialist Party members in the unions, including among organisers.

Amsterdam students and staff demand self-organisation of universities

The Indonesian Constitutional Court has rejected all components of a legal challenge by Prabowo Subianto to the July presidential election results.
The Electoral Commission declared Joko Widodo winner, 53 percent to 47 percent. The margin was just over 8 million votes out of around 120 million, with 55 million abstentions. The Constitutional Court’s decision ends the legal challenges.
The political atmosphere in Indonesia, especially Jakarta, is now pregnant with expectations and questions. There are two foci for these. The first is related to the kind of cabinet Widodo will form and his first policy initiatives. The second is related to whether the coalition of five parties that supports Prabowo will remain intact. This coalition controls 63 percent of the parliamentary seats. The Indonesian political system is semi-presidential semi-parliamentary, in which the parliament retains significant power.
Widodo is a member of and was nominated as a presidential candidate by the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP), headed by Megawati Sukarnoputri. His nomination was also supported by the Nasional Demokrat (Nasdem) party, headed by billionaire media tycoon Surya Paloh, and by the National Awakening Party (PKB).
Different influences
However, Widodo has never been an integrated member of the PDIP and has attracted support from outside these parties, especially from the technocrat intelligentsia and the NGO development technocracy, comprising former activists. There are various strands of thinking in this milieu.
There are also business associates and colleagues of Widodo who have been involved in his political rise. As a consequence of his relative non-integration with any single political bloc, there is still a lack of clarity about the balance within his government – although it should be noted that none question Indonesia’s general capitalist economic policy framework.
Widodo has appointed a transition team that will advise on preparing for government. This has given hints of the power balance. Team head Rini Suwandi was a former minister in the Megawati government of 2001-04 and is intimately connected to one of the biggest conglomerate groups in Indonesia, the automobile assembly giant Astra. She also heads her own large company.
A second controversial appointment was former lieutenant general Hendropriyono, a close confidant of Megawati. Hendropriyono is accused by human rights organisations of being responsible for massacres of peasants in Sumatra in the New Order period and of being involved, or accountable, for the murder of human rights activist Munir, when head of the Indonesian intelligence service under Megawati. Widodo defended this appointment, saying that the accusations were unproven.
A third appointment was former general Luhut Panjaitan, a business associate of Widodo.
Supporters of Widodo from the technocrat-intelligentsia milieu, however, also claim that Widodo is drawing on their expertise. This milieu was associated with a range of non-party campaign volunteer groups – in Indonesian, relawan – that were active in supporting Widodo, especially on social media. Widodo has called on the relawan to continue to act as a channel of information from the grass roots to the presidency.
Which will be most influential, within the pro-capitalist policy framework of the government – the PDIP, Nasdem and PKB political elites, the big business groups associating with Widodo or the technocratic intelligentsia? This is what observers and participants alike are asking.
Widodo also has recently claimed that he has entered discussions with two parties in the Prabowo coalition: the National Mandate Party and Yudhoyono’s Democrats. These are the two parties closest in terms of economic ideology to Widodo and his vice president Yusuf Kalla. There have been no statements from those two parties confirming discussions.
Policy issues mentioned as possible indicators are whether the new government will further reduce fuel subsidies and thus increases prices and push up inflation (and thereby gain some tax revenues) and whether it will open the property market to foreign investment.
Opposition coalition
The initial commentary from most of the pro-Jokowi (as Widodo is known) media after the 9 July election predicted that the coalition of six parties that supported Subianto would quickly collapse after his defeat.
These parties include Subianto’s own party, Gerindra; the old Suhartoist Party Golkar, headed by Indonesia’s richest tycoon Aburizal Bakrie; the Democrat Party, headed by incumbent president Yudhoyono; and three conservative Islamic parties – the National Mandate Party, the United Development Party and the Justice and Welfare Party.
The chairperson of the National Mandate Party, Hatta Rajasa, was Subianto’s vice presidential running mate. Rajasa also was Yudhoyono’s chief economic policy minister for the last four years and is also his son-in-law.
To date, all these parties have remained solid as a coalition. They have announced that they will use their numbers in the new parliament, to be sworn in on 1 October, to obtain all the key parliamentary positions. They have indicated they will vote to form a commission to investigate the conduct of the presidential elections. There are some indications that they could also boycott the swearing in of Widodo and Kalla in late October.
However, it is not impossible that once they have flexed their muscle in parliament, some of them may be open to doing deals with the Widodo-PDIP-Nasdem-PKB coalition.
In the few weeks since the election, the several small socialist groups in Indonesia have been relatively quiet, judging from their websites. The most visibly active are those that have aligned with the technocratic-intelligentsia milieu who are backing Jokowi. They have been holding seminars and forums to discuss how they can “escort” Widodo down the right path – seemingly of a human rights and welfare state oriented capitalism. It is likely that other Left groups will start to clarify their positions once the various forces in elite politics further clarify their stands.
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Dr Max Lane is a lecturer in politics at Victoria University, Melbourne and regularly visits Indonesia.

