Bahasa Reformasi: Political Rhetoric in Post-Suharto Indonesia

In Bahasa Reformasi, Arndt Graf analyzes the political rhetoric of post-Suharto Indonesia from the first wave of major protests against the Suharto government in 1997 to the Wahid presidency in 1999-2001. In this period, New Order types of political communication were challenged by grassroots supporters of the reformasi movement with their own aspirations and modes of expressions. However, due to the structure of the newly liberalized political market, such grassroots aspirations were soon to be ‘expressed’, ‘represented’, and finally ‘reformulated’ by increasingly professional politicians. In their version of bahasa reformasi (political rhetoric resonating the reformasi aspirations), concepts of Political Marketing soon began to play a role. As the reformasi period went on from protests against the New Order regime in 1997-1998 to campaigning for the parliament and the presidential elections in 1999, an even more advanced level of professional political rhetoric could be observed, where keywords and humor were employed with great sophistication.