LEE: Indonesia is going through a very difficult transition from one-man rule by President Suharto to a form of government as yet unsettled. The media is open and free. Anything you say is immediately published. The result is that Army officers’ reputations have been tarnished, former leaders have been damaged. And now attacks are going on against all leaders in government and in the legislature. [Moreover,] the executive and the legislature are boisterously uninhibited in their attacks on each other. It’s a vast and complex country. There are demonstrations going on every other day. In the midst of all this, they are supposed to run a democratic government? How?
I think it is difficult to hold the situation indefinitely. Whether it will unravel I don’t know. [President Abdurrahman] Wahid’s constitutional successor, Megawati [Sukarnoputri], is not eager on taking over in an unconstitutional way, and she holds the largest bloc of votes in Parliament.
It is improper for me to comment. The Clinton administration was uncomfortable that Megawati was close to the Army. It wanted to send the Army back to the barracks and under civilian control. Whether any president could do this depends on whether he or she differentiates between the Army as an institution and certain officers who have violated the rules. You can’t govern that country without the Army.
If you say that political Islam is now a force in Indonesia, I would say yes. They were not in the seats of power before because Suharto kept them out. He did not allow Islam and politics to go together. [Former president B. J.] Habibie changed that and liberated everything. Now there is a proliferation of Islamic parties, but what is interesting is that in the total vote, they did not gain a majority. They are still a minority, but a vocal and significant minority–well organized. Among them are extremists who went to Maluku and shot Christians.
There is no way of getting them out of the political arena. The hope is that the secular and nationalist parties, such as Megawati’s PDI-P, Wahid’s PKB and Akbar Tanjung’s Golkar–Islamic but secular–will combine. If they do, they would easily form the majority. Can they combine is the question. There is an incompatibility of personalities and styles between the leaders. That is the problem.
I strongly believe that the Chinese leaders convinced [North Korean President] Kim Jong Il and supported him in this move to open up with the South and generally engage the world. Kim Jong Il was in Beijing the week before [the talks began]. I was with Jiang Zemin the day they met in Pyongyang; he was delighted. If you look at it coldly, do the North and China really want reunification? I think not. Because reunification means a bigger South, and [also] China loses a buffer state. Does Kim Jong Il want to surrender power? I think not. But when you begin talking peace with the prospect of reunification, you put pressure on the American troops in South Korea [to] eventually withdraw. If those troops withdraw, American influence would diminish [in the region].
About a year and a half ago I asked a Chinese leader, “Is it not because your economic and social changes have been so dramatic that people have become disoriented? We had a similar phenomenon in Singapore. Suddenly people became more religious. We studied what happened in other countries like Taiwan and South Korea that have had rapid growth, and found that they were also going through this phase.” The Chinese leader said that there was an extra factor in China’s case, one that led to the Boxer Rebellion. Large groups of Chinese believed that they were invulnerable to bullets by their beliefs and practices. So [Falun Gong] can become a powerful political movement. Large masses of Chinese are still subject to such mysticism and superstition.
I don’t know if you can eliminate it, but they will not be allowed to mushroom.
