Dunia Berputarâthe World Turns Donald K. Emmerson Director ...
DUNIA BERPUTAR—THE WORLD TURNS
Donald K. Emmerson
Director, Southeast Asia Forum
Stanford University
This essay was written for
Energi Positif: Opini 100 Tokoh mengenai Indonesia di Era SBY
[Positive Energy: 100 Leaders’ Opinions of Indonesia in the SBY Era],
ed. Dino Patti Djalal (Jakarta: Red & White Publishing, June 2009),
a collection occasioned by the naming of Indonesian president
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) as one the “100 Most Influential People in 2009”
by TIME Magazine in its 14 May 2009 issue.1
My wife, our nine-month-old daughter, and I first arrived in Indonesia in December 1967.
I was a graduate student hoping to do field work for my dissertation. We stayed for two
years—a year and a half in Jakarta plus a half-year in Bandung.
In Jakarta we lived on Jalan Doktor Abdulrachman Saleh near its intersection with Jalan
Prapatan/Kwitang, on the second floor of a building that would have had a third floor had
the owner, Ibu Soekasno, not run out of money to keep going higher. She sold tires and
soup from the ground-floor apartment where she lived with her husband, a civil servant
who earned a fraction of her income.
At that time our neighborhood was part of the subdistrict (kelurahan) of Senen. Senen
was a rough and poor part of the city—the opposite of the Menteng neighborhood where
elite Indonesians and foreign diplomats lived. The one and only time anyone tried (and
failed) to rob me during our two years in Indonesia occurred one night on a main street in
Senen.
Our immediate neighborhood was quite safe. We thought nothing of letting our blonde
infant daughter Kirsten disappear down the back alleys of “kampung Kwitang” with Bu
Mirah, our maid, for hours on end. Nevertheless, I confess that when Indonesians at
upscale receptions asked me where we lived, sometimes I said “Senen” just to see the
look on their faces.
We nicknamed Kirsten “Kartini” to honor an Indonesian heroine and because her real
name sounded like Kristen—Protestant—in the Indonesian language. I may have been
too sensitive, but I didn’t want my orthodox Muslim friends and informants to mistake us
for missionaries.
1 I was happy to write this essay upon being invited by Dr. Djalal to do so. The symmetry between Time’s
title and the title of this book should not be taken too seriously, however, at least not as far as my implied
status as a “leader” is concerned. I hope I am a “scholar,” but anyone who says I am a “leader” has a good
sense of humor. As for “positive energy,” I will acknowledge having that in a broad sense: wanting
Indonesians to have a better life and being heartened by their country’s present status as a relatively stable
and democratic country, whomever they may elect to be their president for the coming five years.
If our building was unfinished, so was Jakarta. Empty lots and the skeletons of high-rise
buildings flanked Jalan Thamrin, the city’s downtown thoroughfare. Weeds sprouted
from its broken surfaces. In front of the Hotel Indonesia, the first and only “luxury” hotel
in town, pedicab drivers called out, “Hey, mister!” when a rare bulé (white foreigner)
walked by.
Those were also the days of Hwa Hwee—the Chinese gambling game that managed to
capture the imagination, not to mention the cash, of a good part of Jakarta’s population.
Evenings we sat in the cool open air among the construction rods on our unfinished
rooftop listening to gamelan music on our battery-run record player while young men on
Vespas drove by shouting the night’s winning numbers.2
Dunia berputar. The world turns. Times change. Jakarta is not now and never will be
the same as it was in 1967-69, more than forty years ago. That’s not a bad thing, for
three reasons: the brutal repression of the left that accompanied the inception of General
Suharto’s New Order; the early militarization of political life under his regime; and the
poverty of Indonesians then still suffering the consequences of prior economic neglect
under President Sukarno. Not until later would sustained economic growth and a
significant reduction of poverty be achieved, thanks in part to good macroeconomic
policy advice from the “Berkeley Mafia”—a name whose connotations would evolve
from derision toward admiration. And not until 1997-98 would corruption, repression,
nepotism, and the Asian Financial Crisis bring out onto Jakarta’s streets the young
beneficiaries of those earlier and now suddenly reversed economic gains. From yelling
out lottery numbers thirty years before, young Jakartans were now shouting down
Suharto.
