AMY GOODMAN: You’re listening to Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman.

Today, Indonesia, the fourth most populous country in the world, stages nationwide elections for parliament. But the term “elections” is hardly the word that one would use to describe what’s happening in the Asian country. All the so-called opposition parties are creations of the government, and the ruling Golkar party, headed by the dictator Suharto, has already announced that it expects to win 70.02% of the vote. Still, Suharto faces strong opposition from democratic groups who are boycotting the election, but as we reported here on Democracy Now! earlier this month, the government has launched a fierce crackdown on pro-democracy activists, including outlawing and imprisoning leaders of one of the leading groups, the People’s Democratic Party.

Joining us from Indonesia to update us on the situation is Medea Benjamin. She’s director of the San Francisco-based human rights group Global Exchange, which is leading an unofficial delegation to monitor the electoral process.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Medea. First of all, where are you in Indonesia?

MEDEA BENJAMIN: I’m in East Java. I’m in a town called Malang, which has been traditionally a base of support for the most popular leader right now in Indonesia, Megawati, who has not been allowed to run in the elections.

AMY GOODMAN: I’m looking at Reuters, and it says Indonesians are voting today in parliamentary elections officially described as a “festival of democracy,” but marred by the worst political violence in 30 years in the world’s fourth most populous nation. On the eve of the poll, which analysts say his ruling Golkar party is assured of winning comfortably, Suharto urged his countrymen to exercise their democratic rights with a large turnout. Can you talk about this festival of democracy?

MEDEA BENJAMIN: Well, it ain’t much of a festival. That’s what I can say. It’s rigged on whatever level you want to look at it. There’s only three parties that are allowed to participate, and one of those parties has had its leader, Megawati, ousted. The elections are so tightly controlled that every single candidate running on the party ticket has had to have been approved by the military, and every speech that they’ve given in public has had to be — been approved by the government, as well. No other parties are allowed to participate. You’re not allowed to criticize the government even if you are a legal, recognized party. Most of the country’s most outspoken critics are in jail. That includes the young student group called the PRD, as well as labor leaders, anybody trying to organize independent labor unions, as well as somebody who formed his own party and said that there should be a boycott of these elections because it’s not free and fair, and he is behind bars, as well. Anybody who has called for a boycott is considered illegal, and there’s certainly plenty of reasons to boycott these elections.

AMY GOODMAN: Name some of them.

MEDEA BENJAMIN: Well, I think in the past these elections have been rigged in other years, but this year is worse than any. And what has really been the straw that broke the camel’s back in terms of a lot of people’s outlook on these elections is that Megawati, as I said, who is the most popular leader in the country right now, is not allowed to participate in these elections. She’s had to be very careful about what she says, because she doesn’t want to cause more violence than there’s already been. But she has come out in a statement and told people that voting is their right, it’s not an obligation, and that she will not exercise her right to vote, which is the only way that she can basically say, “Boycott these elections.”

AMY GOODMAN: Medea Benjamin, give us a little background on Sukarnoputri Megawati.

MEDEA BENJAMIN: Well, she is the daughter of the country’s founding father, Sukarno. She has been leading the party called the PDI. She’s quite a recent — a newcomer, actually, to the political system. It was only in 1993 that she started to head her party. She is not very well known in terms of her ultimate beliefs. She has been very careful not to criticize the entire system. She’s a reformist. She calls for changes within the system. But even walking that very fine line has been too much for General Suharto. This is the first time that he’s really confronted somebody who has popular support because of her father’s name, and he doesn’t like having any real contestants to his power, so he engineered a maneuver to get rid of her last year. And since then, people who were already frustrated with the system because of the tremendous inequalities between the rich and the poor, because of the tremendous corruption that exists at all levels in this country, when Megawati was ousted, that was really the breaking point for them.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the political violence that has taken place, outside the ordinary political violence that’s there in Indonesia?

