2
were far less catastrophic than prognosticators had feared. Two further presidential
successions have been executed without incident.
1
Furthermore, no longer a rubber-stamp body, parliament has enacted significant
constitutional reform, such as curbing the powers of the president, highlighted by a two-
term limit. Parliament and the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR) will soon be fully
elected bodies; an independent Constitutional Commission has been established with
powers of judicial review; and the military, once the mainstay of New Order power, has
withdrawn its representation from Parliament. As significant, the army has officially
repudiated its dual function (dwi-fungsi) principle, which, for more than thirty years,
justified the army’s intervention in the country’s political and social affairs.
2
Meanwhile,
parliament is debating central bank independence; media licenses have been liberalized,
making the country’s press one of the freest in Asia, if not the world; most New Order
political prisoners have been released; and the constitution now includes a robust charter on
universal human rights.
So, the question remains, why has this progress, deserving of accolades, failed to
alleviate Indonesia’s sullied image in the western media? Why is the country still depicted
in a dysfunctional fashion, as a cauldron of simmering and exploding ethnic hatreds, a
hotbed of terrorist violence and Islamic extremism whose political instability and incredible
corruption keeps foreign investors at bay? In short, I contend there is a marked disjuncture
1
Habibie was undermined by his own party, Golkar, which engineered his defeat in a vote of no
confidence. Abdurrahman Wahid became the country’s first democratically elected leader,
although through an indirect means, by outmaneuvering Megawati Soekarnoputri whose party,
the PDI-P, was the 1999 election’s top-vote getter with 34 percent. After some 22 months in
office, however, Parliament, prompted by a series of executive blunders, impeached Wahid and
handed power to his vice President, Megawati, on July 23, 2001.
2
Moreover, civilians now routinely head the Defense Department.
Convention