GOVERNMENT

Indonesia is easily the most broken-up country in the world, and its sheer expanse and diversity make it awesomely difficult to govern. On the state crest are the old Sanskrit words Bhinneka Tunggal Ika, "We are many but we are one." This line is played hard by Indonesia's leaders, who try to bring unity to the country by invoking nationalistic ceremonies claiming a mystical, divine mandate to rule; and pushing a national fitness program of senam pagi (morning exercise), practiced every morning in even the most remote hill villages. The Indonesian language is another effective unifying force.
     To bring all the diverse people of this sprawling island nation together within the political and geographic entity called Indonesia will always be the greatest single problem facing its leaders. Along with such typical fundamental problems of a developing Third World nation as overpopulation, unemployment, and lack of an industrial base and technical expertise, the widely dispersed group of 17,000 islands suffers from an unevenly distributed population and unequal distribution of natural wealth. In addition, it's a massive job trying to usher a feudal agrarian society into the 20th century.
     The country's gigantic conservatism, the low-key Indonesian temperament, an almost feudal deference to established authority, the docile resignation of the masses, and the help of the army keep the government in power. Indonesians are most concerned that the government satisfies them-food in their bellies, a roof over their heads, clothes to cover them.
     Bali is an Indonesian province. Administratively, Indonesia is divided into 27 provinces, each headed by a governor nominated by a provincial legislature and approved and appointed by the central government. Akin to the U.S. states, each province has its own provincial capital. The provinces are further divided into regencies, subdistricts, and municipalities.

Pancasila
The concept of Pancasila ("Five Principles"), authored by Sukarno during the Japanese occupation, is the basis of civilized rule. The government urges all Indonesians to accept this state ideology as their fundamental political philosophy, crucial to national unity. Displayed on practically every government building, the emblem of the five sila, or principles, are: 1) belief in one supreme God; 2) a just and civilized humanity; 3) nationalism, the unity of Indonesia; 4) democracy, guided by the wisdom of unanimity arising from discussion (musjawarah) and mutual assistance (gotong royong); 5) social justice, the equality of political rights, and the rights of citizenship, as well as social and cultural equality.
Since 1985, all social, political, and religious organizations have been required to adopt the Pancasila principles as their basic platform. Rather than hard and fast guidelines, each regime tends to interpret these five concepts in a way that will further its social and political goals.

THE NEW ORDER

Jakartan Centralism
The government is centered on Java and is also intensely Java-centered. The Dutch established their colonial bureaucracy to hold together the great Dutch East Indies on Java, and as a result it is Java that has emerged as the most industrialized and modernized island of Indonesia. Indonesia's is not a truly representative government; the Javanese are in effect the new colonialists of the archipelago. An elite of perhaps 2,000 Javanese men manipulate Indonesian politics. With only a dozen or so exceptions, they all speak English, drive new Japanese cars, live in Jakarta, and are ethnic Javanese. This is why government development agencies and Javanese business interests could prevail in the development of a mammoth 121-hectare tourist resort near Tanah Lot in Tabanan, against the wishes of local Balinese opposed to the exploitation of the island's oldest and most sacred sea temple.

The Armed Forces
Indonesia's armed forces were founded in 1945 during the revolution against the Dutch. From that time to the present, the army has been the most powerful of all the services. Under the direct control of the president and the ministry of defense, the armed forces consist of the army (Angkatan Darat), navy (Angkatan Laut), air force (Angkatan Udara), and police (Polisi Negara). A central command (ABRI) coordinates all four services. Armed forces personnel numbers 284,000, with another 800,000 in reserve. The military's arsenal includes F-16 fighter planes and A-4 Sky Hawks; work is progressing on ballistic missiles.
The military is the nation's only credible political power. The service provides the country with its president, half its ambassadors, and two-thirds its regional governors. Half of Indonesia's cabinet ministers are retired military officers who retain strong loyalties to the military. The interests of the armed forces are formally represented in the MPR by a bloc of 100 reserved seats. From its inception, retired military men have secured up to 80% of the leadership posts in Golkar.
The army considers itself a sociopolitical force, a role enshrined in the doctine of dwifungsi, or dual function, which calls for its extensive participation in politics and government. Dwifungsi ensures that military personnel permeate civilian life through a network of watchdogs running parallel to the whole civilian bureaucracy, prodding their civilian counterparts when necessary. A typical military officer's career consists of serving alternating stints in both regional and combat commands at the end of which he "retires" into the civil bureaucracy.

