How Indonesia has changed under President SBY, and what it means for the region and the world - Institute of International Strategic Studies (IISS)

 

 

 

Transcript of Presentation

 

Dr. Dino Patti Djalal

(Presidential Spokesperson / special staff for International Relations of President SBY)

 

“How Indonesia has changed under President SBY, and what it means for the region and the world”

 

at a Speakers Forum organized by

 

Institute of International Strategic Studies (IISS)

Four Seasons Hotel, Singapore

7 October 2008, 10:30-12:30

 

 

Request for publication by IISS (Journal Survival)

 

 

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Begin transcript :

 

OPENING

Thank you, Tim, for that introduction.

I thank the IISS for inviting me to speak at this prestigious forum.  It is an honor for me. 

I also want to introduce my good friend Kemal from the Indonesian Embassy here. If you have problems with your visa, if you are craving for Indonesian food, and just need a place to stay, just knock on his door. (laugh)

I congratulate Singapore for the success of F1, which certainly adds to Singapore’s position as an international, modern and developed city state.

            I think we also have a stake in that success because there is no haze that we send to Singapore this year, as we promised. (laugh)

 

ON SINGAPORE

            Tim has explained to you my day job as Spokesman of the President and Special Staff on Foreign Relations.

            But I also have another hat that I wear and that is the fact that I was actually a resident of Singapore. I grew up at Rebecca Road, went to school at Holland Village, and I played with kids who lived at Maryland Drive. I spent the best part of my childhood in Singapore. My dad was working at the Embassy here during a very difficult time in the 70’s.

            This was a time when Indonesia – Singapore relations were just beginning to form. There were uneasy sensitivities after the execution of the 2 Indonesian marines. It was a very challenging time for us, diplomatically and politically.

            But we made many friends here. I remember my father grounded me for a week, because I invited kids from the kampung nearby to play football in our garden. And he returned home to find all his flowers, all his garden fully destroyed by the kampung kids and by me and my brother.  So he grounded us for a week.

            Singapore has changed tremendously since then. It is now 100% urbanized I think. There is no more kampung today. But the childhood that I spent here remains with me to this day.

            I am very glad to be here today to share some thoughts on how Indonesia has changed in recent years, especially under President SBY, whom I have had the pleasure to serve under.  And I realized that in doing this, I am expected to give some kind of score-card of where Indonesia is today, which I will do.

 

CHANGE 

            The concept of “change” is of course a concept that has been overused liberally by politicians, both incumbents and oppositions, all over the world. This is mainly because that is what the voters want to hear and see.

            Indonesians have been talking about “change” for over a decade now.  When they clamour for democracy or for “reformasi” or for governance, they are actually expressing hopes for change. But “change” is a concept that often suffers from vague rhetoric and abstract generalities. And the politicians who are supposed to deliver and give details to such change, sometimes shy away from doing so.

            So today, 10 years since President Suharto has stepped down and the era of “reformasi” took off, the question of just how much Indonesia has “changed” and how substantively does need to be asked.

 

REFORMASI QUESTIONED

            I say this because I remember in 2001, my good friend Singapore’s Ambassador Chan Heng-Chee in Singapore -- who was in Washington DC at the same time I was posted there, she has been there for 10 years now, and I think she will be there for another 20 years (laugh) -- she asked me in 2001 whether Indonesia was undergoing a real democratic transition or was it just “regime change” ? She asked this because things were not so different than before, except with new players and new faces.  So she asked “was this just regime change or real transition?”

            This was also the time when some Indonesians, while yearning for change, kept inventing excuses and arguing paradoxically that Indonesia was “too large, too complex, too complicated, too fragile, too risky” for a major transformation.

            And indeed in the early days of “reformasi”, I remember that Indonesia was not in a happy place.  Every downturn was replaced by another. This was the time when Thomas Friedman called Indonesia a “messy state – too large to work, too important to fail”. 

Adam Schwarz, in his excellent book written in the year 2000, said that Indonesia was just “a nation in waiting”, and pointed out that “Indonesia is short of time. Indonesia is attempting nothing less than a revolutionary shift in its political orientation”.  He concluded : “all that one can confidently say that Indonesia’s short term prospect is that they are uncertain”.

            Another Indonesianist, my good friend Professor Don Emerson who now teaches at Stanford University, also said that during this time, “democracy I grant development”.

            And Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew in his memoir published in 2000, during the presidency of Gus Dur, did state that Indonesia was under a “sea change”. But he stops short of saying whether this “sea change” are for the better or for the worse.  Perhaps because at that time it was very hard to tell.

            The story of Indonesia in the early years, after the fall of Surharto, was a story of doubt, of uncertainty, of concern, and of volatility.

            When I was posted at the Embassy at Washington DC—where I became good friends with the Skip Boyce who is sitting right there--I did all I could to defend, and sell, and polish Indonesia’s image.  It was quite a hard sell. But privately, I was also worried.  I was worried about the future of Indonesia. I was worried if Indonesia would hold together. I was worried about the prospect of democracy, whether it had the capacity to couple with stability and governance and so on and so on.