Widodo scores presidency but direction still unclear

According to the majority of polling institutions that carried out “quick counts” on 9 July, Joko Widodo won 52-53 percent of the vote in the Indonesian presidential election. Widodo, accompanied by Megawati Sukarnoputri, president of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP), declared himself and his vice president Jusuf Kalla “winner of the quick count”.
Later that day, Prabowo Subianto made a similar declaration based on “quick counts” that put him in front and other data that he claimed he had from the regions.
Quick count tallies are based on a sample of between 2,000 and 4,000 voting booths out of more than 400,000 across the country. The Indonesian Election Commission (KPU) will announce the result of its official count on 22 July.
Since 9 July, there has been no let-up in the number of aggressive statements by Prabowo and his supporters claiming victory. On 11 July, his spokesperson announced that party scrutineers had concluded the count at all polling booths and confirmed a Prabowo win. The former general continues to claim that the quick counts that did not favour him are mistaken or are the result of corruption and bias. Labour union supporters of Prabowo are planning a rally, prior to the official election result being announced, in Jakarta’s largest stadium to “celebrate his victory”.
There are fears, both among Widodo supporters and among democratic and human rights organisations, that this ongoing campaign is aimed at sowing uncertainty and buying time while the Prabowo machine finds ways to pressure and bribe election commission personnel to increase his vote. He has huge financial resources and in some regions the support of incumbent provincial and district governments. President Yudhoyono also has come out in support – raising fears that the police, army and intelligence services may find ways to assist.
Based on the quick count estimates that have given the win to Widodo, Prabowo would need to “gain” at least 4 million votes to give him 50-52 percent.
Whoever the KPU announces as the loser on 22 July is likely to appeal to the Constitutional Court either to overturn the result or order fresh elections.
The old in the new
The election campaign has confirmed the widespread alienation of the population from the existing political elites and parties. The support for both candidates was won primarily by rhetoric and tactics that tried to portray them as new and different.
Widodo’s slogan is “Simple, honest and close to the people”. His folksy style, which contrasts with the 40-year tradition of elitist arrogance by politicians, and the fact that he became a politician after the fall of Suharto, have been key for him.
Prabowo has railed against poverty, foreign domination of the economy, elite corruption and the degeneracy of politicians. On one hand he states that he would make former dictator general Suharto a national hero, indicating his authoritarian political tastes. On the other, he adopts some of the presentational techniques of former leftist president Sukarno.
The people have divided almost equally over whom they trust, although, in my view, there is a slight but clear majority in support of Widodo.
There have been reports of intimidatory mobilisations of military posts at the village level in some areas in support of Prabowo. There also has been a ruthless smear campaign against Widodo, which questions his Muslim credentials and hints that he is Chinese.
The left
No other forces have been able to intervene with a progressive response to the general alienation. The emerging trade union movement has been drawn into the Widodo versus Prabowo polarisation, sowing confusion and division among the ranks of even the more active unions.
The several small left wing organisations have taken different positions. Some have advocated a boycott of the elections on the grounds that both candidates are equally bad. The People’s Liberation Party (PPR), acting with democratic rights groups, played a leading role in organising anti-militarist actions and propaganda, primarily aimed at Prabowo. Prior to the vote its spokesperson, Surya Anta, called on people not to vote for Prabowo.
The Working People’s Party (PRP), the NGO “left” and most of the social democratic intelligentsia and progressive artists actively campaigned for Widodo. They provided the core of volunteers outside of formal party structures. In practice these were divided between those who concentrated on selling Widodo as a reformer, and those who avoided propagating such illusions and emphasised the threat Prabowo poses to democracy.
Widodo has given an undertaking to president Yudhoyono to stop victory mobilisations. However, Widodo is calling on his supporters to keep the closest possible eye on the KPU’s counting of votes from the district to national level. It is likely that Prabowo will continue to mobilise. Prabowo has substantial militias, including some in the unions, if he wants to cause trouble on the streets.
Megawati’s PDIP could also call on its core of traditional supporters to mobilise, at least in some regions. They have hardly been used so far in the campaign.
Tensions are heightening as 22 July approaches. There remains a threat to the democratic space won in 1998. Even if Widodo is declared winner, and even if Prabowo accepts the results, that threat will remain. Prabowo’s coalition retains a majority of the seats in parliament. If Prabowo is declared winner, the threat will immediately be greater. Progressive people in Australia should prepare for active solidarity with all those defending the democratic space won since the overthrow of the Suharto dictatorship.
[Dr Max Lane is a lecturer at Victoria University in Melbourne. He was in Indonesia during the election campaign.]

