The Decline of Constitutional Democracy in Indonesia

The Wilopo Cabinet 301

cabinet period saw the Kahar Muzakar group become further en-
trenched in its power on the island. The trends in the security picture
in West Java gave more cause for hope. However, the Wilopo period
saw no over-all advance in the efforts of the government to come to

full control of its territory.

On the matter of foreign investment policy the cabinet had a

similar record of failure. Its spokesmen repeatedly declared that efforts
were to be made to attract the private foreign investor to the country.
They made frequent promises that the cabinet would issue an ex-

plicit set of terms for the operation of foreign capital in Indonesia,
a statement telling the investor what part of his profits he could
transmit outside the country annually, what his obligations were to

train Indonesian nationals, how long he would be secure against pos-
sible nationalization, and so on. 136 But no statement of this kind had
been issued by the time the cabinet fell.

Of greater importance is the fact that the cabinet failed in its policies
toward the foreign capital already invested in the country. Its weak-
ness here was clearly demonstrated in the Tandjong Morawa affair,
. in which it was shown to be politically incapable of implementing its
part of an agreement with foreign plantations. And if it failed by
commission in the question of squatting on East Sumatran estates,
it failed by omission in the matter of the North Sumatran oilwells.
There the political hazards of taking the action on which the cabinet
had decided were seen as too great. The damaged wells were not
returned to Royal Dutch Shell, but continued in their uncertain status
and very low rate of output.

The cabinet's political failure may be related in part to its exclusively

"administrator" view of its tasks. Determined to demonstrate that it
could succeed on the basis of effective performance, on the basis of
what it was seen to be achieving rather than what it was seen to be,
it acted no hero roles. In fact, its style of governing was peculiarly
pedestrian and unspectacular. Nor did it provide hero roles for its
followers. It certainly did not offer the type of leadership which would

attract those who sought expressive participation in public life. Sim-

ilarly it did not attempt to manipulate political unrest or to channel

aggression to targets outside itself.

!M See the statements of Information Minister Arnold Mononutu, Antara, July 3»
1952; Communications Minister Djuanda, Antara, Aug. 28, 1952; Prime Minister
Wilopo, Aneta, Sept. 3, 1952; the official cabinet announcement of Feb. 27, 1953,
Antara, Feb. 28, 1953; and the statement of Economic Affairs Minister Sumanang,
Antara, March 28, 1953.

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302 Constitutional Democracy in Indonesia

In terms of party politics, the roots of the cabinet's failure lay in
the hostility which existed between the parties represented in it, par-
ticularly between the Masjumi and the PNI. As this hostility grew, the

Wilopo group lost more and more of its influence inside the PNI and
the cabinet's effective political support came to be limited to the

Masjumi, the PSI, and the Christian parties. A new set of alignments

developed, in which the PNI (and the PSII as another government

party) co-operated with various parties outside the government, in-

cluding the Nahdatul Ulama and the PKI and Murba.
This new party pattern was in one sense a sorting out and falling

into place of the hitherto fluid constellation of political relationships.
It put a temporary end to the pattern of the Natsir and Sukiman pe-

riods, in which factions and interparty cliques had been more im-
portant political units than parties or blocs of parties. But the principal
cause of the realignment was a change in the over-all distribution of
power, a decline in the influence of "administrator"-led groupings on
the political stage as a whole and a rise in the power of "solidarity

makerMed groups. When the Wilopo cabinet took office, political con-

flict was still principally between factional groups of "administrator"
leaders. It was between an interparty group of older "administrators"
(Sukiman, Sartono, and the leaders of the PIR) and an interparty
group of younger "administrators" (Natsir, Wilopo, and the PSI), with
the "solidarity maker" parties and factions standing mainly on the
side lines. By the time of the cabinet's demise, however, the conflict
had become one between a cabinet of * administrators and an opposi-
tion in which one group of "solidarity maker" elements had pre-
dominant influence.