            And the talk, not just in Washington, but also in many places, perhaps also in Singapore, amongst policymakers and academics, even amongst friends of Indonesia, was that Indonesia was possibly on the verge of being “Balkanized”. Balkanization !  Just one more screw to undo, either in Aceh or Papua or other places and the country will unravel, just like the Soviet Union, just like in Yugoslavia.

            And why not ?  Between 1998 and 2001, Indonesia had 4 Presidents : from Suharto, to Habibie, to Gus Dur, to Megawati. That’s an average of 1 president per year, and this is a country, which previously in 52 years only had 2 presidents.

            The picture certainly did not look good. The economy was struggling, the leadership was in disarray, democracy was having a hard time setting foot, governance was weak, confidence was low, radicalism was rising, ethnic conflicts – old and new -- were rampant, and East Timor has separated from Indonesia.

            There was so much questions, and doubts, and concerns, and ill feeling on Indonesia that Secretary of State Colin Powell once said that Indonesia was “the most misunderstood country in the world”.

 

A DIFFERENT INDONESIA  TODAY

            Well, lets fast forward !

Today, Indonesia is a very different place. Many of the problems remain the same. Many of the conditions and statistics have undergone incremental improvement. Old players and new players come and go.  But the political context under which all these are taking place have fundamentally changed.

            The constitution of 1945, previously regarded as sacred and unchangeable, has been amended significantly. The rules have changed, the norms have evolved, the relationships between the state and citizens have also changed. And Indonesians now see themselves in a lens that is different than before.

            There are many opinions that can reflect this today, but I chose 3 of the most recent ones.

            Two Indonesianists, Andrew McIntyre and Douglas Rammage, in their excellent study recently published titled “Seeing Indonesia as a Normal Country”, published in Australia wrote that “Indonesia in 2008 is a stable, competitive, electoral democracy with a highly decentralized system of governance, achieving solid rate of economic growth under competent national leadership, and playing a constructive role in the regional and broader international community”.

            Another source from the Oxford Business Group this year wrote : “After a decade of democracy, Indonesia is more stable now that it has ever been, having emerged as Asia’s democratic as well as economic success stories.”

            And Hannah Beech, Southeast Asia Bureau Chief from Time magazine, wrote I think in the issue 2 or 3 weeks ago, that “Indonesia was a political success story”.  She wrote that “Indonesia used to be a reliable punch line for jokes about third world inaptitude. But Indonesia has emerged as Southeast Asia’s unlikely star. For a nation with more than 17,000 islands and hundreds of ethnicities, Indonesia is holding together just fine and Indonesia has made the transition from dictatorship to reliable democracy in less than a generation. And there is nothing funny about that”. 

            Indeed, there is plenty of anecdotes of change in Indonesia. I personally see, feel and experience them everyday, in my home in Jakarta.

For example in the past, when I was growing up, no one wants to be heard or caught dead that harboring presidential ambitions. (laugh)  Today, good luck trying to find anybody who does NOT want to be President in Indonesia. (laugh)

In the past, you would see military officers on the campaign trail, wearing yellow jackets, the jacket of Golkar, the dominant party in Indonesia. Today, the military is completely neutral and out of politics and they do not campaign and they do not vote. You don’t see any generals wearing yellow jackets anymore.

            In the past, you could go to jail if you make fun of the national leaders. Here today, Indonesia’s most popular TV show is “Republik Mimpi” which is a parody, a comedy, a parody about our national leaders, where you have all sorts of different characters from President SBY to Megawati to Gus Dur and all the others.

            In the past, the public use Chinese writings was forbidden in Indonesia. You couldn’t find it because of what happened in 1965.  Today, in Metro TV there is Chinese news and the use of Chinese language is actively encouraged for Indonesia’s students.  National identity cards no longer distinguish where the Indonesian was of Chinese origin or not.

            In the past, the most feared people in Indonesia were the ABRI Generals. Today, the most feared people are the KPK, the corruption busters.

            In the past, Suharto’s children own hotels, toll roads, airlines, banks, resorts, and so on. Today, President SBY youngest son, Ibas, before entering into politics now, once worked in a bakery shop that he did not even own.

            In the past, Indonesians were driven by fear of the communists. That was my whole upbringing for 20, 30 years : everything was about the fear of communists due to the traumatic abortive c’oup. You can get someone, your neighbors your friends in a lot of trouble, just by labeling them a member of communist or having links to communist family. Today, Indonesians are so confident about our democracy and about our political values that we passed a law restoring the political rights of former communists in Indonesia. 

            And I think one of the most significant changes in Indonesia was the trial of Genera Muchdi, for the alleged murder of human rights Munir. Among my generation, this would be unthinkable.  For the people who grew up, who was born in the 60s or 70s, this is something completely unthinkable, for the police to pursue this case all the way into the intelligence service and bring the alleged culprit to justice. I think case this is one of the most outstanding, and eye-opening “change” in Indonesia.