THE STATE ORGANS

According to the text of the country's 1945 constitution, still in effect, the nation is a republic, with sovereignty residing in the people. Functions of the government include executive, legislative, and judicial, but there is no specific separation of powers, no system of checks and balances. The constitution provides for a strong president who serves a term of five years. Apparently, this highest government executive may be reelected indefinitely; it's up to the president to accept or reject another term. Suharto was overwhelmingly reelected to serve a sixth five-year term in March 1993. Only Cuba's Fidel Castro has served longer as a head of state.
     Suharto's cabinet, officially called Development Cabinet VI, is responsible only to him. With a current membership of 41, the new cabinet is the world's largest, after China's. Previous cabinets promulgated policies to improve agriculture, as the president has always had a soft spot for farmers. The present cabinet, however, is intent on turning Indonesia into a modern industrial state. The man most responsible for the realignment of the president's priorities is Minister of Research and Technology B.J. Habibie. This German-trained aeronautical engineer has turned to politics to advance his vision of a modern Indonesia that can take its place beside the tigers of Southeast Asia. Habibie is equally committed to developing a qualified, skilled workforce to implement Indonesia's ambitious technological programs. Bali's principal contribution to the Indonesian economy is not as an industrial or manufacturing center, but as a tourist center.
     The president himself is directly responsible only to the Majellis Permusyawaratan Rakyat (MPR), the People's Consultative Assembly. This "super parliament" consists of 1,000 farmers, workers, students, businesspeople, clergy, intellectuals, and military types-a heterogeneous body meant to represent a wide cross-section of society. The MPR meets every five years to select a president and endorse the general policy guidelines for the president's next five-year term.
     Just because Indonesia has a parliament, doesn't mean it's a democracy. Although empowered by the constitution with the highest authority of state, in reality the MPR is a classic rubber-stamp body that rarely meets and never decides important issues. Members must pass an ideological screening administered by the military, and the president has the final right to approve MPR appointees. At least 60% of the body works for the government party; nearly 200 are admirals, generals, or air marshals.
     The 500-member Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat (DPR), or the House of Representatives, is a legislative body that sits at least once a year. Only 400 members are elected; the remaining 100 seats are reserved for armed forces personnel. DPR representatives are not known for their candor and outspokenness. Every statute passed by the DPR requires the approval of the president.
     The judiciary cannot impeach, nor can it rule on the constitutionality of the decrees or legislation passed by the other branches of government. The number of sitting supreme court judges varies in number from 15 and 20; they preside over 300 subordinate courts scattered across the country. The court faces a maddeningly complex set of social and cultural issues relating to differing adat and the incongruities of a Dutch-based legal system. Adequate qualified staffing is a major problem bedeviling the scope and speed of settlements.

Political Parties and the Electoral Process
The government Golkar party, founded in 1964 as a counterbalance to growing PKI influence, enjoys the full backing of the army and the bureaucracy. This all-powerful government political machine, with almost unlimited resources, dominates all levels of government. Golkar represents the armed forces, the bureaucracy, farmers, women's organizations, students, and many other "functional groups" (golongan karya). Golkar always wins.
     All parties must adopt Pancasila as its sole political philosophy. Golkar screens the candidates for the only other currently allowed two major parties, often installing a particularly unpopular character to further tilt the election in its favor.
     Although political campaigns have an exciting, carnival-like, grassroots atmosphere, Indonesia's electoral process is actually heavily managed and controlled. Little effort is expended in educating the people to inform them of their political choices. Indonesians have a vote but not a say. The whole process is designed to demonstrate the government's legitimacy to its people and the world, while avoiding as much as possible any real contest among competing political parties.
     Voting is not compulsory, but government officials in provincial districts apply pressure on village heads to get out the vote for Golkar. Campaigns are limited to 25 days, with a one week "quiet period" just prior to the election. Golkar issues the permits required to hold political rallies, where criticisms of government policies and discussion of religious or racial issues are forbidden.
     Voters select parties, not individuals. The voting occurs in small polling stations in workplaces and residential areas where political loyalties are closely monitored. Civil servants vote at their offices and must ask permission from their superiors if they intend to vote for a party other than Golkar.

