IT'S probably not fair to compare what's happening in Indonesia after more than three decades of iron rule by one political party with life in Hawaii after more than three decades of iron rule by one political party. But let's do it anyway. Getting to the
Suharto the problemIndonesia's economy is wrecked, the government is completely non-responsive and, as Mel Brooks would say, "the peasants are revolting."
In Hawaii, the economy is wrecked, the government is non-responsive and, so far, a majority of peasants are merely revolted, not revolting.
We know that small-business owners have become revolting to the governor and people like House Speaker Joe Souki. Unlike President Suharto of Indonesia, Souki has no infantry to speak of, so the small-business peasants have been free to rouse their rabble around the state Capitol whenever the mood strikes them.
Nevertheless, Hawaii's leaders and the Suharto government have a lot in common. They both have ignored the decay of their respective societies and ignored it with a vengeance. Instead of real reform, they have offered up raft-loads of verbiage and chosen to suppress or belittle anyone who didn't tow the party line.
They've tried to create reality by proclamation, a sort of "The Emperor Has No Clothes" line of government. Except the way they see it, the emperor is dressed to the nines and ready to boogie. How else can you explain Gov. Cayetano grading the last legislative session a B-plus when just about everyone in their right mind, and quite a few people in their wrong minds, thought the session was about as productive as the Russian Duma after a vodka-tasting festival.
The main difference between Indonesia and Hawaii is that in Indonesia, you can still buy a papaya for under a buck. You can then throw that papaya at one of the many tanks positioned around Jakarta waiting in a Tiananmen Square-type of configuration to gently ease the peasants' minds back on the right track, that track being the one that leads to understanding that dissent will not be tolerated, or, in the alternative, crushed. (By the time you read this, some 1 million Indonesians were to have tried to march. I will have to report back on how many of them became tread-meal.)
Government officials in Hawaii don't crush dissent, they deprecate, sneer at, scorn and pooh-pooh dissent, especially criticism from the news media, which, as of this writing, they don't control.
The official line is that things aren't as bad in Hawaii as everyone thinks or wouldn't be if the media would just shut up and quit being so negative all the time. The media see the glass as half-empty instead of half-full, they say. I don't know what glass they're talking about, but if it is a metaphoric-type glass that is supposed to represent the relative economic future of the state, based on the current poverty of ideas, well, THAT glass not only is empty, but it's been licked clean and flung into the fireplace.
The thing is, Suharto hasn't always been a self-absorbed idiot hell-bent on maintaining power at any expense. It's just that, well, heck, you know, power's kind of cool. It's cushy at the top. There's money to be made, friends to be taken care of and fun to be had. After 30 or more years of uninterrupted power, the original good intentions that launched a person, or, say, a political party in a small Pacific state, into power become a vague, ethereal memory.
That these kinds of regimes inevitably come to an abrupt, if not fairly dramatic conclusion, is a historical given (See: Ferdinand Marcos, Shah of Iran, Peewee Herman, et al).
Whether a majority of Hawaii's peasants will become revolting to the party in power remains to be seen.
Charles Memminger, winner of
National Society of Newspaper Columnists
awards in 1994 and 1992, writes "Honolulu Lite"
Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Write to him at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, 96802
or send E-mail to charley@nomayo.com or
71224.113@compuserve.com.
The Honolulu Lite online archive is at:
http://starbulletin.com/lite