            In short, Indonesia is a very much different country today. It not only feels different, it IS different. And it is one of the most important self-reinvention that we have made since our independence in 1945.

 

10 YEARS REFORMASI AND THE 2004 ELECTIONS

            This year -- 2008 -- is symbolically important for Indonesia because this is the year that the “reformasi” era or democratic transition reaches 10 years old.  Reformasi is a decade old this year. It has not been a smooth, linear process.  It has been a stop-go, up and down, trial-and-error, crisis-driven process.

            Reformasi in Indonesia has also been comprehensive. It covers many different sectors, although sectorally they tend to go at different speeds.

Many considers the year 1998 as a turning point for Indonesia, and I don’t disagree with that. That is the year when President Suharto stepped down, and President Habibie took office and started the democratic transition.

            Some also point to the 1999 elections as a key turning point. That is the time when Indonesia had her first free and fair multi-party elections since 1955. Again, I don’t disagree with that.

            But personally, I would choose the elections of 2004 as the most important milestone in Indonesia’s democratic transition and I will explain why.

The key reason is that in 2004, the country was beginning to lose direction. There was a general sense that the country was just drifting. It was just democracy for the sake of democracy.  Reformasi was losing steam, there were plenty of signs that things were returning to the old ways. Some politicians were trying to lure the military and also the police back into the political chessboard, at a time when the military and the police did not want to do so. They wanted to be out of politics. Corruption, collusion and nepotism, known as KKN, was returning fast -- some say even faster or worse than under the Suharto era.

            The elections of 2004 were also important because by then Indonesians had addressed all their hang ups. In 2004, and before 2004, people were asking all sorts of questions about the national leadership. You know, “what if a Sukarno’s children was to become president”.  There were many nostalgics about Sukarno. Some other people were saying “well, what if Suharto’s children were to return to the scene and exhibit the strongman trait of their father ?”.  Others would ask, “what if a cleric -- you know Indonesia is the largest Muslim population country in the world  -- what if a cleric were to become President ?”  By 2004, all these questions, all these hang ups all these “what ifs” had been answered and people were ready to make a clear choice with a clear mind based on who the best candidate would be, with no more nostalgics and no more hang ups.

            And there was also the fact that until 2004, the division of labor between the Parliament and the President was rather ambigious, which impaired our political development.

            The President, until 2004, despite the elections of 1999, was still chosen by 600 people in the parliament. What did that mean? That meant that there was a lot of political deal making, a lot of IOUs to become President, because in the final analysis you needed only, no matter how many popular votes you got, you needed only to make deals with 600 people in the Parliament, which is not too many people.  This produced a new kind of collusion among the political elites in Indonesia and this also hurt democracy in Indonesia.

So in many ways, the 2004 elections was a crossroad for Indonesia. Would we be able, after 2004 elections, to promise, to fulfill the promise to reform or fail it? Would we be able to move forward or stagnate or even reverse course?

And I think for many people who felt nervous about this, they became even more so with the incident of the killing of Munir in Indonesia. It happened right here, as our police found out most recently, that at Changi Airport, where during his transit he was unknowingly fed with poison while having coffee with someone he knew. And once he got on the plane, he died not long after he boarded, and there was nothing any one could do because the flight to Amsterdam was 8 or 10 hours long. The killing of Munir really touched the nerves of many Indonesians because it was a signal that something could terribly go wrong again.  This also reflected that in 2004, Indonesia was indeed at a crossroad and was making a momentous decision on where to go next.

            Happily, the 2004 elections answered all these questions in the right way.  The 2004 elections ended conclusively the debate between the division of labor between the parliament and the president; both are now directly elected.  The President no longer has political IOUs to the parliament. He or she was directly elected by their own people. Both have their own constituents. They both have their own mandate. The electoral system was fundamentally rationalized. And this time there was much little room for money politics. You can always make deals with 600 parliamentarians, but you cannot buy out 120 million voters. There was no way you could do that. So it rationalized the electoral system for the better.

            The 2004 elections was also a victory of politics of integrity. I don’t know how many of you remember that election in Indonesia. It was free and fair, but it was also marred by “dirty” campaigns. Very dirty. People were trying all sorts of accusations and “black” campaign everywhere. And I remember I had not joined the SBY team by then, because I am a bureaucrat.  But I did have a good relationship with SBY and I asked what he thought about it, and he said he was very concern about the dirty politics.  It was harming our democracy, and he knew he could lose because some people could believe some of these false accusations, some of the dirty campaigns, black campaigns levelled against him. But he said that it would be better to lose with honor in a clean election, rather than to win with shame in a dirty election. He refrained himself totally from responding to the black campaign. And in the end, he won.

            So I did not see the victory of president SBY as just a victory for SBY : it was victory for the good guys. It was a victory for the politics of integrity. Good politics won in 2004 and in fact, bad politics lost. And that was important to me, and especially for my generation.