Tensions rise as Indonesia awaits official election result

According to most Indonesian polls, former provincial businessman, mayor of Solo and governor of Jakarta Joko Widodo has lost a substantial lead to former general Prabowo Subianto in the current general election campaign. The two are now running neck and neck.
Prabowo is responsible for the kidnapping and torture of more than 20 pro-democracy activists in 1997-98. He continues to defend his actions, although he denies kidnapping 14 of those who were disappeared. He is also held responsible for a massacre and human rights violations in East Timor.
I think he has made up ground because he has repeatedly attacked the foreign domination of the Indonesian economy, claiming that it has caused massive leakage of wealth and is responsible for the poverty of Indonesia’s 200 million non-middle class masses.
Of course it is all demagogy – he and his family are super wealthy as a result of the rent-seeking big projects they have acquired. Workers in one of his companies haven’t been paid wages for months.
The anti-foreign domination campaign is cover for his campaign for a “strong state”, which he claims is needed to show foreigners that Indonesia is not weak. However, Prabowo always refuses to specify which foreign businesses or countries he intends to confront, or who are the “thieves and robbers” working with them to rob Indonesia.
In a recent national TV debate with Widodo, he praised current President Yudhoyono’s foreign policy, which aims to have “a thousand friends” but not “a single enemy”. He is willing to say anything to anybody as part of his demagogy. He has signed pacts with Indonesia’s most active unions promising them whatever they want while also promising business groups whatever they want.
Prabowo combines well-known elements of the oratorical style and presentation of the 1960s left wing anti-imperialist President Sukarno with references to aspects of the right wing Suharto dictatorship. Sometimes he appears on stage with one of Suharto’s daughters, who is his former wife.
He attacks politicians in general for being corrupt and deceitful, calls for the end of the direct election of mayors and district heads and says that Indonesia’s democracy is destructive. He is preparing the ground to try to return to the dictatorship state of General Suharto if he becomes president.
Widodo’s campaign has failed to recognise that the poverty the people endure is structural and deep, and that a massive amount of wealth is sucked out of Indonesia by multinational corporations and foreign banks. The reforms he offers amount to very modest incremental improvements to contemporary capitalism.
His appeal has been his image: honest dealings, simple lifestyle, willingness to visit the grassroots and apparent receptiveness to the people. He has called for a “revolusi mental” aimed at ending corruption and mismanagement through setting a good example and through education on morality and character in the schools.
This has been attacked by the Prabowo camp as inspired by communist ideas. The Suharto-era labelling of opponents as communists has begun already. Communism is still formally banned in Indonesia.
Widodo’s appeal is strongest among liberal sectors, who are concerned about the loss of civil liberties and religious freedoms and who are also aware of Prabowo’s past. Prabowo is also being backed by the religious conservatives.
Forty years of systematic and intensive falsification of history following the 1965 terror in which Suharto came to power have caused awareness of the past to be very uneven among the masses. History is like a legend: it just depends whether you believe it or not. Prabowo benefits from this. But the uncertainty as to what he would do if elected also may come into play.
Even if Widodo wins – and especially if it is a narrow victory – the contradiction will remain because the coalition of parties supporting Prabowo has a majority in the parliament.
Meanwhile peasants, workers and students in the Karawang region not far from Jakarta have been in a confrontation with 7,000 mobile brigade police over labour and land issues. As far as I can see, no presidential candidate has made any comment on this oppression.
[Max Lane is based in Singapore and visits Indonesia regularly. He is author of Unfinished nation: Indonesia before and after Suharto and is translator of Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s Buru Quartet novels.]

