ABSTRACT
President B.J.Habibie’s ‘reform development government’ represented a significant, but not complete, departure from the authoritarian legacy of Suharto’s thirty-two-year period of rule. During his short tenure (May 1998October 1999), Habibie delegated to a ‘team of seven’ advisors, within the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the task of drafting a series of new political laws on parties, elections and the composition of legislative bodies. The reforms were to lay the ground for multiparty democracy to be realised with the holding of Indonesia’s first democratically contested general elections in fortyfour years. Consequently, as curbs were lifted on party organisation, unrepresentative political arrangements that had been the mainstay of Suharto’s rule were progressively dismantled or rendered irrelevant. The lifting of restrictions on press freedom opened the floodgates to public criticism and scrutiny of Habibie’s government, the military, authoritarian political institutions and corrupt practices.
