Harry Bhaskara, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
We readily acknowledge that Indonesia is a fledgling democracy, but to assess the country's democratic progress risks getting bogged down by its gross failings.
It must also be taken into account that people's expectations for democratic advances shot up as soon as President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono took office as the country's sixth president two years ago.
The three presidents who led the country immediately after Soeharto stepped down in 1998 -- BJ Habibie, Abdurrahman ""Gus Dur"" Wahid and Megawati Soekarnoputri -- all failed to bring about any changes for the better over the span of six years. So why did people expect Yudhoyono to succeed where his three predecessors had failed? Is he a democratic person capable of staying the course of the reform movement?
Early on in his term, Yudhoyono said he would accept a 20-point proposal from the Partnership for Reform to accelerate good governance in his first 100 days in office. This never materialized.
Political reform started to make a U-turn in early 2000, during the presidency of Megawati Soekarnoputri, when the country began seeing new challenges to freedom of expression in the media and the arts.
The respected Tempo magazine found itself the target of legal complaints by a well-connected businessman, and the teen flick Buruan Cium Gua (Kiss Me Quick) came under fire from religious leaders.
Yudhoyono has the task to reverse this trend. Already, his first two years in office have been less controversial than the terms of Habibie, Gus Dur and Megawati.
Or is it that people who were accustomed to the order of the Soeharto years were simply unprepared for the hustle and bustle of democracy, especially under Gus Dur?
In general, Yudhoyono has had some noteworthy accomplishments in the last two years. Some of these accomplishments, like the return of peace in Aceh after decades of war, have earned him accolades from the international community. Another volatile province, Papua, is relatively peaceful at the moment, although a ban on foreign journalists traveling to the province is reminiscent of the Soeharto years.
Ethnic and religious conflicts in the country have eased. The much-feared security disturbances during Indonesia's first direct elections for regional heads did not come to pass.
The peaceful election of Yudhoyono in 2004 stunned everybody, for it was the country's first direct presidential election. But winning an election is one thing, and running a government is something else entirely.
The list of Yudhoyono's failings over the last two years is long. After some time, the old way of doing things seems to have made a return; the authoritarian culture is hard to put aside.
To be realistic, Yudhoyono was nurtured under the repressive New Order regime, and like Soeharto was an Army general. A horse cannot breed a dove, as they say.
It was probably unfair to pin such high hopes on someone who was groomed by an autocrat. The political culture of the Soeharto regime, nurtured over his three-decade rule, is too strong to resist.
The most obvious example of Yudhoyono staying true to his political roots was his reluctance to bring Soeharto to court, even when he was campaigning for president. This speaks volumes about his lackluster attitude toward eradicating corruption, despite Yudhoyono's declarations that he wanted to personally lead the fight against graft.
If his actions happen to depart from his rhetoric, he learned it from the leaders of the New Order regime.
One of the latest examples was Yudhoyono's expressions of concern over the failure to find those who murdered prominent rights activist Munir. Concern is not what people want from their president for a murder committed two years ago. What they want is justice. The least Yudhoyono could do is open to the public a report submitted to him last year by the fact-finding set up to look into the murder.
At times people get the impression that Yudhoyono seems to feel he has resolved an issue once he has mentioned it in a speech.
Legislators are currently deliberating a state secrecy bill, which if passed into law would make it difficult for the public to access information about the state. On the other hand, a bill on freedom of information, drafted by the House of Representatives toward the end of the Megawati administration in 2004, has stalled and has been sitting in the legislature for two years.
It is a disturbing sign of this government's priorities. It would be easy to conclude that its priorities run more toward protecting the government's interests rather than the interests of the people.
To be fair to Yudhoyono, he is dealing with a society that was damaged to the bone during the 30 years of Soeharto's rule, a society suffering from moral decay.
His perceived failure to bring real change so far reflects the extent of this damage, uncovered largely in 1998 when the Soeharto government collapsed. His three predecessors had a taste of this, and now Yudhoyono is learning. One thing he has learned is that the bureaucracy has not always implemented his instructions because of his failure to put key personal assistants at important ministries.
But there are some personal weaknesses as well. The failure to pick 21 members to make up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is one. The commission is meant to investigate past human rights abuses, including the killings, torture and imprisonment of communists or suspected communists after the Sept. 30, 1965, attempted coup.
The House submitted the names of 42 candidates for the commission to the government about a year ago.
In the case of the violence in East Timor in 1999, questions remain about whether justice has been served when only one pro-Indonesia militia member, Eurico Guterres, has been jailed.
Pro-Indonesia militias were guilty of scorched-earth tactics after the East Timorese voted for independence, killing or displacing thousands of people.
Yudhoyono's government is also marked by some ""sacred cows"", cases in which he has been less than forthright. These include the mudflow disaster in the East Java town of Sidoarjo, linked to a company belonging to the family of Coordinating Minister for the People's Welfare Aburizal Bakrie, the spread of sharia-based laws in the regions and a corruption case implicating Justice and Human Rights Minister Hamid Awaluddin.
His responses to these cases will determine whether or not people remember Yudhoyono as a true leader of reform.
The author is a staff writer at The Jakarta Post.