Be prepared for active solidarity with the Indonesian people

Around 250,000 workers, members of various trade unions, mobilised in Jakarta for May Day, 2014. From all accounts, the mobilisations were similar to those of 2012 and 2013. The demands carried on workers’ banners and posters were for minimum wage rises and the banning of widespread labour-hire practices.
From the hundreds of photos on Facebook, posted by workers from their Chinese made phones, it appears that the mobilisations in Jakarta and other cities were dynamic, colourful and had a strong activist atmosphere. It is a sign that the trade union movement that has developed during the last 15 years remains strongly organised and that worker consciousness remains focussed on issues relating to immediate conditions.
At the same time, various political moves by some trade union officials have set the framework for trade union politics to enter a new phase of internal struggle.
Background
The setting for these moves is the upcoming presidential elections, following the parliamentary elections on 9 April. While the line-up of presidential candidates is yet to be officially confirmed, there have been two people campaigning hardest to gain nomination in mid-May.
These are Joko Widodo, from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (headed by Megawati Sukarnoputri) and Lt-General (ret) Prabowo Subiantio, head of the Greater Indonesia Movement Party (GERINDRA).
Widodo has secured the needed support from another small party, Nasional Demokrat, headed by multi-millionaire media tycoon Surya Paloh. (Paloh and his media group played a leading role in unseating Abdurahman Wahid as president in 2001.)
Prabowo is still to confirm enough additional coalition support to gain the required 25 percent of votes in the legislative elections or 20 percent of seats in the House of Representatives. There are other possible candidates, but these two have been doing the running since 9 April.
Joko Widodo has been leading in all the polls: usually by around 60 percent to 40 percent in most two-horse race polls.
Positioning
Over the last few weeks the various larger union federations and confederations have been announcing or preparing to announce who they support. Two of the biggest union confederations – the KPSI and KSBSI – quickly came out in support of Widodo.
The central leader of the KPSI is the son of the former minister of labour in an earlier Sukarnoputri government. These unions have been less militant in 2013. In 2012 they were both part of the Indonesian Worker and Labourers Assembly (MPBI) that organised a huge national strike. They declined to take part in the 2013 national strike, saying that major wages rises were not yet due.
A new coalition – the Koordinasi Nasional Gerakan Buruh (KNGB) – had to be formed to organise that action. The GKPB has at its core an alliance between the Federasi Serikat Pekerja metal Indonesia (FSPMI) – the biggest and best organised assembly factory workers union – and an alliance of small left wing unions, called the Sekretariat Bersama Buruh (Sekber Buruh). This alliance was not as all encompassing as the 2012 alliance. In 2012, Sekber Buruh was not part of the organising alliance, but mobilised separately on the same day as the national strike.
The FSPMI has been at the forefront of most of the larger mobilisations demanding increases in minimum wages and greater regulation of labour hire. Their red and black uniformed GARDA METAL brigade has played an important role spearheading mobilisations and boosting the confidence of workers in the face of intimidation from employer-funded thugs.
Increasingly, however, the central leaders of the FSPMI, in particular its president Said Iqbal, appear to be playing more and more opportunist politics.
After aligning with the moderate unions in 2012, which then withdrew from mobilising in 2013, Iqbal turned briefly to the socialist and left unions in SEKBER BURUH. From March this year there were more and more signs that Iqbal would throw his union behind a Prabowo Subianto presidential campaign. On a 1 May gathering of at least 50,000 workers in the main Jakarta sports stadium, Iqbal did just that.
