Faisal Basri: A study in humility<\/p>\n
Berni K. Moestafa, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta<\/p>\n
On Faisal Basri, modesty stands out like his trademark khaki
\ntrousers, his light-colored shirt and his leather sandals among
\nother men in suits.<\/p>\n
\"Help yourself please,\" he said, pointing to a selection of
\ntea and coffee, in the corner of his office while he prepared
\nhimself a bowl of instant noodles, \"I don't like how people here
\npamper someone just because he's the dean.\"<\/p>\n
Faisal actually deserves some pampering. It's well over half
\npast three in the afternoon and the dean of the Perbanas Business
\nSchool had not had his lunch yet.<\/p>\n
Earlier in the day, he joined a brainstorming session for new
\nreporters at television station TV 7, gave a lecture on the
\nIndonesian economy at Perbanas, then agreed to a quick interview
\nwhich, he was not to know, turned out to last for over an hour.<\/p>\n
Faisal is an economist. Outstanding economists exist, few
\nhowever launch political attacks, and of those very few find
\npower unattractive.<\/p>\n
Last year, for instance, he called for an act of civil
\ndisobedience by ignoring regulations of politicians whom he
\nblamed for neglecting the public, with their power games.<\/p>\n
In 1997 before a crowd of rallying students, Faisal demanded
\nSoeharto's resignation when even political activists refrained to
\nsingling out the former strongman as hampering economic recovery.<\/p>\n
Believing the struggle must go on after the Soeharto era, he
\nhelped found the National Mandate Party (PAN) and became its
\nfirst secretary-general -- a position so unlike him, as are the
\nshoes he said he kept in his car for formal occasions.<\/p>\n
\"I never wanted to become a politician, that has never been my
\ndream,\" he said. But when close friends asked him to join PAN, he
\ndid so. That was in 1998.<\/p>\n
In January 2001, Faisal resigned over discontent with moves to
\nchange PAN's open political platform into an Islamic one, not, he
\nasserted, after someone challenged him at a public seminar to
\nquit PAN.<\/p>\n
\"What I really like is teaching and doing research,\" he said.<\/p>\n
Faisal hails from the same school as brilliant economists like
\nSri Mulyani Indrawati, M. Ihksan and Chatib Basri.<\/p>\n
A graduate of the University of Indonesia, he has never really
\nleft his alma mater since he first enrolled there in 1978. He
\nstill teaches economics at the university.<\/p>\n
\"After graduating I just stayed on as a lecturer and a
\nresearcher. I didn't even think about working somewhere else,\"
\nFaisal said, adding he did once apply for a staff position with
\nthe United Nations but was turned down when he missed an
\ninterview.<\/p>\n
He then held a research post at the University of Indonesia's
\nInstitute for Economic and Social Research (LPEM) for 17 years.<\/p>\n
From inside LPEM, he launched his criticism of the
\ngovernment's economic policies that often hit the political
\nestablishment behind them as well.<\/p>\n
He had no qualms about blasting the businesses of the Soeharto
\nclan and his cronies, knowing well their empire was build on
\npower rather than entrepreneurship.<\/p>\n
Soeharto's downfall in 1998 opened the way to uproot excessive
\nstate control over the market under the auspices of the
\nInternational Monetary Fund (IMF).<\/p>\n
Today Faisal airs his grief over unfair business competition,
\nover the media and the country's first antimonopoly watchdog, one
\nof several IMF-backed products.<\/p>\n
The Business Competition Supervisory Commission (KPPU) has
\nbecome the referee in today's ever tighter market, penalizing
\nshady dealings of big corporations.<\/p>\n
\"The market is no saint, without regulations the big ones bury
\nthe small ones, the smart cheat the dumb, two big ones almost
\ncertainly means collusion,\" said Faisal, now also a KPPU member.<\/p>\n
But between the Soeharto-style market control and the risk of
\nfree trade, Faisal goes for the middle ground. \"It's like a
\npendulum, swinging from one extreme to another, it isn't good.\"<\/p>\n
His down-to-earth insights are not merely pragmatism nurtured
\nby years of toiling with economic figures at LPEM.<\/p>\n
\"What are the values I try to adhere to?\" Faisal asked as he
\npondered a question on the meaning of life. \"Quite simple, they
\nare (the values from) the people nearest to me,\" he said, citing
\nhis parents first.<\/p>\n
His family, he said, was rather poor but not without dignity,
\nwhich strikes one as especially hard, since his relatives
\nbelonged to the upper crust of society during the late sixties.<\/p>\n
After all, his grandmother's elder brother was Adam Malik, the
\nvenerable foreign minister and vice president during that time.<\/p>\n
But while Adam might have set the mark of his family's social
\nstatus, he also taught them to be humble.<\/p>\n
Faisal recalled how the former vice president gave attention
\nto family members who were not as well-off as their well-to-do
\nrelatives.<\/p>\n
\"I look at Adam Malik's modesty, how he taught our family the
\ntrue meanings of family values, being non-discriminative,\" he
\nsaid.<\/p>\n
Adam's teachings, in the most obvious form, have resurfaced in
\nFaisal's unpretentious dressing style. It is from within him
\nthough that these values serve the country best.<\/p>",
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