            Also important : the voters showed a high degree of maturity. This was somewhat unimagined and also unappreciated by many politicians. The voters in 2004 showed sophistication. They did not want to be manipulated, in their choice, in their feelings towards the candidates. They wanted to make up their own minds.

            I remember at this time, all the biggest parties, Golkar and PDI-P, after fighting with each other for so long, formed an alliance against SBY and many people said SBY could not possibly win with all the big parties against him. But the voters were not swayed by this odd party realignments and they made up their own minds, and I think it was historically, politically and psychologically amazing that a man with no famous name at the end of his first name, with only a small political party, with no power base, with only a sense of idealism and a sense of mission, could actually win an election in a country of 220 million people. I think it was quite a nice story.

And that is exactly why the 2004 election was a milestone event in our democratic transition. It corrected the historical anomalies, it produced new political landscape, it sets Indonesia back in the right direction, there was a new energy, there was new hope, there was also huge expectations, and there was a rare opportunity now to achieve the agenda of reform.

 

THE SBY YEARS

            SBY got into power, the office of President, in October 2004. And I was fortunate that he asked me to join his team. Here, I must make clear that I am not one of these bureaucrats who lusted after power and badly wanted to work at the presidential palace. I was also offered this position before and I turned it down. But I chose to work in the Palace because I believe that SBY was the right man to lead Indonesia : I have met him, I have known him, I have engaged in many discussions things with him. I knew the depth of this man.

            I also knew that 2004 and 2009 would be the most important 5 years, the most important political era for Indonesia, since we became independent. I believe that more things would change in the 5 years between 2004 and 2009, than any other period in Indonesia’s history before. I believe there would be more breaks from the past than compared to the previous administrations.  And I believe that there would be more capacity for adaptation.

I don’t think history has proved me wrong.

And I also found president SBY, again here I am speaking objectively I think, as objective as I can be as spokesman for the president, but also as an academic, to be a different kind of President. He had a strong sense of destiny and mission about his presidency.

He knows, by experience and by observation, what was right in Indonesia and what went wrong in Indonesia, and what needed to be done. He was a policy wonk, he was forward-looking, he was not backward-looking, he did not entertain nostalgics, he was an optimist. 

He was solution-oriented : he said to us that his mission was to “clean the dishes” –referring to unsolved problems-- in the country. He was a nationalist, and he was also an internationalist, which is a rare quality in Indonesian politics.

He wanted to change politics and he wanted to succeed.  He did not want to just preside—the term President actually came from the word “preside”--but to lead.  And he knew how to lead and plan and execute and experience that he gained from military experience.

            So I think Prime Minister John Howard was right when he said that SBY “is perhaps one of the best Indonesian president ever”. 

I also knew, when working for SBY, if there is going to be any change of Indonesia, the driver of that change would be the executive. Why do I say this ? Because the parliament had too many political parties, was not compact, was not coherent, and did not speak in one voice as any parliament.

But also, because the Indonesian parliament only produces about 12-15 laws a year.

            When I was posted at the Indonesian Embassy in the US, there would be about 12,000 draft laws draft bills submitted to the US Congress and about 10% or 1200 would be passed during the term of congress.  But that is still a high number you know, about a thousand laws per working term.  The Indonesian Parliament produces about 12-15 laws a year, so the pace of what can be delivered by parliament is quite limited. And the hope for political mobility, democratic development and filling the gaps between aspirations and development would be filled very much by the executives sector.

            And what I have found out is that the last 4 years, Indonesia has undergone a fundamental modernization of Indonesian politics.

            In the last 4 years, we encountered many things that stood in our way.  We dealt with the many unknowns, we dealt with the tsunami, which defined the SBY Presidency early on, and a string of natural disasters. I think the last 4 years had been the worst in Indonesia in terms of natural disasters.

            We faced a string of external conditions which were not favorable to Indonesia, such as the oil crisis, the food crisis, forest fires. We faced a bureaucracy which remains stubborn, resistant to change, and I say this being a bureaucrat of the system.

 

SOME KEY ACHIEVEMENTS OF PRESIDENT SBY

            So many of these things stood in his way. But I think in the overall, the last 4 years have been quite productive and have gone well for SBY.

            Let me give you a personal review, the view from the inside on some of the key changes which have happened under president SBY.

            First, there was a change in the corporate culture, in governance in Indonesia. SBY enforced political contracts with his ministers, he asked each and everyone of them to sign a contract of integrity and professionalism.  If they breached that contract, then they will be released from cabinet.  He opened the palace to the public, and he opened his office’s communication with the public. There is a Presidential SMS service whereby anybody who is anybody can lodge a complaint and there is a team of 20 people who assess all these SMS to determine if any of them is credible enough to be followed up, and most of them do get followed up, and the president checks on these SMS on a routine basis, every 2 weeks.  This is what he calls direct democracy and this has changed the way the government functions also.

