Kornelius Purba , The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Tue, 07/28/2009 10:38 AM | Headlines
“Ha ha, ha ha,” I responded when a friend told me Monday afternoon to avoid Jl. Diponegoro in Central Jakarta. According to my friend, a dozen protesters were burning the effigy of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY), as they accused the retired four-star general of being responsible for the bloody attack against the supporters of Megawati Soekarnoputri on July 27, 1996.
“They should burn Megawati’s [effigy] not SBY’s,” I teased the friend while driving near the aforementioned street.
I do apologize to the victims of the 1996 tragedy, which occurred in the early hours of July 27, for they may conclude that I am not sensitive to their suffering. Five people were killed, 23 disappeared (some of whom are still missing to date), 144 were injured and 136 were jailed at the time.
I felt very angry, but powerless against her Monday. Angry, because she should have stopped people from burning SBY’s effigy and suggested instead that they should “burn myself [in effigy]”. She has a moral obligation to apologize to the victims of the riot for her persistent refusal to get justice for them. Powerless, because like millions of other Indonesians, I still cannot say “no” to her in the general election, although we are very disappointed, upset even, with her selfishness and mediocre capability as a leader.
Let me clarify my position first. I did vote for Megawati in the July 8 presidential election, and for her Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) in the April 9 legislative election. I voted for her in the 2004 second round presidential election, although not her party. In 1999, I even forced my wife to opt for her in the legislative election.
Thirteen years ago President Soeharto ordered his generals – at that time, as a one-star general, SBY held the second-highest position in the Jakarta Military Command – to do whatever necessary to disperse the die-hard supporters of the daughter of the country’s first president Sukarno, who were defiantly camped out at the office of the then Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) headquarters on Jl. Diponegoro, on Saturday, July 27, 1996. Soeharto had ousted Megawati as the party’s chairwoman a few weeks earlier. Her popularity was rising, because she was a perfect unifying factor among anti-Soeharto activists.
As a reporter, I covered the riot, as a perfect coward, I quickly ran away from the scene. But I did have
a very good excuse, as even Megawati stayed at her comfortable residence in Kebagusan, South Jakarta, for that whole day. She told me (a pretext, perhaps) her supporters prohibited her to go to the
riot scene. Her camp was scheduled to submit her case on the Tuesday. Did she remember the victims?
Trust me, the military atrocities against her supporters had very likely been deleted from her memory.
Two years later, Soeharto was forced to end his 32-year ironfisted rule, after a serious economic crisis hit the country and severe riots hit Jakarta and other cities in May 1998. In 1999, Megawati’s PDI-P won 33,689,073 votes (including mine) or 33.3 percent of the total votes. Many of us believed her the savior of
this nation.
When she was vice president from October 1999 until July 2001, and then president until October 2004, she had the perfect opportunity to repay her debt to those who had sacrificed their lives and bodies as proof of their loyalty to her. But she had completely erased the tragedy from her memory.
In his book Menggugat Megawati (Suing Megawati), Agus Siswanto, one of the riot victims, quoted Megawati, when she met with a group of victims in October 2000, as saying, “Please tell your friends that I never asked you to support me. I never forced you to maintain the DPP PDI (Indonesian Democratic Party headquarters)”.
On Monday, Megawati would have been busy finalizing her lawsuit against the General Elections Commission (KPU) and the government. Her camp was scheduled to file the lawsuit with the Constitutional Court (MK) on Tuesday. Megawati still cannot even accept her embarrassing defeat to SBY in the 2004 presidential election.
I wish I could bring her a mirror on Monday and ask her, “Ibu, please look into this mirror”.
I wish she would answer; “Now I can understand why so many of my loyal supporters have abandoned me.”
And, if she asked me to look into the same mirror, I wish I could tell her, “I really am an idiot for giving my vote to you”.
source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/
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