Indonesia Has New Chief and Old Problems

By: W. Scott Thompson 
July, 27, 2001
Reprinted from the LA Times


BALI, Indonesia -- It's a truism that we never really know how bad our bad leaders are until they are gone. Too many people are championing them for self-serving reasons while they remain at the helm.

Everyone on the inside knew just how bad "Gus Dur"--former Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid--was at running a country, but few said just how terrible. They had to use corruption--the least of his sins--as a handle with which to beat him.

"Hospitals at the least shouldn't spread disease," Florence Nightingale once said. Presidents at the least shouldn't make things worse. Now there is a new president in Indonesia, the sixth country in Asia in which a daughter or wife has come to supreme power through the heritage of her father or husband. The country's problems are so grave--and Gus Dur made them so much worse--that everyone rightly cheers President Megawati Sukarnoputri.

But the problems remain. Economic reform is stalled and foreign investment has all but dried up. Debt is overwhelming and unemployment is endemic. The centrifugal forces in the sprawling archipelago leave Indonesia perilously close to breakup.

With a particularly sad irony, Indonesia's accomplishments since 1998 are extraordinary. The nation has gone from military-buttressed dictatorial kleptocracy to democracy, from a 15% decline in gross national product to a net gain this past year of a respectable 4%. And everywhere you look, there are nongovernmental organizations pressing for constitutional reform or refinement, human rights activists trying to bring justice and environmentalists trying to protect the forests.

There is a new problem, however. President Mega, as she's known here, will work closely with the army and will listen to her economic advisors--rather than exclusively to God--but she does not bring to her job any special skills or much keen intelligence for leadership. All she has is the mantle of legitimacy from her father, Sukarno, Indonesia's founding president, who left the country in ruins. And from his heritage she derives a keen sense of entitlement that, in the last two years, showed her to be diffident, insouciant, but without helpful insight or useful words of wisdom. One cannot be confident that this will be enough to keep Indonesia together or to get it out of its economic snake pit.

The problem goes beyond Megawati. The elites of Jakarta in the past two years showed little real concern for their suffering country. Assembly Speaker Amien Rais is a venal Chinese-baiter not known for his honor or stature, but he runs circles around most other politicians. In the run-up to the impeachment of Gus Dur, all the parties showed a lack of commitment to tolerance.

The Jakarta Post editorialized, correctly, that "not a single one of the country's current political leaders has come out to condemn publicly the violent demonstrations," and went on to note, sadly, that all this was more or less like the Suharto era, "except that this time around, everybody is doing it, while in those days, the division between the oppressor and the oppressed was clearer."

At least there is a chance for a new beginning. The International Monetary Fund had almost reached an accord with Jakarta for the release of a desperately needed tranche of funds and probably will send checks now to buoy up Megawati and its own otherwise bad loans. A period of political stability at the top may well encourage investors to return. The 15% appreciation of the battered rupiah in the past few days shows the market favors the new order.

However, everything hinges on whether President Mega really can grow in her job, get past her resentments at being thrown out of the presidential palace when her father was forced from power and work to calm the center and stabilize the outlying regions. The war in Aceh continues unabated, and calls for secession in West Irian haven't ended. Violence in Kalimantan may have claimed a hundred thousand lives.

It comes back to the question of leadership--whether Mega will spread more disease or start to heal the patient. The state is spread very thin in a country like Indonesia. In a poor, developing country the absence of coherent and purposeful leadership is quickly felt everywhere. With so little for the government to hand out and to regulate, and in this case so many ethnicities and traditions, a bad leader can make a fast mess.

Most people in Jakarta, and elites throughout Southeast Asia, are hoping the new president is up to her job, but the more knowledgeable they are, the more misgivings and doubts they have. 

W. Scott Thompson is professor of international politics and head of the Southeast Asia program at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a visiting professor at the Asian Institute of Management in Manila.