            SBY is also leading by example, as a sign of his seriousness in enforcing a new corporate culture. Not long ago, he returned 6 billion Rupiah from the presidential budget because after scanning the budget, he thought “this was overpriced, this is too much money, we shouldn’t be paying for this,” and so on.  And for the first time in our history, there is a President who actually returned 6 billion Rupiah to the state coffer. His finance minister was just speechless because her experience in dealing with other ministers is that they tend to ask for more money, rather than giving money back to the state coffer.

They say that the lights are always on now at the palace.  As I am speaking now, they are building a situation room in the old office of President Suharto, where President SBY wants to make sure that he can keep abreast of developments throughout Indonesia, on a 24-7 basis.

            President SBY is asking for all ministers to have an achievement index.  He gets into an annual review with them, “What have you done? Why haven’t you been able to achieve this? What are you going to do? Why can’t you perform better ? And why can’t your staff achieve the objectives that I have set for you?”

He is raising the bar, and he is asking for personal accountability on a routine basis from his ministers. 

The cabinet meetings also now geared towards solutions.  Cabinet meetings are now geared in a very systematic way, every meeting must produce a decision.

            There is a cabinet meeting every week, and there is limited cabinet meeting that can be held on ad hoc basis. There is a delivery unit that checks on progress  that the President has made, and there is also mechanism to monitor what decisions the President has made.

            Another part of the corporate culture is the openness to ideas. This is very different from the past whereby ideas had a hard time reaching into the inside of the palace.  President SBY has produced an intellectually rich environment at the palace, whereby all kinds of ideas can be discussed. Of course, not all ideas can be implemented.

            And again, all these is important because we can all talk about the grand concept of change but usually the failure of this grand concept of change is when they don’t have the element of the small, inglorious details of good policymaking.

            The second change is making the system works. If there is a lesson we had in 60 years of political development, of President Sukarno and President Suharto, is that politics were highly personalized. When the person, the leader falls, the whole system crumbles. It was because the system was not strong enough and was not durable enough.  President SBY was perhaps the most conscientious politician in Indonesia when it comes to doing things by the system. He always says that “it’s all about the system”.  And he wants to leave behind a legacy of strong institutions and durable systems.

His favorite saying is that “the Panglima now the law.  Panglima sekarang adalah hukum”.  What takes command now is the law. In President Sukarno’s time, they said “The Panglima adalah politik”. Under Suharto’s time, the “The Panglima was economics”. The primacy was development, everything was justified for economic development. SBY has said “No, this time, our time, the Panglima is the law. It’s not politics, it’s not economics, it’s the law. No one is above the law. And it is the legal system, this predictability that we have to build.”  And this is exactly why the trial of General Muchdi for the killing of Munir is very significant, because it signifies that no one in Indonesia is untouchable.

            The third key change is anti-corruption -- again this is related to the fact that “Panglima is hukum”. The commander is the law. Without doubt, President SBY has launched the most aggressive anti-corruption campaign in Indonesia’s history.  And he knows the secret. The secret is that first you have to do it from the top. If you do it from the middle or from the bottom, it will not reach the top. It will lose credibility. And if you do it from the top, but the top gets tainted then the whole thing crumbles, as it has happened in the past.

So you must do it from the top, and you must sustain it and you must do it not just in terms of law enforcement but fixing the systems to make it difficult for corruption to take place in Indonesia. His favorite reminder for us is that Hong Kong was also one of the most corrupt place in Asia, but after 15 or 20 years, Hong Kong became one of the cleanest government in Asia. In other words, you can change within one generation. You can clean up the system, and I think you in Singapore also would attest to this. But I would argue that in the past 4 years, Indonesia has made a very real and significant dent on corruption, and our goal is to make corruption the exception rather than rule.

            We know it will still characterize Indonesia society in the next 5 to 10 years, but now people think twice about doing corruption. There’s fear in the hearts of corruptors. You open any newspapers, on a daily basis not weekly or monthly, but on a daily basis, you will read big stories about anti-corruption successes. People being busted in elevators, people being busted giving money in hotel rooms, and so on and so on.  And anyone you talk to, there is fear in their hearts, about doing things the wrong way. So that is a sign of success, and we need to build on that.

            The fourth key change is, this is unnoticed by the outside world, because it is happening quietly in Indonesia, the growth of local democracy in Indonesia. The 2004 elections were very significant because it was national election. But Indonesia is a very large country, 220 million people divided into so many provinces and hundreds of regents, and towns and cities. And for the first time in the last 4 years, we now have a democratic process where all leaders are directly elected by their own constituents. In the past, it was all appointed by the regional parliament, with a message from the top, so it was a top down process. But by April this year, there were 355 elections being held throughout Indonesia, in 22 provinces, 272 regencies, and 61 cities.

            In the American system, you have 2 elections within 4 years.  One in the middle and one once every 4 years.  In Indonesia, it happens every year and every month.  Imagine 355 elections, any place, anywhere in Indonesia. And by 2009, when there is a new national election, all the governors, all the regents, all the mayors in Indonesia would have been directly elected by the people.