Iqbal turned from an alliance with the socialist unions, which he needed to avoid isolation in the 2013 national strike, to the far right Prabowo camp. Prabowo spoke in 2013 against the wage rises sought by the national strike that the FSPMI was leading. Prabowo very recently reminded members affiliated to Suharto’s old party, GOLKAR, that he too was an “Orde Baru (New Order) man” and came from GOLKAR. (New Order was the name given to the post-1965 Suharto dictatorship.)
Prabowo stands for a return to the most authoritarian aspects of New Order crony capitalism. At the 1 May rally, Iqbal gave him the platform. Prabowo claimed to support the Confederation’s ten demands for improvements in wages, conditions and welfare policies. But the next day, a chairperson of GERINDRA stated that the party had a team that “would select which ones could actually be implemented”.
Iqbal’s decision will most likely begin the unravelling of the FSPMI as an effective union. The decision to support Prabowo was taken at the leadership level with no membership discussion. This reflects an increasingly bureaucratic approach.
In 2013, union solidarity activists and educators for FSPMI, Danial Indrakusuma and Sherr Rinn, were expelled and prevented from continuing their education and media activities for the union after consistently supporting militant and progressive educational material and policies.
Then, as the pressure to “Go Politic” increased, a plan for the whole membership to elect the union members who would be presented to political parties as candidates in the legislative elections was ditched in favour of the leadership choosing them.
Several later became candidates for different political parties under a “Workers Go Politics” slogan. Without a proper process of building member support, their campaigns had little impact. None received the necessary vote to be elected. (Two were elected after their parties passed on to them surplus votes from the party list, however.)
Iqbal will face increasing dissent not only from democratic and progressive-minded workers already semi-organised inside the union, but also from workers who have left the FSPMI to join other alliances or to form single enterprise unions.
Inside the union there are also other forces. Another central leader, Obon Tabroni, who was also active in mobilising for the 2013 national strike, is rumoured to have joined the PDIP. He supported the PDIP candidate for West Jakarta governor in 2013. While he appeared on the podium with Iqbal and Prabowo on May Day, he will most likely align with Joko Widodo’s candidacy. As the decision to support Prabowo, was taken behind closed doors, there is no confirmation whether there was a contested vote at the central leadership level or whether it was unanimous.
Sekber Buruh and Komite Politik Alternatif (KPA)
Most, though not all, of the smaller unions led by members of socialist groups or progressive union leaders are to be found in Sekber Buruh. On May Day Sekber mobilised around 20,000 workers – an advance on previous years. A largish progressive union, KASBI, that usually separates itself from Sekber unions, combined in the field with them this year.
Sekber is not supporting any of the candidates and is stressing the need to build both an alternative union confederation and an alternative political party based on the labour movement and other popular classes. (Neither a trade union-based social democratic party nor a socialist party has existed in Indonesia since 1965.)
A committee of some Sekber members and other groups then formed the Committee for an Alternative Politics (KPA) to propagandise for these ideas. The socialist political groups in the KPA include the Indonesian Struggle Union (PPI), the People’s Congress Organisation – Working Peoples Association (KPO-PRP) and the Peoples Liberation Party (PPR). Among these three, the PPR has also been emphasising a “Fight Militarism” campaign, specifically targeting Prabowo Subianto.
For a great selection of photos by Toby Carroll from May Day click <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/sixbyfourfive/with/14101325783">HERE</a>
[First published at <a href="http://maxlaneonline.com/2014/05/05/article-indonesia-the-politics-of-may-day-2014/">Max Lane Online</a>]