MEDEA BENJAMIN: Well, since there are really no ways to participate in a political discourse in any kind of normal way, because they’ve all been banned by the government, one of the only ways to vent your frustration is to get out on the streets. And so, the violence is really a condemnation of the tightly controlled system. People get out on the streets, and violence can erupt between the different political parties or between the political party and the government troops. There’s many ways that violence has erupted during this campaign, but I think the root of it is all very much the same, that if people don’t have a way to have a dialogue on the political process, if they don’t have a legal way to oppose the system, then this kind of street violence is inevitable.

AMY GOODMAN: Medea, what are you doing with this Global Exchange delegation that you’re on in Indonesia?

MEDEA BENJAMIN: Well, we came here to look at what’s happening during this election period. We have had to be very careful, because we did not come as official monitors, because we were told if we were official monitors, we would have a government person around with us the entire time. Now, we’re assuming we have government people around us all the time, but we don’t know who they are. And we have been speaking with opposition leaders. We’ve actually been getting inside the jails to talk to people who have been arrested because of their political beliefs. We’ve been talking to all members of the different parties, as well as the unrecognized parties. And we’ve been going out into the countryside and talking to farmers. We’ve been going into the slum areas and talking to poor people. And what we found is a general frustration with the system.

Now, many of the people we’ve been meeting were supporters of Megawati, and they have been in this dilemma about what to do. And I think this is what makes this election particularly interesting, is that many of the Megawati supporters have decided to boycott the election, and another portion of the Megawati supporters have decided to vote for the other political party, called the PPP, which will undoubtedly get more votes this year than it has in the past. The question now becomes whether the government will actually give them the votes. It seems unlikely that they will get the votes they deserve, and that the question of how the PPP and its supporters at the grassroots will react to this kind of government cheating is the big question mark right here.

AMY GOODMAN: Who is on the delegation that you’re a part of?

MEDEA BENJAMIN: The delegation is made up of 24 members coming from seven different countries. The majority of us are from the United States, but we have representatives from throughout Asia and several from Europe, as well. And they are lawyers and human rights activists, a couple of business people, people from the labor community, as well as a few professors and students. So it’s quite a mixed delegation, but a delegation that has done its homework, has a lot of background in the issues. And I think we will have our press conference tomorrow right after the elections, and it will be very interesting to see how the government will react to our findings.

AMY GOODMAN: Medea, you mentioned that there are a number of labor representatives on your delegation. Months ago, you brought Cicih Sukaesih to the United States, a young woman who worked in a Nike plant, and Global Exchange was largely responsible for bringing tremendous attention and pressure on Nike for their practices in Indonesia. Can you talk about the connection between these companies and the elections, if you want to call them that?

MEDEA BENJAMIN: Well, the U.S. companies are here for an obvious reason, and that’s not only cheap labor, but a repressive system. Their profits come from the fact that workers are not allowed to organize in any independent fashion. And the more time I spend here, the angrier I get at the conduct of U.S. companies. They take advantage of the fact that labor leaders are behind bars. They take advantage of the fact that the military is there to support the repression of workers. And they haven’t lifted a finger to say anything about jailed labor leaders, to condemn these present “elections,” in quotes, to call for greater democracy in Indonesia. And I think we should just renew our efforts to push the U.S. companies who are in Indonesia either to make some efforts to democratize the system or get out.

AMY GOODMAN: The presidential task force on sweatshops, though it’s not officially called that, you know, came out with their statement that they’re going to work toward having a “no sweat” label and at least toward developing international labor standards. How does that affect what’s going on in Indonesia right now? And do you hold out much hope for these negotiations?

MEDEA BENJAMIN: Well, no, it doesn’t affect things at all. In fact, people laugh about that task force and say that it doesn’t really matter here, because you have a military system that’s designed to keep workers repressed, that’s designed to keep wages low, and that’s the only reason the companies are here. And so, if the things on the task force were really taken to heart, like the freedom of association or paying some kind of wage that had any relationship to people’s basic needs, the companies wouldn’t even be here. So, I think it’s all pretty farcical, when you get down at this level, to think that the U.S. companies are, in any way, shape or form, interested in ending sweatshops. And, in fact, it’s just the very fact of sweatshops that brings them here.

AMY GOODMAN: The thousands of Nike workers that went out on strike because their plant tried to get a waiver from even the minimal minimum wage that is paid in Indonesia, did you meet with any of those workers while you’ve been there on this trip?