This turns the whole political pyramid upside down. This is truly the quiet revolution in Indonesia, and it was achieved without a bang, without riots, without turbulences. There were about 176 lawsuits, people who were challenging decisions of elections. Yes, that’s quite a large number. But of all these numbers, only 6 cases remain unresolved. All of them, the rest of them, were resolved satisfactorily. And again, this reflects the surprising maturity of Indonesian democratic development.

            But local democracy also provides a new challenge to governance.  Why do I say this? Because with the power structure being changed, it is also goodbye to the days of the Suharto era, whereby the distance between the decisions of the President all the way to the village level was just one decision away.  You know, in the past under Suharto and Sukarno of course, whatever the President said in his palace, goes directly to the ministers, to the director-generals, to the governor, to the regents, to the mayor, and gets carried out all the way down to the village level. It can be carried out within 1 day. They say Indonesia is a large place, but politically and bureaucratically, it was a very small place for so many years under Sukarno and Suharto. But nowadays, its different.  Every elected politician feels they have their own mandate. So Indonesia has moved from a very small place bureaucratically, to a very large place bureaucratically. The distance between the President’s office and down the village level is much farther much longer, much wider, than it had ever been.

            I remember the president holding a meeting once with the governors. One governor complained : “Mr. President, I have a complaint.  I am calling all my regents to meet for coordination, and few of them showed up. They all think they have their own mandate, they have their own money, they have their own authority to rule. And it makes my job more difficult”.  And the president says “Well, you are not alone.

            This is exactly the challenge of democratic development in Indonesia, and I suppose this is true in many other new democracies as well. The question is how do you evolve a new art of governance, whereby you have democracy but you also achieve results by enabling all the elected actors to work together in a way as coherently as possible.  It is not easy. It takes an art of leadership.  The President have to be able to mobilize the governors, the governors have to be able to mobilize the regents, and so on and so on. So this has produced a challenge for Indonesia’s democracy.  Any future President of Indonesia must develop this leadership skill to effectively mobiiize all the elected officials in the new jungle of local democracy.

            The fifth change is the economy, of course.  I think we doing quite well.  We have achieved the highest growth since the crisis.  Our exports have exceeded 100 billion dollars for the first time. Our budget has exceeded 1,000 trillion Rupiah, I don’t know if you know how much money that is, but it sounds like a lot of money.  Our reserves also is the highest ever in our history. Our Debt-to-GDP ratio used to be 80%, used to be 60%, used to be 50%, now it is at its lowest around 35%. Our capital market is doing well, it didn’t go very well in the last few days, but they have been doing well in the last several years. Our credit ratings is also the highest since the crisis.  Poverty, we made some dent. In the last 10 years, we achieved the lowest poverty both according to World Bank and our own standards of measurement.  We have repaid IMF loans 4 years ahead of time. We have disbanded the Consultative Group on Indonesia, because we don’t feel that it is relevant to the times anymore. We also are spending for the first time 20% of our budget on education. And we also now have the largest government allocation for anti-poverty program.

            So the economy is doing well.  I am not saying it is without challenges : poverty and unemployment remains a serious issue. It could be an election issue in 2009, but I think the people recognize and especially analyst recognize that the government has made very bold moves, being able to take political risks to ensure that rational and right policies are being undertaken.

            The sixth key change : an innovative, open minded, and bolder, and methodical, and proactive approach to conflict resolution.  Again, the proof is in the pudding – Aceh. For 30 years, it was unresolvable.  To be honest, I did not think it was going to be resolved so easily, just within 5 rounds of negotiations in 6 months, but that is what happened. In 2005, of all the major international conflicts, Aceh was the only one that got resolved in Indonesia. The tsunami also hit Sri Lanka, but only in Indonesia we were able to capitalize on the tsunami tragedy to push for the peace process, and successfully so.

            The seventh key change : a new brand of politics and a new sense of populism in Indonesia. What do I mean by this ?  After the election of 2004, the black campaign, the dirty campaign, the bad politics still persists.  But President SBY still maintains that he wants to keep his brand of the politics of integrity, politics of dignity, politics of decency in the mainstream of Indonesian politics. He has refused to resort to dirty campaigns, even after he gets elected.  And that has changed the quality of Indonesian politics.

            There is also a new populism.  What do I mean by that ?  For about 40 or 50 years, Indonesian leaders defined “populism” in an ego-centric way, there was always this tendency to package “the great leader”.  Populism was defined somewhat as a way for the people to glorify the leader, the achievements of the leader. Again, it was populism, but it was different kind of populism. Now, SBY has changed this. He has said that populism is all about the people. The center of gravity is not the leader, but the people. Everything gravitates around the people, and that is the brand of populism that he has brought to Indonesia.

It is significant, for example, that in today’s Indonesia, what you saw in after 1965, also in the 70s in East Timor, would not be acceptable. I grew up in a generation where when we heard about hundreds of thousands of people being killed after the failed coup in 1965, and also in East Timor,  we sort of shrugged and said “well, it’s bad but that’s life”. That’s the mindset of the generation that I lived in for so many years. But in the last 4 years, you could hardly imagine any of this happening in today’s Indonesia.  There would be a national uproar if a major human rights violation by the Government were to happen.