Only a dreamer could have imagined in May 1998 that in May 2009 Indonesia would be
a stable democracy preparing for its second direct presidential election—the most
democratic country in Southeast Asia by Freedom House standards. This is not the place
to allocate responsibility for that achievement, but President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono
(SBY) certainly would figure in such an account.
In a book that celebrates the inclusion of President Yudhoyono in TIME Magazine’s list
of the world’s 100 “most influential people,” it is both heartening and ironic to note that
the comment on SBY commissioned by TIME is not a puff piece that merely praises the
president and his considerable accomplishments. In addition to lauding SBY, Malaysian
author and politician Anwar Ibrahim is candid about the challenges that Indonesia faces:
persisting poverty, neglected infrastructure, injurious corruption, and “a bewildering
array” of investment-discouraging regulations.
Anwar’s blurb for SBY is heartening not only because it avoids bogus flattery, but also
because the president himself, perhaps in light of his partly academic background, readily
acknowledges the value of critique. Anwar’s remarks are at the same time ironic insofar
2 I wrote about Hwa Hwee later in "Gambling and Development: The Case of Djakarta's 'Flower
Organization,'" Asia (Autumn 1972).
as a reader with a sense of humor can wonder: If Yudhoyono really is one of the 100
most influential of all the 6.8 billion people now alive on this planet, how can poverty,
corruption, and red tape still exist in the country he has been governing nonstop ever
since he was elected to its presidency five years ago?
This is a joke, of course, but it prompts a serious thought. Indonesia is a democracy—
flawed, to be sure, but democratic nonetheless. Democracy is intentionally and
institutionally geared to prevent or remedy the concentration of influence in the hands of
any one person—king or queen, president or prime minister—standing at the top of the
political system. Indonesia could not possibly be a democracy if the editors of TIME had
selected the country’s leader on the basis of brute omnipotence rather than persuasive
talent—taking into account hard power alone, ignoring the softer kind.
Democracy is not a one-size-fits-all solution to any problem. In Indonesia’s
decentralized multiparty system, politics can hamper performance. The necessity for
coalition and compromise can undermine the exigency of good governance and effective
public policy.
Indeed, President Yudhoyono’s more enthusiastic supporters could argue that what he
needs is not TIME’s congratulation for being so uniquely and impressively influential.
They could ask instead for recognition that, if he is re-elected, and if he then governs by
compromising with his political opponents and appropriating their diverse partisan
agendas, he could lose what limited influence over policy he might otherwise be able to
exercise.
It is one thing to make a state accountable. It is another to make it responsive—
responsive, that is, to the physical and socioeconomic needs of its citizens. If
accountability is an electoral question for politics, responsiveness is a policy question of
performance.
Consider the president’s decision to choose as his running mate the head of Indonesia’s
central bank, Boediono, a man without a political base but well regarded for his economic
expertise, managerial skill, and personal integrity. Boediono is a Muslim. Yet the head
of one Islamist party, Tifatul Sembiring of the PKS, accused him of not being Muslim
enough to warrant selection as a potential vice-president in Muslim-majority Indonesia.
In addition to noting the multi-religious character of Indonesia, reflected in its trans-
confessional national doctrine, Pancasila, one could observe that for Sembiring, the
politics of identity mattered more in this instance than the criterion of competence.
If Yudhoyono’s presidency is renewed, will he be influential enough to establish and
sustain the criterion of competence in his cabinet appointments? Or, lacking sufficient
political clout, will his ministerial choices amount to political concessions to the parties
he needs to ensure a majority coalition in the legislature—appointments of individuals
whose loyalty or importance to this or that party may exceed their knowledge of, and
ability to improve, the policy sectors entrusted to their care? How will Indonesia balance
the political need for dispersed representation in the legislative branch of government
with the policy need for concentrated effectiveness in the executive branch? Whose
influence will count, and with what consequences for the country as a whole? Those are
the questions that President Yudhoyono’s winning TIME’s contest for influence raise, at
least in this outside observer’s mind.
In Indonesia’s polity, directly elected legislators and a directly elected president are
juxtaposed. The balance of influence between them, and their willingness and ability to
abjure personal avarice, vested interests, and communal agendas, and instead to cooperate
in serving the public interest, will be critical to whether Indonesia’s government from
2009 to 2014 succeeds or fails.
Whatever happens over these next five years, we can be assured of this: Dunia berputar.
Times change. So will Indonesia.
