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1997 the Editors Current Data on the Indonesian Military Elite October 1, 1995- December 31 , 1997 The Editors The present shorter listing shows the holders of key positions in the Armed Forces headquarters and the army central and regional commands since October 1, 1995, the terminal date of our last complete listing (Indonesia 60, February 1996), to December 31, 1997. Changes in the top military leadership were announced on February 12, 1998. These included, among others, the change of the Commander-in- Chief of the Armed Forces from Gen. Feisal Tanjung to Gen. Wiranto, the Armed Forces Chief of General Staff from Lt. Gen. Tarub to Lt. Gen. Fachrul Razie, the Armed Forces Chief of Social and Political Staff from Lt. Gen. Yunus Yosfiah to Lt. Gen. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the Army Chief of Staff from Gen. Wiranto to Gen. Subagyo Hadi Siswoyo, and the Commander of Army Strategic Reserve (Kostrad) from Lt. Gen. Soegiono to Lt. Gen. Prabowo Subianto. Whether or not this new leadership stays— and there are rumors about who will replace Gen. Wiranto after he is appointed the minister of defense and security—there will be large-scale personnel changes anyway in the near future, most likely in April and May. We have decided to publish this shorter listing, nonetheless, for a simple reason. As we all know, Indonesia is in deep crisis. As of February 23,1998, there is no end in sight for the current economic and social crisis. Business activities are in a state of paralysis. More than three-quarters of companies listed in the Jakarta Stock Exchange are said to be technically bankrupt. Prices are rising fast. Millions of people are being laid off. Riots and strikes are taking place every day and in many places. Social unrest is mounting. And the government has largely lost its credibility and legitimacy both internationally and domestically. Though we should never 180 The Editors underestimate President Soeharto's staying power—and he is going to be elected to his seventh term three weeks from now—it is hard to believe that he will survive the crisis and make a spectacular comeback to complete this term, which runs to 2003. The end has begun, though we do not know how long this ending will take before the curtain falls. The military will have a crucial role to play in this transitional process, if it finds a way to translate its structural power into political power. The military enjoys a monopoly over state coercive power. Its intelligence apparatus is central in the state intelligence community.1 And its institutional reach goes down deep into the village level, deeper than the reach of any nonmilitary branch of the state. Yet it is unable to translate its structural power into political power and there is no sign of the military gaining its own political will independent of the President. Why is this? What is happening within the military at this crucial juncture of Indonesian history? Let us start with institutional changes that took place in this period. Four changes deserve notice. First, the office of the Head of BIA, the armed forces intelligence agency, was separated from the office of the Assistant for Intelligence to the Armed Forces Chief of General Staff effective on December 1, 1995, and now reports directly to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. It has thus reverted back to the old formula in which the Deputy Head of BAIS ABRI, the Armed Forces Strategic Intelligence Agency which the BIA replaced in January 1994, reported directly to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces who concurrently served as Head of BAIS ABRI. Second, in June 1996, some senior army positions were upgraded, obviously to create more generals to satisfy hundreds of officers from Class 1970 to Class 1975 who are waiting for their turn for promotion. The Commander of the Special Forces (Kopassus) was upgraded from a one-star job to a two-star job, and its name changed from Commander to Commander General. His deputy should be a brigadier general now. The Commander of Army Strategic Reserve (Kostrad) was upgraded from a two- star to a three-star job, while the two divisional commanders under him should be major generals. Third and more substantially, the Kopassus was expanded from three groups and the anti-terrorist 81st Detachment to five groups, each headed by a colonel. Its force strength of seven thousand is to be expanded by 40 percent, though it is not clear whether this plan has been implemented. And finally, the deputy and directorate system was replaced with the general staff system in June 1997 at the navy, the air force, and the national police headquarters, so that now their staff systems are each parallel in form to their senior branch, the army headquarters. In this system, each service chief—the navy chief of staff, the air force chief of staff, and the chief of national police—is supported by a deputy chief of staff (or a deputy chief in the case of national police) and assistants for security, operations, personnel, logistics, and planning (plus an assistant for social guidance in the case of national police). 