            And happily in Indonesia, there is not one major human rights violation. The last big news was 20 people getting killed in an accident in a house that was giving money after Idul Fitri, it was completely unconnected to police, unconnected to the military. That was a big news, about 20 people dead in that time. But if there is ever going to be an incident about the police or military senselesly shooting 200 people or 300 people, the whole country would raise a rumpus.  It is completely a different mindset for this new generation and this new Indonesia.  And again, I think that is a good thing.

            So what you see in Indonesia is not just “reformasi”, it’s not just “demokrasi”, but it is also transformasi. All this amounts to modernization of Indonesian politics and a change in political culture for Indonesia.

 

SOME LESSONS :

 

There are lessons to be learnt from the Indonesian experience.

We all talk about change for different countries, and every country wants to change. And I found that there are three key drivers for change for any country, for any different situation. 

The first driver for change is exposure. The way Japan became exposed to outside world after Meiji Restoration. The way Indonesia in 1908, became exposed to the concept of nationalism, which was a western concept, and hence started the independence movement. The way Singapore opened up to the world and became a dynamic developed nation that you are now.  Exposure is a key part of change, but it usually takes time for that to take place. Exposure is one key reason for change.

            The second driver for change is crisis. A country that doesn’t want to change goes on a linear fashion for some time, but when it gets hit by a crisis, it gets a world of reason to start doing things differently.  China did this is in the 70s, India more compellingly in 1991, Finland also changed dramatically after Soviet Union changed course.  And you see many other countries which were propelled to change by crisis, including Indonesia also in 1997 after the financial crisis.  But change driven by crisis does NOT sustain itself long enough.  People are compelled by circumstances to change for 1 year, or 2 years or 3 years.  But you know after 4 or 5 years, that reason can dilute itself. People will forget the urgency and the necessity of change.

            And this brings me to the third key driver for change, after exposure and crisis. That is leadership.

For countries undergoing democratic transitions, what would usually deliver the big blow, the big punch and bring the country conclusively over the other side of change ? I have no doubt about this : it’s really leadership, not just 1 leader but a group of leaders that are able to affect change and bring the nation’s fate to a different conclusion.

You see this in China : it’s not just Deng Xiaoping but there’s a group of leaders who were progressive minded who are able to sustain China’s change.

You see this in India.  You see this also in Singapore : there is leadership which enabled Singapore to reinvent itself many times over in the last 4 or 5 decades.  But it also happens in Indonesia especially since 2004 : leadership is  the key factor that sustains and accelerates change in Indonesia.

            And another lesson is that cross-roads DO come back again and again. I said earlier that an important crossroad came to Indonesia in 1997, 1998 and then it came to Indonesia in 2004.  The important lesson to keep in mind is that crossroads do return, they do come back to haunt you, and you do have to make decisions again.

This is true for Indonesia, this is true for South Africa, this is true for China, this is true for India, this is true for Pakistan, this is true for Thailand, this is true for many other countries.

Crossroads do come back and I think the next crossroad that will return to Indonesia is in 2009. 2009 is the next elections in Indonesia, and we will face this next crossroad.

 

THE STAKES

And what is at stake ?  Well, it’s quite simple.

At the moment now, there is a contest for the soul of Indonesia. And I see this battle everywhere.

What is that mean? It is a contest between the progressive force of change, that is, forces who embrace, and are comfortable with change, and have a clear sight of where they want to take the country, which is to make Indonesia different than before.  And then there is force of retrenchment, those who are resistant and suspicious of change. 

It is a contest that is taking place in many different sectors, within governments, even within government departments, within political parties, within parliament, within the media, within religious organizations, within student organizations, within civil society,.

            I think since 2004, the progressive forces have changed Indonesia, have made significant headways, but this contest is still on-going.       

The quality of change and how fundamentally Indonesia will transform itself in the next 5, 10 to 20 years, will be determined by which force will prevail.  And that is why I say that in the next 5-10 years, one of the key factors that will be relevant is the quality of regeneration in Indonesian politics.

            We see now many young politicians, many of them are the children of officials, children of parliamentarians. They are forming the new generation of Indonesian politicians.  But the big question is whether or not this new generation will be more progressive than the previous one, and will be substantively different, and able and confident enough to define its own footprint in history.  Time will tell.

 

ON FOREIGN POLICY

            I promised to talk about Indonesia, the region and the world, but in the interest of time I will cut that short.

I think it was the late Professor Jack Bresnan of Colombia University who said that the threat to the region of Southeast Asia will come not from a strong Indonesia but from a weak Indonesia.  Indonesia’s success and strength as a democracy, therefore, is important to the stability of the region.

            Indonesia is the largest country in Southeast Asia, both in terms of population and territory.  It is the largest economy in Southeast Asia. It is a country with the largest Muslim population in the world, and thus what happens to Indonesia matters.

