Legacy of Indonesian Reform

As Vote Nears, Three Democracy Activists Deal With Disappointment

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Nusron Wahid has traveled a long way since the student uprising of 1998, only to return to the gates of parliament where he helped topple President Suharto after more than three decades of dictatorial rule.

Wahid, 31, a former campus leader, is about to take his seat as a newly elected legislator. But, disillusioned with the political forces that sprang from the reform movement he once championed, Wahid now represents Suharto's own Golkar party and is campaigning for Suharto's military chief to be the country's next president.

Wahid reflects a generation of student activists who, as reformers, became heroes to their countrymen and who now embody public disappointment in the five-year democratic experiment that followed Suharto's ouster.

President Megawati Sukarnoputri, buoyed to the top of Indonesian politics as a victim of Suharto's repression, now trails badly in the polls. Analysts said she may not even win enough votes to make it past the first round of voting on July 5.

Both of Megawati's main challengers are former generals under Suharto, underscoring the public yearning for a strong figure to revive the flagging economy and crush corruption. The front-runner, Gen. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, was commander of the Jakarta garrison and then the military's chief political policymaker. The Golkar nominee, Gen. Wiranto, was commander in chief.

Wahid, short and stocky with wide eyes and a small, puckered mouth, entered the student struggle in 1996 on Megawati's behalf. Suharto had ousted Megawati as the leader of an opposition party and installed his own lackeys, backed by the military and police.

As pro-democracy demonstrators gathered outside Megawati's former headquarters in central Jakarta, Wahid said, he led a group of students from the University of Indonesia into the streets. The security forces moved against the protesters, killing five people and leaving 23 others missing.

Two years later, on a storied day in May 1998, amid the crescendo of the pro-democracy movement, Wahid shepherded 18 buses filled with students to the parliament grounds. They pushed through the iron gates of parliament, he recalled, demanding that Suharto resign and vowing to camp out until he did.

On the fourth day, Suharto conceded.

"I was so happy that I was yelling," Wahid recalled.

In the following years, Wahid became national chairman of a Muslim student organization, demanding that Golkar party officials be brought to court for their misdeeds.

But by two years ago, Wahid said, he had concluded that the new parties, including Megawati's, were little more than fan clubs for egotistical politicians. He switched sides, deciding that Indonesia's best hope lay with Golkar's established machinery. Then Golkar leaders approached Wahid about running for parliament from his home district on Indonesia's main island of Java.

His family was taken aback. His father, a rice and corn farmer, had been arrested twice under Suharto for political activities. "Are you crazy?" he recalled a family friend asking, pulling him aside during his campaign. "Don't you remember how badly your father and I were beaten during Suharto?" The man parted his hair, baring a scar.

Wahid was elected this spring, and Golkar received the largest share of seats in parliament.