Finally, the new pattern was a result of the basic power shift which
came about after the October 17 affair. In consequence of the events
of October, the "administrator" group of army leaders had had their
base of power destroyed. The army, now deeply split, was no longer
the counterpoise it had been earlier to the influence of President

Soekarno.

Wilopo's defeat may be seen, then, as the outcome of two related
trends. One was the growing estrangement between the Masjumi and
its allies on the one hand and the PNI and its allies on the other. The
second was the rising power of "solidarity makers," both in the parties
and in the army.

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Chapter VII

I

From Hatta to Wilopo

i

Some Trends Unfold

IN the foregoing chapters we have discussed cabinets, policies, and
issues. Our focus has been on parties and factions, on the army leader-

ship and the President, and on the changing pattern of alignments

between all these. Now to be considered are some more general as-

pects of the system of government and politics which existed in this
three-and-a-half-year period—and in particular the attempt to operate
constitutional democracy.

ADMINISTRATIVE AND ECONOMIC POLICIES

Between the four cabinets we have discussed there were great
similarities. They were all cabinets composed predominantly of "ad-
ministrators." On the whole, they were strongly oriented to policy, and
all of them were concerned much more with solving practical problems

than with effectuating ideological imperatives. Accepting an "ad-

—ministrator" definition of policy it was basically a Hatta-Natsir-

Sjahrir definition, which leaders like Sukiman and Suwirjo accepted

—with minor deviations of an ad hoc character they concentrated their

attention on normalization, the restoration of secure conditions, and
the establishment of strong, unified and efficient government. In eco-
nomic policy their first concern was to restore and increase produc-
tion, to stimulate development, and to achieve and maintain fiscal
stability. Their desire to restructure the economy was a matter of
second priority.

303

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304 Constitutional Democracy in Indonesia

In broad terms, all four cabinets may be said to have accepted the
fact of the preponderant power of Westerners and Chinese in the
economy. It is true that they established several new state enterprises 1
and that they devoted sizable sums of money to helping ethnic In-

donesians enter certain business fields, particularly importing and to
a lesser extent banking and bus transportation, which had previously
been the virtually exclusive preserve of foreigners.2 They imposed a
variety of new regulations on the large foreign enterprises operating
in the country and made it obligatory for these enterprises to give
their Indonesian employees executive and managerial responsibilities.
They acted directly to train Indonesians for economic leadership
through various schemes. Their labor policies generally favored
unions. The trend of their tax policies, in particular the fact that the
peasantry was now scarcely taxed at all and that a large proportion
of revenues came from foreign trade taxes, placed a considerable

burden on the foreign-owned export industries. A similar effect was

achieved by exchange rate unreality.3 But there was no real challenge
to the predominance of large Western enterprises, predominantly
Dutch, in the estate economy, the oil industry, shipping, and export-
ing, and there was only a relatively small challenge to the position of
the large Western firms in banking and importing. Nor was any major
effort made to dislodge the Chinese from their very strong position in
internal distributive trade, rural credit, and manufacturing. In the
field of foreign trade, Indonesia kept to most of the patterns prevailing
before 1949, selling raw materials in Western Europe, the United
States, and Japan and buying industrial products there.

The cabinets had success with many of the administrative and eco-
nomic policies they pursued. Whereas any attempt to make an assess-
ment of the effectiveness of performance in these areas of policy must

—necessarily be highly tentative if only because of the difficulties of

choosing between the various possible standards of judgment—certain
general observations may be made. The Indonesian governments

maintained their authority with reasonable effectiveness during the
difficult period of the transition to independence and to a unitary

state. They unified and regularized the administration and made it

1 John O. Sutter, Indonesianisasi: Politics in a Changing Economy, 1940-1955
( Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, 1959). PP- 786-790, 947-953.

*lhid., pp. 77a ff., 905 ff., 1016 ff.; Nan L. Amstutz, "The Rise of Indigenous
Indonesian Importers, 1950-1955" (doctoral dissertation, Fletcher School, 1959).

•Douglas S. Paauw, "Financing Economic Development in Indonesia," Eco-
nomic Development and Cultural Change, IV (Jan. 1956), 171-185.

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