ABSTRACT
After Megawati had been deposed of the party chair at the June 1996 Medan congress and her supporters had been ousted from the party’s headquarters the following month, Soerjadi embarked on a campaign to consolidate his leadership over the party and start the preparations for the general elections. Soerjadi’s apparent involvement in the 27 July incident, however, proved to be a liability for him, with widespread speculation that the government-sponsored party chair might be prosecuted for his alleged role in the incident. The demand that Soerjadi be put on trial was loudly propounded in the frequent anti-Soerjadi demonstrations which Megawati supporters staged in different places around the country. His attempts to consolidate the party, moreover, met considerable opposition. Many of the party’s district branches flatly rejected the results of the 1996 Medan congress and continued to be loyal to Megawati’s central board. On several instances in the last months of 1996, when Soerjadi visited provincial and district branches in order to consolidate the party, he was greeted by demonstrators who derided him with slogans and threw rotten eggs and other objects at the party chair and his supporters. When Soerjadi, for example, visited his hometown, Ponorogo in East Java, demonstrators pounded on the door of the hotel where he was staying with his entourage, warning them not to set foot outside. In Wonogiri, Central Java, demonstrators tried to stop Soerjadi’s car on the way to a consolidation meeting, but failed and instead went on a rampage, beating several PDI functionaries who supported Soerjadi and attacking passing cars.1
Although Soerjadi on several instances received police protection from the crowds, the security forces generally seemed to take a lax attitude to the anti-Soerjadi protests. A pro-Megawati activist in Central Java even said: ‘Before they [the security forces] chased after us, now they even support our
demonstrations’.2 Both Minister of Internal Affairs Yogie S.M. and Coordinating Minister of Politics and Security Soesilo Soedarman said that they ‘felt sorry for’ (kasihan) Soerjadi, but offered no help for the beleaguered PDI chair.3 The Wonogiri incident, Yogie said, was just a small matter that could be solved by the PDI members themselves. Further undermining Soerjadi’s position, the government then, at the end of November, hinted that the party might be allowed to hold an extraordinary congress to replace Soerjadi, an option which, however, was ruled out a few days later by a spokesman for the ministry for internal affairs.4 In the face of the unexpected strength and persistence of the opposition against Soerjadi, it thus appears that the government from the end of 1996 tried to dissociate themselves from the PDI leader whom they had installed less than six months earlier. Senior government and the military officials probably felt that Soerjadi had become a liability, not only to the PDI, but to the government as well, and the attempts by these officials to distance themselves from Soerjadi was probably meant to diffuse the wide-spread criticism over the biased stance of the government in the PDI conflict. In spite of these difficulties, Soerjadi remained optimistic about the party’s prospects before the election, and he hoped that the PDI would improve its result over its 1992 showing and overtake the PPP as the second place finisher in the election.5
