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Chapter 3 the New Order As a 'Cultural Process' 136 Chapter 3 The New Order as a ‘Cultural Process’ The formidable New Order strategist and architect of the New Order regime’s early political and social policies, Ali Moertopo, acknowledged the importance of cultural change to the New Order regime when he wrote: ‘The New Order is a cultural process.’1 The New Order regime viewed cultural change as both a desirable and inevitable aspect of its policies and, as a close reading of Moertopo’s quote indicates, intended to direct cultural development. However, the regime could not exercise complete control over the cultural processes present within Indonesia during the New Order era. This chapter explores the ‘cultural processes’, both generated from New Order governance and from other groups and dynamics, from which cultural policy arose. While the official cultural policy programs and institutions are analysed in the following chapter, this is only possible after an exploration of how broader political and social changes impacted notions of national culture, particularly amongst political power-holders. Indonesian national culture, far from being a pre-existing set of attributes, has a temporally changing character. Philip Kitley, in his discussion of Television in New Order Indonesia, argues that the changing ‘national cultural project’ from Guided Democracy to the New Order era should be understood as ‘three entwined processes of cultural denial, affirmation and invention, which together have attempted to map a unitary and unifying cultural identity across [Indonesia]’ (2000, pp. 5-7). Chua Beng Huat and Eddie Kuo similarly draw attention to the processes of deployment and suppression or erasure of different ‘elements’ in their discussion of the invention of ‘Singapore’ and ‘Singaporeans’ (1998, p. 38). They write: ‘In each deployment, some 1 ‘Orde Baru adalah proses kebudayaan’ (1978, p. 36). 137 elements of the past will be discursively suppressed or erased, others accented and given added semiological significance’ (1998, p. 38). Kitley (2001, pp. 12-3) and Chua and Kuo highlight the importance of discourse in the construction of national cultural identities (1998, pp. 37-9). They argue that national identity is ‘necessarily the results of discursive practices that formulate them as objects ... which are ‘called into existence’ by statements that circulate in different discourses, in different spheres of social practices’ (1998, p. 37). While I am tracing a discursive formation through analysis of its constituent parts (in the words of Chua and Kuo, its ‘ontological elements’, 1998, p. 37) and am interested in questions of discursive deployment and erasure, unlike Chua and Kuo, I am not directly analysing the construction of a national identity. I trace here the discursive formation that gave rise to a particular cultural policy. After a brief historical introduction, I examine four ‘ontological elements’ that informed cultural policy. The first three cultural policy informing factors were central to the articulation of national culture from the 1970s. These are: the governmental discourses of the New Order regime; the supporters of the concept of universal humanism that dominated the national arts and national cultural debate in the New Order era; and the governmental uses of ethnic cultural practices. The final section addresses the impact of social changes in the 1980s and 1990s brought about by sustained economic growth. Two themes run across the chapter. Firstly, the notions of deployment and erasure are used to assess the chronology of the period and provide a sense of the changing environment within which cultural policy was produced. Secondly, the argument that cultural policy in Indonesia is a variation of a widespread form of contemporary governance is continued here, but with a focus on the broader governmental discourses in which culture was employed, rather than the specific cultural programs within the Directorate of Culture (Direktorat Kebudayaan, the new name for the Cultural Office)2 which are the subjects of the next chapter. This chapter is focussed on changing discourses and only provides brief examples of their effects on cultural practices. The impact of these changes on cultural policy is explored in chapter four. 2 The name of the Office of Culture changed to Directorate of Culture in 1964. Although the name change occurred before Suharto took control of the government, the different names are a convenient way of separating the two periods. 138 1. Historical Background: The Political Climate of the Early New Order Period The core of the New Order political elite was a military faction that had built alliances with anti-communist civilian groups in the last years of the Sukarno regime. In the months following the attempted coup of 1 October 1965, a broad coalition of groups that had suffered in the political polarisation of Sukarno’s Guided Democracy supported the army’s tough handling of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). Two groups were particularly important sources of support: the urban middle class and Islamic mass organisations (Aspinall, 2000, p. 26). Many university students, academics and professionals rallied to the army. Students’ and scholars’ action fronts (such as KAMI, KAPPI and KASI)3 agitated initially against the PKI and later against Sukarno, providing crucial support for Suharto’s political manoeuvrings. The Islamic parties Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama openly supported the army, and Nahdlatul Ulama, in particular, was involved in the killings and suppression of rural communists (Cribb, 1990; Sulistyo, 2000). The New Order regime was reliant on the support of these groups to maintain power and this reliance was reflected in how the regime responded to the problems of governance it faced when it first came to power. Suharto’s faction consisted of officers of similar age and, most importantly, similar experiences from the War of Independence and the pre-1965 period. The military had been increasingly caught up in politics in the fifteen years preceding 1965 and developed substantial links with various political groups and business concerns. By 1965 the military was part of the political elite, and was deeply involved in politics, civil administration and economic management (Crouch, 1978, p. 22). On taking power, Suharto and his supporters were not primarily concerned with instigating social change. They wanted to consolidate their position of power. The stabilisation of power in the hands of the New Order elite corresponded with the breakdown of the coalition that was so effective in 1965. Opposition began to surface as early as 1967 with student protests in Jakarta (Ricklefs, 2001, p. 354) as the urban middle 3 KAMI – Kesatuan Aksi Mahasiswa Indonesia (Indonesian University Students’ Action Front), KAPPI – Kesatuan Aksi Pemuda dan Pelajar Indonesia (Indonesian Youth and High School Students’ Action Front), KASI – Kesatuan Aksi Sarjana Indonesia (Indonesian Graduates’ Action Front). These groups were formed around (ex-)members of the anti-communist political parties (the PSI and Masyumi) and Catholic groups. 139 class became disillusioned with the economic policies and the level of corruption (Aspinall, 2000, p. 28).4 The Malari riots and the subsequent political crackdown galvanised civilian critics of the government. Edward Aspinall identifies the end of the civilian coalition as 1977-78 with large student demonstrations and public dissent surrounding the elections and parliamentary session (Majelis Perwakilan Rakyat – MPR) followed by state occupation of campuses and a wave of arrests (2000, p. 29). An important tool the New Order state used to assert control was violent anti-communist repression. The usefulness of the violent actions of the army was not limited to the elimination of the politically powerful PKI. Repression provided a deterrent for potential political opposition, and the techniques used on the communists were later used on other political opponents.5 Ken Ward describes the killing of thousands of communists and sympathisers as the ‘fundamental fact of the New Order’ (1973, p. 67). Ward writes: By continuing to inflict extreme penalties, whether execution or imprisonment for indefinite periods, against those who had participated in communist politics, the new government had at its disposal an example with which to threaten critics from all parties and to discourage any from engaging in active politics. (1973, p. 71) Anti-communism also made important new alliances possible in the international arena. Suharto quickly abandoned Sukarno’s foreign policy stance (particularly the confrontation with Malaysia and alignment with China) and pursued economic aid from Western countries. Indonesia’s non-communist creditors formed themselves into the Inter-Governmental Group on Indonesia and from July 1966 began making arrangements to reschedule Indonesia’s debt repayments. Anti-communism strengthened both the domestic and international position of the new regime. Substantial amounts of Western aid were given in conjunction with economic policy reforms.6 The Suharto government’s early economic policy focused on stabilisation and rehabilitation of basic infrastructure and encouraging foreign investment. A significant economic policy change in 1967 stimulated foreign investor interest in Indonesia. The New Order regime reversed the highly restrictive foreign tariff and investment policies of its predecessor between the years of 1967 and 1972. In 1973 the regime began to again 4 Feith identifies the beginning of the
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