MEDEA BENJAMIN: Yes, we met with Nike workers, as well as many workers from many different factories who have been out on strikes recently. And you get a sense that the workers are definitely getting better educated than they’ve been in the past, they’re not accepting the kind of maneuvers that the factory owners have done in the past to keep them from getting even their basic rights, and that this country is going to experience a lot of strikes in the future, because the workers are being squeezed. Even the minimum wage, when they do get it, is not enough for them to live on. Sometimes they get the minimum wage, and then they get deductions for all kinds of things — transportation to the factory, deductions for the meals that they’re forced to buy in the factory, deductions for other kinds of, quote,” benefits.” And workers are really not going to take it anymore. So, despite the government’s tremendous efforts to keep workers repressed, to stop them from organizing, there are more strikes than ever before, and there certainly will be in the years to come.

AMY GOODMAN: Medea Benjamin, I know you got involved with Indonesia. One of the ways, the routes, was through your interest in East Timor, the occupied country, occupied by Indonesia. I was just talking to José Ramos-Horta, the Nobel Peace Prize winner this year, is from East Timor. And he said that in the last elections, Suharto won in East Timor by 105%, he joked, saying that that, in fact, was the case, but it shows, you know, what a fraud the elections were. A hundred and five percent voted for him, despite the fact that it seems that the whole country is opposed to him. That’s the country of East Timor. Do you see a connection right now, as you’re in Indonesia, between what’s going on there now, these elections, that they’re calling them, and East Timor?

MEDEA BENJAMIN: Well, the issue of East Timor comes up all the time, no matter what part of the country we’re in, because in some ways it defines who is totally outside of the system, is anybody that advocates for self-determination in East Timor. And, in fact, the labor leaders — Muchtar Pakpahan, who is in jail, one of the things he’s accused of is calling for self-determination in East Timor. The students who started their own political party who are in jail, one of the things that has come up time and again in their trial is that they advocated self-determination in East Timor.

We were talking to students at the universities yesterday and found that there is a tremendous division between those who feel that the government did the right thing in East Timor, because they have little access to real information, and those who seek information from outside, in the most subversive places, like CNN, and try to get real news. And those who have news from the outside are the ones that agree that East Timor should have the right to a referendum on self-determination. So, the issue comes up time and time again.

In terms of these elections, it has been noted by a lot of the analysts that we’ve been talking to that the most repressive places right now include East Timor, that the most military out on the streets for the elections are in places like East Timor, that the most fear exists there, that nobody will talk openly about the elections in a place like East Timor, and there’s tremendous pressure to vote for the government party of Golkar.

AMY GOODMAN: Is there a sense, although Suharto is not running, in what’s going on today — is there a sense that he will remain at the helm there, as he has for 31 years?

MEDEA BENJAMIN: Nobody thinks that Suharto will fulfill his next five-year period. There will be — the president will be appointed next year. Everybody thinks that will be Suharto again, but that he won’t fill his five-year term, that he will have to step down during that period. You certainly get the feeling when you’re here that this is the beginning of the end of his rule. There is a tremendous division in the country between how people think that transition will take place. Most people are very anxious that it takes place in a peaceful way. They still have memories of what happened in the 1960s, of mass slaughter. They don’t want that to happen again. And so, the scenario that most people talk about is that Suharto will name a vice president, who will be a weaker vice president than he could possibly be, and that after — that during the next period, he will step down, the vice president will become president, and then the changes will start to take place.

AMY GOODMAN: Medea Benjamin, director of Global Exchange, a human rights group based in San Francisco. She’s been speaking to us from Indonesia.

A copy of today’s show, you can call 1-800-735-0230. That’s 1-800-735-0230. If you’d like to send us some email, you can send it to us at democracy@pacifica.org. That’s democracy@pacifica.org. Democracy Now! is produced by Dan Coughlin, with Lauren Kamato. Errol Maitland is our assistant producer and our engineer; Andy York, our engineer in Washington. Julie Drizin is our executive producer. Tomorrow on Democracy Now!, we will be airing the words of Vandana Shiva. We’ll be talking about biopiracy.