Indonesia is now held up as a role model for Egypt to follow, after Hosni Mubarak's resignation this month. Hamish McDonald explains why.
On May 21 in 1998, B.J.Habibie, who was Indonesia's vice-president, stood at the side of his country's effective leader and president of 32 years, Suharto, as he read out his resignation in front of television cameras and ranks of army brass and ministers, following prolonged street protests.
The guarantees behind Suharto's retreat had been all worked out. The ''old man'' would be allowed a dignified retirement, with no prosecutions for abuses of power, and no more than token efforts to recover family wealth. It was expected by the generals that the way would be eased for one of them to move into the presidency.
But something happened that wasn't in the script. Habibie was supposed to resign too, easing the way for the armed forces commander, General Wiranto, to take power. Instead Habibie stayed put, and automatically became president. The mercurial former aeronautical engineer then went on to make critical reforms that launched democratic contest, reduced the powers of the military, and cut East Timor free.
Indonesia now is held up as a role model for Egypt to follow, after Hosni Mubarak's resignation this month. The example is positive in many respects: three rounds of robustly contested elections since 1998; the secessionist revolt settled in Aceh; some regional Muslim-Christian violence ended; jihadist terror cells rolled up; the economy back to strong growth.
Wild cards
But as the Habibie anecdote suggests, it wasn't running to anyone's plan. Wild cards like Habibie and the Aceh tsunami helped. Progress has been erratic, and sometimes reversed. The country is back in the charge of a conservative former army general, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
The next elections in 2014 will see if Indonesia moves forward, to put Suharto era figures decisively behind it, or the past re-emerges either in the form of recycled generals and Suharto kids or big capitalists like Aburizal Bakrie who built up their dominating positions under Suharto's controls.
Indonesia's lively civil society is offset meanwhile by lack of accountability for crimes and abuses, such as the intelligence agency's murder of the human rights lawyer Munir. Support for the Islamic-based parties has consistently peaked well below levels where they could lead a ruling coalition - but bullying of religious minorities is growing. Corruption and tax evasion is deep-seated, resisting the efforts of reformers like the former finance minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati.
Egypt has had many similarities to pre-1998 Indonesia: largely Muslim but with a big Christian minority and a pre-Islamic history underpinning national pride and tourism; a huge army and domestic security apparatus intertwined with the government; an Islamist underground at once the most potent threat to and the best excuse for despotism; a semblance of free electoral politics with the table tilted to ensure the official party is always the winner; the military and palace cronies given first go to the best economic openings. But Egypt starts on the road to democracy with one odd disadvantage: its army has too much respect and has put itself in charge. The Indonesian political scientist Dewi Fortuna Anwar, a former Habibie adviser and now working for Vice-President Boediono, says it is a combination of Indonesia in 1965 and 1998, the first year referring to the start of the overthrow of the independence era leader Sukarno.
''Sukarno was also overthrown by a popular uprising, but the military was 'trusted' by the civilians to guide the transition to democracy, and we know what happened next,'' Anwar said.
Prime target
But by 1998 ''the Indonesian military was so closely associated with Suharto's New Order that the military became a prime target of the reform movement and had no credibility left to continue to play politics,'' she said. The ''weakened'' military had no option but to swear loyalty to Habibie, once he stayed.
''Let's hope the Egyptians will not give the military carte blanche to form a democratic government, for history has shown the military, no matter how honest and well-meaning, is not a good agent of democracy,'' she said. ''With the military acting as an interventionist watchdog, what transpires will be a praetorian state, even if it is a democracy like in Turkey. In such a situation democracy will never become truly consolidated.''
Another difference is that Indonesia resisted calls from students to dissolve the parliament, even though it was stacked with Suharto loyalists, and got it to enact democratic reforms under strong public pressure.
''This is one of the reasons why Indonesia's democratic transition, though still patchy here and there, has gone some way towards institutionalising democracy,'' she said. ''The old constitution was not abandoned or suspended, but amended wholesale by the sitting MPR [the highest legislative chamber], through lengthy, step-by-step amendments. Learning from Thailand, if making and adopting a new constitution becomes too easy, the next ruler who comes along can simply throw out the old constitution and draft a new one.''
By this analysis, Egypt has already taken a wrong step, with the army in charge of rewriting the constitution and the parliament dissolved. So far, the army is making all the right noises about holding early and free elections, and including a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, fresh out of the cells, in the constitutional committee.
But let's see how the monolithic power structure is freed up too, and how tempted is the winner of the presidential election to revert to the traditional tools of office, ranging from
patronage to media censorship to the torturers of the Mukhabharat.
The candidates may include an army general in a suit, the former nuclear watchdog chief Mohammed ElBaredei, and perhaps Mubarak's son Gamal, though he would be well advised to wait out the initial elections. The Muslim Brotherhood says it will not run a candidate, at least not in the next election.
But how about Khalid Abdel Nasser, the stormy oldest son of the famous late president, who turned up in Cairo's Tahrir Square to protest. A Nasser back in the presidential palace at Heliopolis? Maybe the Americans and Israelis have been worrying about the wrong contingency. Egypt has its own wild cards.
Hamish McDonald is the Asia-Pacific editor on The Sydney Morning Herald.
Pacific Media Centre