            We know that many of our friends around the region were nervous to see the developments in Indonesia in the first years of “reformasi”. Indonesia had turned inward looking, and the policymakers seemed to be less interested in regional affairs as they were drawn into the constitutional crisis.

But that has now changed. President SBY is a staunch internationalist. He knows that internationalism is the key to our success, that in this 21st century, our success as a nation depends on our international engagement. He is also the first President in Indonesia who has openly said that Indonesia’s nationalism is to be redefined in that it has no more enemies now.

            Again amongst Indonesians, this is a new concept.  Why ?  Because the concept of nationalism in post-independence Indonesia has always been tied to concept of an “enemy” : the Dutch and the Allies, and the Japanese during the colonial times; the Americans in the 1960’s; the British also; Singapore and Malaysia during “konfrontasi”; China after the c’oup; Portugal during the East Timor days; and so on.

            So, for so many years, for 4 or 5 decades, the concept of an enemy shaped ur sense of identity, our sense of nationalism. 

And SBY now says : “Look. This is a unique time.  There is not one country in the world that we regard as an enemy, and there is not one country in the world that regards Indonesia as an enemy”. Now, we have the ability to pursue what President SBY calls an “all-directions foreign policy”.

            This is a new concept, and I must admit that sometimes that has faced resistance from ultra-nationalists in Indonesia, some of whom tend to be drawn to conspiracy theories, believing that the world especially the west or somebody is still out to get to Indonesia, who believe that foreign nations are trying to break Indonesia apart and so on and so on.  Some still have not been able to get past this intellectual adolescence. 

But SBY has completely rationalized Indonesia’s policy-making and policy-thinking. And in cabinet meetings, or in meetings with his staff, he would step his foot down on anyone who entertains too much conspiracy theories.  So that is a nice change.

We have also found that Indonesia in the 21st century has new assets.

For so long, we knew that Indonesia the country with the largest Muslim population.  That was a fact of life for us.  In the past, people viewed this as merely an interesting fact of trivia.  I never talked much about it as a diplomat for so many years. But in a world of post-911, in a world that Samuel Huntington says can be marked by “clash of civilizations”, in a new globalised world where issues of ethnicity and religion are becoming more prominent, we found out that our status as the country with the world’s largest muslim citizens is an asset.  We can prove to the world that “look in Indonesia, Islam, democracy and modernity can live happily”, “in Indonesia moderate Islam rules rather than radical Islam”, and that has redefined our role in this new world. 

Thus, Indonesia CAN bridge between the Islamic world and the Western world, and this is shown for example in the way Indonesia responded to the cartoon crisis.  President SBY used his political capital as a muslim leader to convince people, “look this is bad but let’s not lose control, and let’s do something constructive”.  He convened what is called the Global Inter-media Dialogue, which to this day is still ongoing between, participated by the western media and also the Islamic media, and the media from other developing countries. So that is one asset.

            The other asset is the environment.  Some people have called Indonesia an “environmental super power”.  It didn’t dawn on us until it hit us : “hey, that could be true”.  We have always known we have got lots of seas, we have always known we have got rich coral reefs, we have always known we have got large tropical rainforests, but only in the new context of intense global climate change agenda, that we find a new relevance. 

            There is no new man-made machine that can absorb the greenhouse gas emission from the atmosphere, except the trees. That means that Indonesia, along with Brazil, Congo, Papua New Guinea, Malaysia, Costa Rica and others, have found a critical role in this new global debate on climate change.  Again, this is a new asset, or an old asset but with new relevance in the new world.

            The same goes true with terrorism.  We have experienced all kinds of terrorisms since 1997 in Indonesia, when the bombs were exploding in Medan, in Java, in many places in Indonesia.  It did not take long before we realized that they were connected to groups outside Indonesia, and the government took on a very resolute commitment to fight terrorism, which placed us as a frontline state in the global fight against terrorism.  Again, that gives us a new relevance.

And this is why Indonesia, in the last 4 years especially, has formed strategic partnerships with many countries, even with those with which we had conflictual relationships with in the past. With China, we had conflictual relations but now we have a strategic partnership with China.  The same goes true with India, with Russia, with South Africa, with Pakistan, with South Korea, with Australia, with Japan, and the list goes on. It’s a growing list, and in a way it also reflects a transformation of Indonesia’s strategic environment.

            Our foreign policy is still a very principled one : it is staunchly independent and active, but it is much more connected now, it is much more opportunity driven than before.

I have talked at length about Indonesia’s internationalism.

But I think what matters more is what kind of nationalism we actually develop in Indonesia, and I know that is a question that is important to our neighbors, to Singapore, to Malaysia, and all the others in the region.  Yes, like in all other countries, there are strains of ultra-nationalism and narrow nationalism in Indonesia.  But I think over the long term, Indonesia will be able to evolve an open, moderate, tolerant, inclusive and dynamic nationalism. This will be the factor that will underpin stability in the region.

I am quite certain that we will be able to maintain that brand of nationalism, not just for ourselves but also for the region and for the world.

            I have talked long enough. Thank you very much.  

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