Managing Politics and Islam in Indonesia

28 STATE CORPORATISM AND INDONESIA UNDER SUHARTORobison explains that an important aspect of the new arrangements was thatstate-sponsored mass organisations, such as the youth fronts KNPI (NationalCommittee of Indonesian Youth) and AMPI (Indonesian DevelopmentGeneration of Youth), as well as mass organisations outside of the stateapparatus and functional groups were cultivated as support groups for Golkar.For example, two of Suharto’s children, Siti Rukmana and BambangTrihatmodjo, who held senior positions in Golkar, had their own supportingyouth fronts. 23 Both the Golkar chairman and Siti Rukmana dispensed massivepatronage to constituencies in the race for grassroots support. New regulationsintroduced in 1995 brought about regeneration within Golkar. Fealy notes thatthe regulations aimed to displace about 60 per cent of its older, long-servingGolkar members of the DPR with ‘younger high-profile leaders from massorganisations who can maximise Golkar’s appeal to the under-40s voters whoconstitute the majority of the electorate’. 24The changes to Golkar brought about not only a shift in the balance of powerin favour of civilian family interests of Suharto and his close associates. It alsocreated a ruling party that sought to draw upon increasingly heterogeneoussources of support that was, at face value, more inclusionary in nature and, tosome extent, outside of the corporatist structures. MacIntyre argues that therewould most likely occur a shift from the New Order’s exclusionary corporatistframework to a more inclusionary one, rather than a shift to democracy, giventhe mounting pluralist pressures for change in the 1990s. 25 Nonetheless, underSuharto, Golkar continued to preside over a political system organised alongexclusionary lines, which denied the right of Indonesians to organiseindependently and did not open new channels of participation in the formalpolitical system. It appears that Suharto’s strategy from the late-1980s until thelate-1990s was directed towards securing his unchallenged dominance over thepolitical system, and reducing the political influence of ABRI, rather thanmaking Golkar more responsive to the grassroots. It was also a strategy directedtowards absorbing and deflecting the growing demands within society fordemocratic participation and change, by co-opting strategic middle classes intoexisting political structures.Studies by Hadiz, Lambert and others on the New Order regime’s structuringof labour reinforce this general picture of corporatist organisation. Despite ashort period in the early-to-mid-1990s of a relaxation of controls on labour andthe introduction of some reforms, which devolved limited authority to industrysector unions, the overall corporatist structure remained exclusionary innature. 26