A step toward democracy

Things are looking up for Indonesia. Late last Sunday, Indo-nesia's first democratically elected civilian president, Abdurrahman Wahid, suspended General Wiranto as coordinating minister for political and security affairs. Wiranto, a key enforcer of former President Suharto's strong-arm rule, has been implicated in the atrocities perpetrated against the people of East Timor when they voted for independence from Indonesia last year. Wahid's surprise announcement was greeted not with a military coup but with an affirmation of support from the Indonesian armed forces and the parliament.

Wiranto himself said he was accepting the suspension, which Wahid explained would allow the general to concentrate on his defense. Last year, in what has been described as a de facto coup, the military under Wiranto had pushed Suharto's hand-picked successor, B.J. Habibie, to call presidential elections. But inves-tigations conducted by both Indonesia and the United Nations implicated Wiranto, as military commander at the time, in the human rights abuses in East Timor and the violence that erupted last September. The suspension saves Wiranto from facing a formal trial before an international tribunal; the United Nations has said it will form such a body only if Indonesia is seen to be stalling on its own probe.

Filipinos are painfully aware that the road to democracy from authoritarian rule is rocky. Indonesia has suffered not just from decades of strong-arm rule but from great bloodshed that has marked changes in its leadership. Generals ruled Indonesia since its birth as a modern nation. But the same forces that are sweeping away the world's autocrats brought Wahid to his nation's helm in Indonesia's first free elections. Since the nearly blind cleric assumed power, there have been questions on how long the Indonesian military will recognize civilian supremacy. Wiranto's suspension and the initial reactions to it by Indonesia's power blocs give an indication of the answer. Democracy is gaining strength in Indonesia.