1 To see the centrality of the military intelligence, the BIA, in Indonesia's intelligence community, it should suffice to recall who head nonmilitary intelligence agencies. The State Intelligence Board (Bakin) is headed by Lt. Gen. (Retired) Moetoyib (appointed in April 1996). The Directorate General of Social and Political Affairs, Department of Interior, is run by a former deputy chief of Armed Forces Intelligence Agency (BIA), Maj. Gen. Achdari (appointed in September 1997, replacing Maj. Gen. Retired Sutoyo N.K.). And the Deputy Attorney General for Intelligence is Maj. Gen. Hadi Baroto, a former assistant for security to Army Chief of Staff. Military Data 181 Table 1. Timing of Personnel Changes A BRIH q Army Total 1995 Oct. - _ Nov. 1 - i Dec. - 2 2 1996 Jan. - - - Feb. 2 3 5 Mar. 6 7 13 Apr. - 2 2 May - 1 1 June - - - July - - - Aug. 1 6 7 Sept. 4 1 5 Oct. - 4 4 Nov. - - - Dec. - - - 1997 Jan. - - - Feb. - - - Mar. 1 - 1 Apr. - - - May - - - June - 3 3 July - 5 5 Aug. 13 19 32 Sept. 2 5 7 Oct. - - - Nov. - - - Dec. 1 - 1 More interesting for our present discussion, however, are personnel changes. As we can see in Table 1 above, the situation has remained volatile (as in the previous years under Gen. Feisal Tanjung as the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces). There took place three waves of personnel changes in the period we cover, in February-March 1996, August-October 1996, and June-September 1997. The first involved more than 180 general rank officers, including 76 army generals, and culminated in the appointment, on March 15,1996, of new Navy and Air Force Chiefs of Staff and Chief of National Police, the elevation of Gen. Wiranto to the position of the Commander of Army Strategic Reserve (Kostrad), and the replacement of Lt. Gen. Moh. Ma'arif with Lt. Gen. Syarwan Hamid as the Armed Forces Chief of Social and Political Staff. Wiranto was promoted to Lieutenant General on the same day when Arief Kushariadi, Sutria Tubagus, and Dibyo Widodo, respectively the new Chiefs of Navy and Air Force and Chief of National Police, were promoted to three star, clearly presaging Wiranto's future rise to the position of Army Chief of Staff in the near future. The second wave of changes in part resulted from the July 27 incident. Its major casualties were Armed Forces Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Soeyono and Head of the 182 The Editors Armed Forces Intelligence Agency Maj. Gen. Syamsir Siregar. Gen. Soeyono, who happened to find himself in bed on the day of the Jakartan riot because of the accident he suffered in a motorcycle race in Sulawesi, was replaced by Lt. Gen. Tarub shortly thereafter, while Maj. Gen. Syamsir Siregar was replaced with Army Chief of Staff Gen. R. Hartono's assistant for security, Maj. Gen. Farid Zainuddin in September 1996. The most important, however, was the third wave of personnel changes which took place in the wake of Gen. Wiranto's replacement of Gen. R. Hartono as Army Chief of Staff on June 6,1997, and which involved more than 300 general rank officers from the three services and the police. This completed the "regeneration" Gen. Feisal Tanjung first referred to in August 1994 to justify waves of reshuffles. This is clear in two respects. In the first place, the military leadership, both at the armed forces headquarters and at the army central and regional headquarters, is dominated by class 1970-74 officers and those class 65 and 66 officers who remain will be on the way out soon (see Table 2 below). This has been a policy, as Gen. Soeyono said in June 1996: "We have to dare go fast. Officers of Class 70 below should have been in place after the general elections [in 1997]. If not, we will be late in regeneration and they will be late in maturation [akan lambat dewasanya]."2 Table 2. The Class Distribution of Offices AMN Armed Forces HQ Army HQ 1961 i _ 1962 - - 1963 - - 1964 - - 1965 4 - 1966 2 - 1967 - - 1968 - 3 1970 1 8 1971 1 10 1972 - 3 1973 1 1 1974 - 3 Navy 4 - Air Force 2 - Police 1 - unknown 4 9 But the class ("lichting" in Soeyono's word) was not the only factor taken into consideration for regeneration. Soeyono also stressed the importance of age.3 As we 2 Angkatan Bersenjata, June 15,1996.
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