Source/Credit: The Jakarta PostNational
By TJP | National | March 23, 2011
The government is shrugging off reports that retired generals are using Islamic hard-line groups to threaten a coup against President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
Presidential spokesman Julian Aldrin Pasha said that the threats were made only by a handful of groups of people in the vast democratic country.
“We see no serious threat indicating it as treason,” Julian told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.
Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Djoko Suyanto said the government was not vexed by the report.
“Who [does the report] annoy? I’m certainly not pestered,” he said, adding that there was no need to overreact in responding to the issue.
In its recent report, the Al-Jazeera said “senior retired generals” have been secretly supporting hard-line groups to incite religious violence in an effort to overthrow Yudhoyono.
In the report, retired Army Chief Gen. Tyasno Sudarto, a staunch government critic, told Al Jazeera about his support for groups that he said aimed to topple Yudhoyono in a “revolution.”
Tyasno’s name is listed as security minister in a proposed cabinet line-up for an Islamic government. The line-up, posted in a website, was co-drafted by Muhammad Al Khaththath, secretary general of the Islamic People’s Forum (FUI).
Defense Minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro refused to acknowledge Al Jazeera’s report on the generals.
"No, there's no such thing. And such thing may not happen in Indonesia," he said, "We have tools that allow us to monitor developments in the field."
One legislator dismisses the notion that retired generals have the ability to topple the government as a tall story.
“In this day and age, news saying that retired officers conduct coups are fairy tales,” Lieut. Gen. (Ret) Salim Mengga from Commission I overseeing defense, foreign affairs and information, said at the House of Representatives as quoted by tribunnews.com.
He said that soldiers were bereft of the capacity to seize power, as opposed to soldiers fighting for independence.
Salim said that such information did not need probing. “Consider it ordinary information. BIN [the National Intelligence Agency] does not have to be involved,” he said.
He said that officers still active in the military did not dare stage a coup-de-etat, “Let alone retired generals...They do not have the power, their powers are limited to talking here and there,” he said.
In her report, Al Jazeera correspondent Step Vassen quoted Chep Hernawan, the leader of Islam Reform Movement, as saying that the generals had attempted to fuel a backlash against the president by bringing up certain issues, including corruption and, now, the Ahmadiyah religious group.
Chep on Wednesday said his group, networked under the FUI, was “ready to support [Yudhoyono] if he dissolves the Ahmadiyah. If not, then he must go down.”
Ahmadiyah, possibly the most persecuted group in the country’s history, has around 200,000 followers. Hard line Islamic groups, including FUI and the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), have been linked to a series of attacks on Ahmadis in Indonesia.
Purnomo vowed that the military would counter efforts to overthrow Yudhoyono “if there is any”.
One seems to about to take place.
Chep Hernawan said on Wednesday that he was set to mass millions of Muslims in a walloping protest on May 20 in an attempt to topple the President.
“We now have the Ahmadiyah issue, which has turned out to be well responded by all Muslims, we can use this to overthrow [Yudhoyono],” he added.
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