The Papernas Congress is over, a leadership has been elected and has had their first meeting making ready for a year of “all out” political campaigning. Some activists, however, a still paying the cost of fighting off the disruption launched by the group calling itself Front Anti-Kommunis Indonesia (FAKI). One women member, Andi Nurjaya, had to be hospitalized after the stress caused her to miscarriage. In the North Sumatran town of Medan, the local Papernas chairperson is in jail, was detained overnight after protesting the disruption of the Congress. In Malaysia, activists from the Malaysian Socialist Party (PSM) are still in detention after being taken in at a protest they were holding outside the Indonesian Embassy in Kuala Lumpur.
The disruption of the congress clearly worked in Papernas’s favour with newspaper and television reports bringing the congress to the notice of a wider audience. From other progressive groups, there also have been statements in defence of Papernas’s right to hold their congress. In a statement issued on19 January by Irwansyah, the Secretary-General of the Perhimpinan Rakyat Perkerja (PRP - Working Peoples Association), the PRP demanded that the police do nothing to prevent or hinder citizens from carrying out their political rights. It also condemned the actions of the Indonesian Anti Communist Front (FAKI) and called on the people to unite to resist all forms of political thuggery.
“But there can be no holding back now,” Agus Jabo told me in Jakarta on January 25. “We have built up structures in many provinces; now those structures must be exercised, put to work, in political campaigning. That is also how we will expand and build more branches.” Asked about how the PRD, of which he is also secretary-general, will relate to Papernas, he stated that it would “dissolve” into Papernas. But later he clarified that this was not an organizational or structural dissolution, “perhaps the better word is the one we use among ourselves – konsentrasi – we will be concentrating most of our cadre into activities organized through Papernas. We will be educating within Papernas so that it will can develop the same level of programmatic commitment as the PRD. Meanwhile the PRD structures will remain intact and will be used to assess how Papernas develops.”
Agus Jabo kept coming back, however, to the necessity for “all-out” campaign work. “Protest actions, also what we call now vergadering, these will be the core form of our activities.” Vergardering is a Dutch term used by the anti-colonial activists during the struggle for independence. “These will be large gatherings, mainly indoors, where the ideas of the party can be directly discussed with the masses. They will be more intense and explanatory, aimed at winning them to our politics and raising their consciousness. But we will keep up protest actions, what we call aksi, as the second part of our campaign work.”
In fact, Papernas had launched its first coordinated series of protest actions even before the January Congress. On December 20, a day set aside to commemorate the first women’s congress in Indonesia in 1928, and now strangely called Mothers Day, branches of the Preparatory Committee of Papernas held protest actions in a number of cities and towns around the country. This allowed Papernas to raise its flag in several towns where even a PRD presence had not yet been registered. The protests took place in smaller towns such as Gresik, Mojokerto, and Malang as well as Lampung in Sumatra, Yogyakarta, Jakarta and Surabaya.
“Now the challenge is to repeat these kinds of campaigns throughout the year, to raise the Papernas flag, expand the party, win registration and get ready to build a powerful mass movement.” Jabo explained that between now and March, Papernas would concentrate on dealing with unfinished business from the Congress. A formateur group, elected at the Congress, would select a Central Committee. There would be an intensive effort to prepare the final requirements to formally register as a political party, which is a separate process to passing verification to participate in the elections. “We want to register as a formal party in March. This means consolidating some of our branches, and finalizing formalities for those branches. We will be holding a series of conferences to organize all this. In March, we will hold a mass rally to launch the party and at the same time submit our registration forms.”
Jabo emphasized again that 2007 must be a year of “all-out” campaigning. “This all out campaign will not necessarily be an all-out immediaqte offensive against the regime in the direct sense. It will be an all out campaign to convince the people of our programme. The people feel the situation directly, they suffer it directly, but they can’t yet see the way forward. This is what we must bring to them. This is why vergadering will be the key activity, alongside protest actions.” Convincing the people that the Three Banners for Peoples Welfare, nationalization of the minerals sector (including oil and gas), cancellation of the foreign debt, and the building of factories, of building national industrialization are they solutions will be the central task, he explained. “We have to explain to the people that their problems are a result of being colonized, of the country being occupied by foreign interests. The Three Banners are the key policies we need to overcome this and open up other possibilities.”
These central policies need to be explained at vergadering in conjunction with responding and campaigning around local sectoral issues, he added. “If we are campaigning in the villages, in the rural areas, we will have a lot to say about agriculture, and the same applies for other sectors. Our cadres have to unite with the people at the base and be a part of their struggles” He went to reaffirm the party’s commitment to combining parliamentary and extra-parliamentary struggles. “This defines our current to some extent. Other groups in the opposition on the left are either entirely parliamentarist in their orientation, or opposed entirely to parliamentary work, or can’t make up their mind. This was the key difference that prevented Papernas form developing on the basis of a Left unity front rather than on the basis of gathering together the fragments of action and dissent around the country that feel they can support the programme the PRD has put forward for Papernas.”
Commenting on the recent “Withdraw Mandate” protests and other signs that opposition frustration may not be able to wait for the 2009 elections, Jabo explained “of course, we have never been a parliamentarist party. If things involve in a different direction and the masses want to move more quickly, we will try to lead that process as well.”
The openings for a rise in extra-parliamentary campaign activity continue to accumulate, especially in the wake of the launch of the “Withdraw Mandate” campaign. There are noticeably more reports in the media, especially the mass circulation newspapers, undermining the legitimacy of the President and Vice-President. The latest figure to add the momentum undermining President Yudhoyono is former President Abdurrahman Wahid, or Gus Dur. He, together with a number of community figures, have started speaking put publicly stating that President Yudhoyono’s election was illegal. They argue that he was elected under a 2002 amendment to the Constitution which has not yet been passed by the Peoples Consultative Assembly (MPR). Wahid responded to a call by Yudhoyono for “everybody to prevent moves outside the legal structures for change” stating that the constitutional crisis was one reason for the emergence of the Withdraw Mandate movement or other calls for Yudhoyono to resign.
In addition to this kind of public maneuver by figures such as Gus Dur, the popular press is also giving increasing space to new figures on corruption and poverty. The sensationalist but mass circulation populist daily, Rakyat Merdeka, led its front page coverage on 26 January, the same day as it reported on Wahid’s response to Yudhoyono, with the headline: “Prices of basic goods go up, 14 trillion rupiah corrupted.” (1.75 million Australian dollars) The lead article began: “While prices rise and some of people must eat the worst quality rice, the amount of money being corrupted just keeps on rising.” The story goes on to report the findings of Indonesian Corruption Watch who reported that they had identified a total of 166 cases of corruption involving a total of 14.4 trillion rupiah. In 2004 and 2005 they had identified 153 and 125 cases respectively.