Procrastination: Hoping problems will just go away<\/p>\n
Nirwan Idrus, Executive Director, Indonesian Institute for
\nManagement Development, Jakarta<\/p>\n
The ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) 2003 wasn't to be, because it
\nstarted on Jan. 1 2002 -- a year earlier. The Gulf Corporation
\nCommittee (GCC) also announced that their cut-in date has been
\nmoved forward from 2005 to 2003. The speed of the computer and
\nthe half-life of technology keeps moving forward, while we in
\nIndonesia are asking for things to be moved backward!<\/p>\n
As reported on Feb. 1, President Megawati Soekarnoputri at an
\nAFTA Conference the previous day strongly suggested dispensation
\nfrom the rules of AFTA for those countries which are still too
\nweak to compete. A year or so ago, the Chairman of the Indonesian
\nAutomotive Association, asked for the postponement of AFTA 2003
\nby 10 years, as the Indonesian Automotive industry was not ready
\nto compete.<\/p>\n
The recent rift between Kwik Kian Gie and his cabinet peers
\nand perhaps even the President herself, arose due to the
\npostponement by 10 years no less of the debt repayment by
\nconglomerates to the government. Obviously these debtors are also
\nnot ready to pay their debts, even though most of them are still
\nliving a life that most Indonesians can only view in television
\ndramas, the sinetron.<\/p>\n
There are many other examples of procrastination. The
\nsuffering by Jakartans in recent days due to floods is but just
\nanother. Regrettably, we cannot ask God to delay the rains until
\nwe have finished what we were supposed to have done many moons
\nago.<\/p>\n
The monetary crisis is still with us while Thailand, Korea and
\nother Asian countries have well passed it. People could not be
\nblamed for thinking that we are so used to it now, that it may as
\nwell continue. We have survived for nearly 60 years since
\nindependence the way we are. Indonesians survived the Dutch
\ncolonization for 350 years presumably under worse conditions, so
\nwe can survive another 10 or 20 with the monetary crisis hanging
\nover us. Why worry?<\/p>\n
Well, Indonesia is already behind Vietnam in education.
\nVietnam, which had to bear the aftermaths of their civil war,
\nwhich had to reform and revolutionize all sorts of things
\nincluding education, will rapidly become an economic power in
\ntheir own right. Observers expect Vietnam to surpass some of the
\nother Asian economies in the next 10 to 15 years. This could in
\nfact be time on the outside, as it may happen much earlier than
\nthat. Why could this happen?<\/p>\n
Well, Vietnam's leadership is certainly one factor. There is a
\nconcerted effort to get the country going again. To some extent
\nit has practiced AFTA and globalization earlier than some of the
\nother Southeast Asian countries. Although recent times have
\nreduced the speed of investments by other Asian countries in
\nVietnam, there is no doubt that they will continue.<\/p>\n
There are also other investments -- in particular in their
\nhuman resources and human resource capabilities. You only need
\nto go to any one of the universities in Hanoi for the
\nmanifestation of the hunger for education. No, you won't see cars
\nor even motorcycles in the campus' parking area. You see
\nthousands of bicycles.<\/p>\n
But go inside the university and you will see French, American
\nprofessors, and Australian professors and so on involved in
\nvarious educational programs with their Vietnamese counterparts.
\nPrograms that really work and that are running. Human resources
\nand therefore education and training are absolute imperatives for
\nthe survival of a country.<\/p>\n
Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore knew this right from
\nthe start. Maybe he didn't tell us the whole story. We can see
\nnow, that it wasn't just because Singapore didn't have any
\nnatural resources, but that the only way to progress is indeed
\nthrough \"knowledge economy\" and a well educated citizenry.<\/p>\n
Somebody once said that to think is to change. As a corollary,
\nif there is no change then there is no thinking. One wonders if
\nthis befits Indonesia and Indonesians? One only has to be on the
\nroad for a few minutes in any city in Indonesia to confirm this.<\/p>\n
It's a dangerous jungle out there on the streets. This is just
\nthe traffic -- not the other unthinkable activities that go on
\nlike bags snatching, extortion at traffic lights, pocket picking
\nin buses and trains and even plain robbery. We all know why these
\nhappened, don't we?<\/p>\n
We all say that there is no law enforcement and we read that
\nthe three most corrupt departments in the bureaucracy are the
\npolice, the judiciary and the customs -- the very departments
\nthat should become pillars of civilization.<\/p>\n
Surely the people who are suffering most from the floods, the
\nlittle people, do not have either the power or the tools to
\nimplement changes in those departments. In the armed forces you
\nmust blame the generals, not the foot soldiers, for losing a
\nbattle. The soldiers only follow orders.<\/p>\n
Management gurus say that it is the managers who must be
\nresponsible for any action or inaction or for the quality or lack
\nof quality in an organization.<\/p>\n
All the above are only symptoms of what we all know to be
\nchronic and cancerous problems in this country. Of course one can
\ndebate what the problems really are. One at least, must be
\nprocrastination by the governments and the people in government
\nto take the difficult but appropriate decisions. It would seem
\nthat they are hoping hard that these problems will go away by
\nthemselves.<\/p>\n
So delay the decisions, ask for extensions, find lots of
\nreasons and spend lots of effort and money to justify
\nprocrastination, instead of spending that same effort to make and
\nimplement decisions.<\/p>\n
After all, what are we going to get by waiting 10 years, by
\ngetting dispensation from rules that were made together with the
\nother ASEAN countries and by not rocking the boat? Twenty more
\npercent of Indonesians going below the poverty line, making it
\nnow 60 percent of the population, that's what!<\/p>\n
Should we wait until 80 or 90 percent or about 200 million
\npeople, when Indonesia will indeed become a barbaric jungle and
\nthe only law is the survival of the strongest or fittest? It
\nseems that then it will be really too late. Even now,
\nintelligence reports are foreshadowing social unrests if the
\ndelays in debt repayment by the super-debtors were approved by
\nthe government.<\/p>\n
At a recent conference on economic reform in Indonesia,
\nsomeone commented that it is important that Indonesia has a
\nblueprint for its survival and that it must ask the question:
\nWhat sort of an Indonesian do we want to have in the year 2100?<\/p>\n
A young official from a department that advises the
\npresidential office, responded by dismissing the blueprint and
\nsaid that the answer is already in the Constitution.<\/p>\n
\"We want a just and prosperous community,\" he said. But
\nIndonesia has been trying just that for almost 60 years without
\nsuccess. You need a blueprint, mate!<\/p>\n
And when should we start? The answer is of course now. And
\nwhen is a good time for AFTA? Well everybody else around the
\nregion knows that it started on Jan. 1, 2002!<\/p>",
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