LOCAL ADMINISTRATION

On Bali, all traditional political concepts are based on Hinduism. Each of Bali's regencies is headed by a bupati, and each is separated into smaller kecamatan headed by a camat, the executive officer of the bupati. Under the camat are the village headmen, perbekel, who govern an area comprising several small communities.
There are 564 incorporated villages under a perbekel, as well as 1,456 desa adat (common villages). The smallest political unit is the banjar, an individual community ward consisting of 200-300 male householders and administered by a klian (banjar head). The sprawling seacoast village of Sanur, for example, has 22 banjar.

Gotong Royong
Gotong royong means joint responsibility and mutual cooperation of the whole community, all working together to achieve common ends. With origins in much earlier times, this is an all-important institution in Indonesian village life. Bali consists of hundreds of villages, and the tradition of gotong royong is the real grassroots base of political rule.
     Whenever fire, flood, earthquake, or volcanic eruption strikes, when pipelines break down or a dam needs building or repairing, the principle of gotong royong goes into effect. If a rice field must be harvested, all have a right and duty to help, receiving a share of the crop as compensation. If a temple is to be built, all villagers will join in building it, or else contribute money in lieu of labor. Men usually work with their own tools and without pay. Sometimes neighboring villagers are expected to help. If a village follows this communal organization, no household will be without land to farm, work to subsist, food to eat. Anyone in trouble will receive help.
     A number of ancient Balinese customs-three-day cycling markets, subak organizations, unpaid labor required by feudal lords-have their origins in an Indianized Bali preceding Javanese contact, so the practice of mutual cooperation and ritual corvée was already well established on Bali before gotong royong became an all-important principle in modern Indonesian political life. Gotong royong as it works on Bali revolves around thousands of perbekel and klian who coordinate gotong royong programs and carry out government policies. Perbekel rule by assigning friends and assistants to tasks, a sort of administration by relationships. Loyalties to family, village, and friends are more important than self-advancement. The central government greatly stresses this village socialism-it makes the government's job much easier, enabling the country to almost run itself.
     When the local government feels it can bring economic benefits to an area, it sends men out to the villages to explain the advantages, asking the help of the local banjar. In this way, with the villagers supplying the labor and the government the equipment and materials, real progress and a higher standard of living can be achieved.
     By channeling agricultural production campaigns through the local subak and banjar, the government can ensure that the nine regencies of Bali develop harmoniously in all sectors. Under government supervision, vineyards are planted along the arid northwest coast, old coconut and coffee trees are replaced with more productive varieties, high-yield rice strains are promoted, fisheries and other small marine industries are established, and tourism and transportation infrastructures are constantly improved upon.

CIVIL LIBERTIES

Indonesia's military bureaucratic state can best be described as an open patriarchal dictatorship. Don't think Big Brother is always watching. The Javanese are a softer civilization than the North Koreans or Saudis. There's authoritarianism, but not mind control. A citizen or visitor is actually quite inept if he can't arrange to pay, cajole, or otherwise work a way through this system.
The rule of formal, court-upheld law doesn't exist here. Customary law (adat) and the regulations of the banjar cover even criminal and civil cases and are the most powerful social forces of all. Regulations can be stretched more in Indonesia than in the West; problems can often be worked out before they come to a confrontation. Because adat affords so much latitude and reinterpretation, the amount of personal liberty in practice is astonishingly high. Government controls actually felt by the Balinese are extremely limited compared to places like the U.S., where government regulations, laws, and taxes touch every individual every day. Though demonstrators are sometimes confronted with the military, protest marches continue and activist organizations exist. Balinese pro-democracy student groups agitate for human rights and environmental issues. The most recent passionate public protest occurred in 1994, opposing a monstrous 400-billion-rupiah, 125-meter-high statue of Garuda in Nusa Dua.

