Unfinished business: reform of the security sector in democratic Indonesia

• Donald Greenlees
• Security Challenges

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19 December 2011After many years of being sidelined by democracy, Indonesia’s military men and their fellow travellers in the conservative civilian elite are again feeling confident enough to challenge their exclusion from the political mainstream.

Conservative members of Indonesia’s military establishment are breaking a self-imposed silence to critique the country’s thirteen-year-old democracy and call for a restitution of a direct military role in the machinery of government. It underscores two realities of present Indonesian politics more than a decade into the new democratic era: the fragility of the political system and the failure to complete the goal of security sector reform to assert civilian prerogatives. The unfinished agenda is substantial, and the political opportunity exists to push it through if executive government, the legislature and civil society have the will. Such an agenda could include further institutional reform of the military and police, stronger parliamentary and legal oversight of the security services and a resolution of the political status of Papua. Yet with presidential and parliamentary elections looming in 2014, there are doubts Indonesian leaders are willing to finish the reform task.