Indonesia – the politics of May Day, 2014

The Act of Killing, the acclaimed documentary about the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of communists and leftists in Indonesia, did not win favour in Hollywood. The systematic, activist-oriented promotion of the documentary, however, has helped it impact public discussion of the mass killings of 1965, writes Max Lane.
A single film by itself could never overthrow half a century of indoctrination, but it has – due to the guerrilla activism that has got it around the traps in Indonesia – punctured the ruling hegemony.
Activities and processes aimed at exposing the mass killings and repression – embodied in the scores of Indonesian and foreign books, articles and independent video documentaries about what happened in 1965 – have received an important boost.
It is worth reflecting on why The Act of Killing has reached a wider audience, either directly through viewing or through public discussion, than previous films. Films like Chris Hilton’s Shadow Play and Rob Lemelson’s 40 Years of Silence, for example, were both excellent films, exposing that reality.
Danial Indrakusuma’s prize-winning Kado Untuk Rakyat was also excellent and one of the most informative. John Pilger’s powerful New Rulers of the World, while not focusing on 1965, also made sure the truth was exposed. The Act of Killing’s ultimate political strength and, I think, the reason for it rapidly winning a profile, is that it contains something that no other work has contained, as far as I am aware.
It contains a confession. Indeed, the film is a series of confessions by Anwar Congo, his mates and his patrons, that they carried out the brutal and bloody murder of communists and leftists. In contemporary society a confession is always a thousand times more powerful and convincing than the testimonies of victims, especially where there are no “neutral” witnesses.
In many criminal jurisdictions, when an accused criminal confesses to a crime, a trial is not deemed necessary. The court will just hand down a sentence. Unlike victims’ testimonies, confessions also have an aura of indisputable authenticity. Why would anybody confess to such crimes, if they did not in fact commit them?
These confessions are an important victory for the victims as well. Any suspicions anybody had that they may have been exaggerating their sufferings are dispelled. It was probably worse than they have told us.
The confessions in this case are shocking in at least three ways. First, they are confessions told with no sense of shame or guilt – and indeed with a sick pleasure in the re-enactment of blood-thirsty actions. It is only as a result of the film makers’ prodding that minuscule inklings of guilt occasionally surface, and even then they are insignificant, resulting in no behavioural change at all. This is shocking for many viewers in that what is considered normal morality is doubly violated: no shame, but rather relishing the sadism.
A second way the confession is shocking is that as far as we know, it has been the only confession (or the only one to obtain any profile) in 50 years. In the aftermath of the release of the film, some Indonesian media sought out other confessions which had brief media coverage.
Nobody has regrets; no moral dilemmas were experienced by anybody over a 50-year period. Some commentators point to a moral void or numbness that the loneliness of this confession seems to reveal. It is probably true that there is numbness, but one must be wary of extrapolating that moral failing beyond the ruling elite and its servants.
The third shocking aspect of the confession was the way it was obtained. The film makers’ offer to help Congo and his gang make a film re-enacting what they did was entrapment. The film makers were not just acting as artists, but as underground agents who went behind enemy lines to get the information they needed.
Given the society that 1965 created, with its rigid ruler-ruled power structure, getting confessions would need undercover work. But this means again, that these entrapped confessions were not admissions of wrongdoing; rather, they were mad boasts.
Many – perhaps even the vast majority of Indonesia’s 240 million people – don’t know the true history of this period. This may even be true for many of the descendants of those who were killed and tortured. There has been systematic and deep indoctrination for 50 years through the schools, mosques, churches and media – 100 percent backed by the state and the combined authority of the country’s intellectual and political leadership.
For most of the 200 million people living in small and medium-sized towns, the truth of 1965 is still beyond their grasp. As more books, films and reports circulate, this ignorance is being eroded, especially as high school teachers become more critical. But the task is big.
There is very little that is moving in this film. The scene where Suryono, whose parents were killed in 1965, must help Congo and his gang re-enact their brutality is the one deeply emotional scene. The final scene where Congo retches is insignificant, and hardly meaningful given the scale and horror of his crimes.
But what hits you at the end of the film is very moving. As the credits roll down the screen, there’s a long list of credits for “Anonymous” – all the Indonesians involved in making the film. The puncturing of the hegemony in Indonesia, the successful foray onto the international stage, would not have been possible without “Anonymous”. It is moving because anonymity is still necessary. It is inspiring because being anonymous hasn’t stopped them.
Viva “Anonymous”!
[The Act of Killing will be screening, along with a link up with director Joshua Oppenheimer, at the Radical Reels film festival – part of the Marxism 2014 conference, Easter weekend, 17-20 April at Melbourne University. Visit <a href="http://marxismconference.org/">marxismconference.org</a>.]

