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Our Life and Times by Kevin A. Barry and
Mary Holmes
News & Letters, July 2001
"Unrest threatens Indonesia's Wahid"
In Indonesia, workers in Jakarta, Bandung, Surabaya and the
industrial sectors of East Java began a series of
anti-government protests at the beginning of June. They opposed
a decree ending the requirement for employers to provide
severance and service time payments to workers who retire or
quit.
Without the requirements, it will become easier to fire workers.
President Abdurrahman Wahid told union officials the decree
would make Indonesia more attractive to capitalist investors.
The workers' demonstrations have forced Wahid to hold back the
law, only for the time being, but a number of unions intend to
keep demonstrating until the law is permanently shelved.
Wahid is facing opposition not only on the streets, but from
other sectors of the ruling class, including the military. The
legislature has already voted a special session of parliament to
begin impeachment proceedings against him in August. Since being
elected president almost two years ago, defeating Suharto's
hand-picked successor Habibe, Wahid has been unable to handle
any of the crises besetting Indonesia, be it the economy or the
demands for regional autonomy in Irian Jaya and Aceh.
Vice-President Megawati Sukarnoputri, the likely successor to
Wahid, has said virtually nothing to indicate her position on
these events. While her party, PDI-P, opposed Suharto when he
was in power, it is now in alliance with his party, Golkar,
along with the military and the right-wing Muslim Central Axis,
to remove Wahid.
Sukarnoputri did not condemn the orchestrated appearance in
April of a right-wing group, the "Anti-Communist
Alliance" (AKA), which set out to burn
"subversive" books and attack left-wing political
leaders. Its titular chairman, Eurico Guterres, headed one of
the most brutal paramilitary squads in East Timor opposed to
independence.
Whoever may succeed Wahid will inherit an economy still
staggering from the 1997 Asian financial meltdown. Capitalist
growth, which soared to 7% in the 1990s, was down to 4.8% in
2000, and is expected to slip as low as 2.8% this year. The
estimated total private and public debt is close to $150
billion, with some 40% of government operating expenditures
going to debt payment alone.
On the one hand, the IMF is withholding $400 million in funds
until the government institutes cutbacks to begin shrinking the
deficit. On the other hand, there are an estimated 40 million
people already jobless, and at least one-fourth of the
population lives below the official poverty line. The
long-service payment requirement for dismissed workers was
passed only last year, mainly to prevent the kind of mass
layoffs, and workers' defiance, that followed the massive
economic crisis in 1997-98.
When the government put a 30% fuel price increase into effect on
June 16, it deployed over 42,000 military and police in Jakarta
to guard property from student and worker protests. This is an
indication of the struggles ahead.
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