Yogyakarta – Activists from the United People’s Movement (GRB) in the Central Java city of Yogyakarta held a protest action by placing flowers on a grave at the zero kilometer point near the Yogyakarta central post office on Friday May 21. The action was used to the express the group’s concern that after 12 years of reformasi, which has been fought for by students since 1997, political reform is now dead.

According to action coordinator Akbar Rewako, over the last 12 years of reformasi or political reform the government has been hijacked by neoliberalism and corruption. Democracy can now be said to be dead, because the regime of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) is neoliberal and his government is filled with fake reformist from various oppressive elements from the New Order regime of former President Suharto.

“Twelve years since Suharto’s resignation, most of what was fought for by the reformasi movement has not yet been achieved. In the field of democracy for example, there is still no ideological freedom, because the 1996 MPRS decree banning communist or Marxist and Leninist teachings is still in force. Many books have been banned during the SBY era”, said Rewako.

They said that under Yudhoyono’s leadership, corruption still continues to take place involving all state institutions, from the presidential office and the House of Representatives to law enforcement agencies. Bank Indonesia (the central bank) and the taxation office have become the most corrupt institutions in Indonesia. Both institutions are crutches for the capitalist system and have become parasites that are destroying the economy and national industrialisation.

“The involvement of SBY, [Vice President] Boediono and [former Finance Minister] Sri Mulyani as the principle actors in mega corruption cases, one of which is the [Bank] Century [bailout] case, has resulted in corruption cases never being able to be fully resolved. The state instead criminalizes officials from corruption eradication institutions [the Corruption Eradication Commission, KPK – JB] who criminalize the corruptors,” said Rewako. (Den)

Notes

Tap MPRS XXV/1966 – Provisional People’s Consultative Assembly Decree Number XXV/1966 on the Dissolution of the Indonesian Communist Party and Prohibitions on Marxist, Leninist and Communist Teachings.

[Translated by James Balowski.]