Recently, Wahid doubted this would happen. But a referendum on independence - no, because it will lead to a Balkanization process. What is striking about Sudradjat's remark is its implication that the people who live in Aceh, Irian Jaya, and Kalimantan are prisoners of Indonesia against their will, and that denying them the right of escape via self-determination is therefore essential to keeping Indonesia together as a single country. By this logic, and if democracy means deciding one's own future, repressing democracy is necessary to rescue Indonesia. Indonesians inhabit some 6,000 islands.
Few countries are more diverse.
I doubt that public opinion across the archipelago is as firmly and irrevocably committed to local independence as the army seems to believe. If Wahid underestimates centrifugal sentiment, Sudradjat exaggerates it. But the same question asked in the future under very different conditions just might yield a different result. Those very different conditions, however, imply some choices that Jakarta must make - and very soon indeed if Indonesian leaders are to have any hope of postponing, let alone cancelling, Aceh's rendezvous with sovereignty. First, it is time for Indonesia to consider transforming itself from a unitary republic into a federation of autonomous but cooperating states, including Aceh.