Dissension and Censorship
Although the Indonesian constitution guarantees freedom of the press and speech, censorship is taken for granted in Indonesia. Accompanying the economic deregulation of 1988 was a tendency toward keterbukaan, or openness in Indonesian society. Some public political protest was allowed to occur and there was some freedom of the press. But the result was like removing the lid from a pressure cooker. Demonstrations erupted all over the archipelago from hospital workers demanding a minimum wage of US$3.70 per day, to conservative Muslims damning American diplomats bringing the drug XTC into Indonesia.
     On Bali in 1994 were vociferous demonstrations, provincial parliamentary debates, and passionate letters written to oppose the US$200 million Bali Nirwana Resort near Tanah Lot, threatening the sanctity and cosmological significance of the ancient temple. This was the first time many Balinese mustered the courage to protest government decrees since the orgiastic communist massacres of 1965-66. Not only was there a placard-waving, shouting demonstration of 500 students at Udayana University in the capital city of Denpasar, but it was actually reported by the island's newspaper, the Bali Post. This was such a momentous occurrence, the edition sold out within an unprecedented eight hours of its release. Subsequent editions of the Post dutifully reported the ongoing debate. It seemed everyone on Bali was against the project-with the exception of Jakarta-appointed Governor Ida Bagus Oka. In a fiery editorial retort, the governor paternally admonished citizens to shut up and accept the inevitable. The result was an even larger student demonstration, demanding the governor resign. This so aggravated the police and military, they charged into the crowd and beat stragglers with rattan canes.
     Everyone in Bali knows the governor's nickname-Ida Bagus "O.K." This refers to his proclivity for rubber-stamping any project that originates in Jakarta. A few cosmetic concessions were granted. The local business owners of Tanah Lot, with their modest streetstalls and simple cafes, were uneasy about the project, aware they would be swallowed up. Glumly they watched as the bulldozers arrived in March 1994 to begin shaving off the topsoil for the cement underpinnings of the mammoth project. The resort opened on schedule in August 1995.
     This time, the Bali Post was thoroughly browbeaten, the whole publishing industry under seige. In Indonesian political culture, freedom of the press is regarded as less important than stability and harmony. There is rarely an exchange of opinions, only a one-way monologue from the government down to the people. In the past 10 years, the New Order regime has banned the publication of over 120 books and periodicals. Pages critical of Indonesia are often blacked out in such imported weeklies as the Far Eastern Economic Review, Time, and Newsweek. Moon Publications' Indonesia Handbook has been unavailable for sale in Indonesia for over 20 years.

Java versus Bali
Bali is a Hindu enclave deep within the largest Muslim country in the world. Most of the fabulous wealth derived from Bali's tourist industry finds its way back to corporate shareholders in the capital of Jakarta on the neighboring island of Java. This results in a smoldering animosity between the two islands, one only somewhat assuaged when the Indonesian House of Representatives passed the country's first Tourism Bill in 1991. This statute allows residents of areas set aside for tourism to become owners and managers of their own resorts by forming small private companies or cooperatives.
     The animosity between Java and Bali is heightened by Java's image of Bali as a spoiled child of tourism and itself as a spurned and neglected older sibling. The relationship between the two islands, though separated only by a narrow straight, is quite complex. Most Balinese attribute their ancestry to Java but believe the Javanese blew it when they converted to Islam in the 13th-16th centuries, at the pinnacle of their Golden Age. The Javanese, in turn, claim the Balinese sold out their culture for tourism. This sentiment is tinged with envy: Bali has been the cornerstone of the country's tourism industry for the past decade, receiving as much investment in tourism as the rest of Indonesia combined.
     Javanese domestic tourists who flock to Bali seldom deign to wear traditional clothing when attending Balinese temple festivals and ceremonies or even wear scarves, a simple sign of respect when visiting a Hindu temple. This is an obvious sign to the local people that the visitors do not acknowledge or respect their religion. This, and other historical and cultural differences, add up to a belief that Islamic Javanese business interests are prone to running roughshod over Balinese sensibilities-since Muslims, it is believed, do not recognize or respect Hinduism anyway. The Balinese at times find it necessary to assert their autonomy to protect, for example, their sacred sites. In 1993, when the national government wanted to make Besakih a national monument along the lines of Borobudur, the local Hindu community raised such a clamor the idea was dropped.
     Another trend exacerbating the situation is the influx of economic migrants from Java. For several decades these refugees from overpopulated Java have poured into southern Bali to work in road construction or in the hotel, restaurant, and building industries. Kampung Java have sprung up at building sites all over the island, supplying the labor forces used in every new project. At the same time, Javanese ruling and business elites build more and more vacation homes on the island. This rapid migration has left little time for adaptation and compromise. Furthermore, the Javanese-controlled government continues to encourage the transmigration of Balinese families to other, less-populated islands of Indonesia. These policies raise fears among the Balinese that their island is being literally usurped by the Javanese.
     The government denies any strain between the two peoples, as the task of governing the world's largest archipelago, with its multitudinous differing religions, customs, languages, and local societal systems, necessitates maintaining an appearance of generosity. Nevertheless, the fact is: majority rules. Local Balinese who've made a career in the government or military have a vested interest in preserving the status quo, repressing dissent, and furthering integration into the national agenda.