The Military Factor; Indonesia's next president will face tough decisions about new Army reforms.

Byline: Joe Cochrane

Susilo Bambang Yudhoy-Ono still looks like a military man. As he toured the scene of a terrorist bombing last week outside the Australian Embassy in Jakarta, the retired Indonesian Army general and presidential candidate stood ramrod straight, examining the carnage with the dispassionate gaze of a battlefield commander. But looks can be deceiving. Moments later Yudhoyono sat at the hospital bedsides of blast victims, comforting them with the same avuncular gentleness that has made him the front runner in next week's presidential election. His campaign hopes this dual image will help assure voters that a product of Indonesia's brutal militaristic past can be a compassionate civilian leader committed to democracy. "Coming from a military career, I think he understands very well... the do's and don'ts of behavior," says military analyst Agus Widjoyo, who is also a retired general. "His former military career will be an asset."

Given the climate of fear engendered by such bombings, Yudhoyono's security background would seem a plus in the Sept. 20 runoff against incumbent President Megawati Sukarnoputri. But the winner's greatest challenge will likely not be terrorism but pushing forward Indonesia's incomplete economic, judicial and, most important, military reforms. After being humiliated following the collapse of ex-dictator Suharto's authoritarian New Order regime in 1998, the Indonesian Defense Forces, or TNI, have regained their footing and are effectively sidestepping many of the changes demanded of them by the country's pro-democracy movement. The TNI is clinging to its controversial territorial command structure, for example, which for decades has given the military a say in the political, social and economic affairs of this sprawling archipelago. The military has also largely kept its business empire, both legal and illegal, away from the prying eyes of civilian leaders. "The reform movement's largely dead," says a Western analyst who's studying the TNI. "And the [armed forces] are self-sufficient, thus they are independent of civilian control."

Indeed, there are signs that the Army is reasserting itself. Last month an appeals court inexplicably overturned the convictions of four senior Army officers for atrocities committed in East Timor in 1999 after the territory voted for independence in a United Nations-sponsored referendum. Critics say the --acquittals show the military's continuing sway over the judiciary. Some accuse the TNI of scaring the judges by having senior generals attend the proceedings daily. "It was blatant intimidation," says former attorney general Marzuki Darusman, who first investigated the cases. Moreover, the Parliament last week debated legislation that would allow the TNI to maintain its current presence in virtually every city, town and village via the territorial commands, keep its seat in the president's cabinet and have active-duty officers fill certain civilian government posts. Critics say the legislation will embolden the TNI to ask for more concessions and possibly reverse the democratic gains made since Suharto's ouster six years ago. "We have a chance to break away from the new order," says Wimar Witoelar, a prominent political commentator, "so why don't we?"

The answer is simple: history. Since Indonesia's independence from the Netherlands in 1949, successive leaders have used the armed forces as an instrument to crush dissent and prevent the ethnically diverse nation from disintegrating. Founding president Sukarno ordered the Army to put down an Islamic rebellion in West Java and South Sulawesi in the 1950s. Suharto used the military in the mid-1960s to exterminate a growing communist movement. During this time the military installed Army officers to mirror civilian officials at every level of provincial government. The military thus ensured that Suharto's political vehicle, the Golkar Party, remained the ...