Documenting Indonesian purges

Widespread strikes and worker protests took place in many Indonesian town and cities on 31 October and 1 November. On the first day of the strike, the Indonesian police stated that they had noted actions in 50 towns and cities in 15 provinces.
The protesters had three main demands: a 50 percent increase in the minimum wage, an end to all illegal labour hire (“outsourcing”) and a social insurance scheme for all Indonesians.
The actions were organised by a coalition called the Labour Movement National Consolidation (KNGB), formed three weeks before the strike. The KNGB comprised the Confederation of Indonesian Trade Unions (KSPI), the Workers Joint Secretariat (Sekber Buruh), National Trade Union Confederation (KSN) and several other union federations and regional alliances. The KSPI includes the Metalworkers Trade Unions Federation (FSPMI), which has been at the heart of many major actions over the last three years.
A national strike with similar demands was held in October 2012 organised by the Indonesian Workers Assembly (MPBI), which comprised the KSPI, KSN, Confederation of the All Indonesian Workers Union and the Confederation of Prosperity Labour Unions. Wage increases of 40 percent and more were won as a result of that strike, although many employers are still resisting paying up.
It appears that KNGB was formed in response to a breakdown in the unity of the MPBI. While only two of the big confederations from 2012 are in KNGB, the new alliance includes the openly left wing Workers Joint Secretariat. Although the Workers Joint Secretariat can mobilise only small forces, its involvement is a major advance in ending separate mobilisations. The KNGB also involved many local alliances of enterprise level unions, which may have involved members of all the MPBI unions.
It is difficult to assess how many workers took part – probably several hundred thousand. Activists report that in the industrial belts around Jakarta, production was stopped in about 40 percent of factories, despite the abstention of two large confederations.
There was also systematic harassment, especially in the factory belt areas, by groups of uniformed gangs, mostly belonging to the Pemuda Pancasila (PP). This group was formed during the Suharto dictatorship as a weapon of the state. The PP and other groups mobilised to prevent workers leaving factory compounds or factory neighbourhoods to join mobilisations.
In some cases there were physical attacks, resulting in workers being hospitalised with stab wounds and slashes. Later, there were clashes between organised workers and the PP and other similar groups. Police were often present but usually did nothing to stop the PP, although some gang members were arrested.
In other areas such as in Sumatra and Sulawesi, the police attacked protesters and detained some for several hours. On the factory island of Batam, off Singapore, it is reported that the factory belt areas were brought to a total halt.
Recovering from dictatorship
Militant trade unions first arose in the 1920s in Indonesia and were engaged in many important campaigns over the next four decades, including winning nationalisation of all former colonial companies in the 1950s, the repudiation of foreign debt in 1957 and the appointment of worker representatives on the board of management of many state-owned companies in the 1960s. After General Suharto took power in 1965, unions disappeared for several years.
Between the early 1970s and 1998, there was only one union – tightly controlled by the dictatorship and used as a weapon to control workers. During these 33 years, new generations of workers entered into a workforce in which trade unionism had almost disappeared. Since the end of the dictatorship in 1998, and especially since 2000, independent trade unionism has slowly re-emerged.
Key in developing a militant wing have been sections of the FSPMI, a union with a large, well-organised membership based in manufacturing and assembly plants, including the automotive sectors.
Consciousness in these very new unions, at all levels of leadership and among the factory base, is very uneven. There is constant struggle and argument over the best tactics and levels of militancy required. There is not yet a developed practice of strikes (stopping production), most worker protest mobilisations taking place outside shift hours.
The 40 percent participation in stopping production in the factory areas was a significant advance on this front. A crucial technique to achieve this turnout is “sweeping”. Workers from one factory gather outside of factories still operating and call on the workers to join them. They chant and bang on the factory gates.
The practice developed during 2011 and 2012, when workers from one factory would mobilise to show support for workers on strike or involved in conflicts with management at other factories. This inter-factory solidarity over the last few years has fostered an atmosphere that has made “sweeping” feasible.
There has also been an active “ekopol” education campaign, originally hosted by the FSPMI, which has brought progressive labour movement ideology into the factory belts around Jakarta and in other provinces. Although the FSPMI has recently ended these courses for being too left wing, other unions have started to host them.
The timing of the strikes was linked to the wage-fixing process. The minimum wage is fixed annually by municipal and district governments on the advice of a tripartite wage council.
The governor of Jakarta, Joko Widodo, incurred workers’ wrath when he confirmed that the Jakarta minimum wage would be raised only 10 percent. The unions have assessed that the cost of living is such that a 50 percent increase is needed to achieve a decent standard of living. Most surveys show that the workers’ real purchasing power has decreased drastically over the last decade. Other local governments have yet to announce their decisions.
While the media and the new middle class and its twitterdom have generally been hostile to the strike, a positive sign has been the many campus student actions in solidarity with the workers. Human rights NGOS and similar groups have also expressed solidarity.

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Be prepared for active solidarity with the Indonesian people

Indonesia – the politics of May Day, 2014

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