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COPYRIGHT 2001 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS)
The fall of Soeharto on 21 May 1998 marked another radical turn in Indonesia since independence. While the fall of Soeharto has initiated a democratic transition process, it has also caused much misery. Even today the new government under Abdurrahman Wahid, the current president, is still looking for ways to resolve the social, economic, political, and cultural crises affecting the country.
The Indonesian Chinese, inadvertently, were caught up in the ensuing turbulence that gradually enveloped the archipelago. A number of Chinese conglomerates, fearful of an impending economic crisis, started to ship capital out of Indonesia in 1997. On the one hand, it seemed that this news, and the hatred against the coterie of Chinese closely identified with Soeharto, could have been the spark that triggered the attack on the community. Yet, on the other hand, attacks on the Chinese by mobilized mobs in various parts of Indonesia have occurred periodically long before Soeharto's downfall. As such, the May Riots in Jakarta and several other cities were more likely another manifestation of the long history of violence against the Chinese in Indonesia.
In the May Riots, Chinese were killed, their shops and homes were looted and burnt, and Chinese women were mocked, beaten, and even gang-raped. The horrific violence inflicted upon the community spurred the Chinese to pursue various concrete actions. While many wealthy Chinese fled the country with their families, the Chinese who stayed on, instead of remaining passive, formed political parties, support groups, published newspapers, and so on. Indeed, the Chinese have taken advantage of the new democratic climate to advance their concerns and interests.
This paper thus will try to address the questions: what did the Indonesian Chinese do after Soeharto's downfall? With the accelerating process of democratization, how are they using the newly opened space? Lastly, with their newly found freedom, what are the measures the Chinese have taken to protect their community?
I will argue that the Indonesian Chinese have adopted, at least, three different types of responses: "exit", "voice", and "loyalty" (Hirschman 1970). These concepts can usefully map out the Indonesian Chinese's responses. Furthermore, I will argue that too much attention has been devoted to the "exit" and "voice" options and too little to the "loyalty" option even though it is the option exercised by the majority of the Indonesian Chinese.
Theoretical Framework
Albert O. Hirschman (1970), in his classic book, identifies three possible type of responses by customers or members of an organization when the firm or organization is in decline. The first response "exit" denotes the "customers stop buying the firm's products or some members leave the organization" (ibid., p. 4). "Exit", according to Hirschman, is the normal response.
Another possible response is where the customers or the organization members opt to "voice". In this response "the firm's customers or the organization's members express their dissatisfaction directly to management or to some other authority to which management is subordinate or through general protest addressed to anyone who cares to listen" (ibid.). Thus "voice" refers to
any attempt at all to change, rather than to escape from, an objectionable state of affairs, whether through individual or collective petition to the management directly in charge, through appeal to a higher authority with the intention of forcing a change in management, or through various types of actions and protests, including those that are meant to mobilize public opinion. (Ibid., p. 30)
As such "voice" can be in the forms of writing letters, submitting petitions, posting banners or pamphlets, organizing protest movements, and so on.
Obviously, the main purpose of "voice" is to change the situation. Hirschman, however, warns us that there are two types of "voice" that reflect two related situations in relation to "exit". The first is "voice as a residual of exit", which happens when "the voice option is the only way in which dissatisfied customers or members can react whenever the exit option is unavailable" (p. 33). The second is the situation when an exit option is available. In this situation "voice [exists] as an alternative to exit"; thus, the customers or organizational members would stay for a while before they exit. Indeed, "if customers are sufficiently convinced that voice will be effective, then they may well postpone exit" (ibid., p. 37).
The third option is "loyalty". According to Hirschman, this is a unique situation which is "less rational, though far from wholly irrational" (ibid., p. 38). In other words, "loyalty" is not something entirely explicable. Two forms of attitudes are possible: people will actively participate in actions designed to change the bad policies and practices, or, alternatively, they simply suffer in silence, confident that things will soon get better. These seemingly contradictory attitudes are both rooted in a simple calculation about the future. Those who opt to take active steps are driven by the calculation that they have the ability to influence the organization or products to a better condition. Even those who are less active calculate that the organization or products will get better despite the current bad shape. About the latter, Hirschman formulates it in an elegant phrase: people are "willing to trade off the certainty of exit against the uncertainties of an improvement of the deteriorated product" (ibid., p. 77). Although the option for exit is open, both attitudes display a strong belief that the current bad situation is only temporary and that the future will be better.
Thus, we find three different possible responses by people faced with a decline of firms, organizations, or states: exit, voice, and loyalty. "Exit" is certainly the most detrimental action to a firm or organization. "Voice" is intended to ameliorate the bad situation, but if it is overdone, it will not produce the intended result. "Loyalty" gives a firm or an organization the opportunity to become better. As such, says Hirschman, "loyalty, far from being irrational, can serve the socially useful purpose of preventing deterioration from becoming cumulative, as it so often does when there is no barrier to exit" (p. 79).
Background to the Ethnic Crisis
The financial crisis that befell first on Thailand, and then the whole of East Asia, caught all the countries unprepared. Before the crisis hit Indonesia, it was enjoying an economic growth of 7.5 per cent a year and everybody was optimistic that it would soon catch up with the "four little dragons" (South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore) and become a "new tiger". Indeed, the World Bank, a month before the financial crisis, predicted that if Indonesia could sustain an annual growth rate of 7.5 per cent until 2005, gross domestic product (GDP) per capita would more than double to over US$2,300. Indonesia, according to the report, will become one of the world's twenty largest economies (World Bank 1997).
The International Monetary Fund's (IMF) assistance to Indonesia on 31 October 1997 while...
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