A friendlier Clark to visit our shores

A friendlier Clark to visit our shores

Claire Harvey, Contributor, Jakarta

Not so long ago, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark was
not a big fan of Indonesia.

"Indonesia is a particularly broke economy which looks to
other wealthier countries to bail it out," she said disparagingly
in September 1999.

Back then, Clark was opposition leader and Indonesia was
facing the wrath of the world community for failing to rein in
the pro-Jakarta militias who were killing and terrorizing East
Timorese civilians.

Clark wanted the world to put pressure on Indonesia, and felt
the economic forum of the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation,
where Indonesia was then seeking help to cope with the monetary
crisis, was the right place to do it.

The Helen Clark who arrives in Jakarta tomorrow is a much
friendlier figure.

The Prime Minister, leader of the New Zealand Labor Party, has
already established a rapport with President Megawati
Soekarnoputri and this two-day visit is aimed to help smooth the
differences over East Timor, refugees and human rights which have
dogged relations between Jakarta and Wellington.

Like Megawati, Helen Clark is a pioneering female politician.
But Clark, 52, is a much less flamboyant leader than the
Indonesian president.

The daughter of dairy farmers, Clark was born in the central
North Island town of Hamilton in 1950.

A serious, studious young woman, she was educated at boarding
school and studied political science at the University of
Auckland.

"I was academic, worked really hard because I've always really
enjoyed academic work," Clark has said of her student days. She
has described how 1960s pop music made little impact on her and
once admitted seeing other students smoking marijuana - but not
trying a puff herself.

But even in her earnest youth Clark was an individual thinker.

To her parents' angst, she joined in protests against the
Vietnam War and against the presence of US military bases on New
Zealand soil.

Clark became an academic after graduating from university but
the political urge was strong and she was deeply involved with
the left-wing Labor Party.

By 1981, she was a member of Parliament for an inner-city seat
in New Zealand's biggest city, Auckland.

In those days, Clark was an unfashionable beast - a Labor
politician who did not support the rampant free-market
deregulation which the party was embracing.

Clark felt the policy, dubbed "Rogernomics" after Treasurer
Roger Douglas, was unjust.

"If the market is left to sort matters out, social injustice
will be heightened and suffering in the community will grow with
the neglect the market fosters," the young MP told Parliament in
her maiden speech.

That was not a message the government leaders wanted to hear.
Clark remained on the backbenches for the next 6 years, speaking
out about the importance of social welfare while senior members
of the government privatized more and more public assets.

She was mocked within and outside the party as "Red Helen", an
old-fashioned leftie who stubbornly failed to recognize the
brilliance of Rogernomics.

Clark was also deeply opposed to nuclear power. A vocal anti-
nuclear activist in the 1980s, when New Zealand earned American
wrath for banning US nuclear warships from visiting Kiwi ports,
she even suspected the American government was bugging her phone
conversations.

In 1987 Clark became Minister for Housing, coming in from the
outfield as Prime Minister David Lange began to recognize the
weaknesses of Rogernomics. But three years later Labor lost
office and had seemingly lost its way - it had abandoned its
traditional working-class roots but seemed to have no coherent
alternative.

For the next nine years Labor languished in Opposition. In
1993, Clark decided it was time to make her move and toppled
Labor leader Mike Moore, who had just been defeated in elections.

The overhaul of Helen Clark's public image was well on the
way. Often characterized as a dour, humorless, boring policy
nerd, she used the years in opposition to broaden her interests.

Clark climbed Mount Kilimanjaro with her husband, academic
Peter Davis. She took up cross-country skiing, studied foreign
languages and adopted a much more media-friendly look; a softer
haircut, tailored clothes, even a little makeup.

In 1999, Clark defeated National Party Prime Minister Jenny
Shipley, who had come to power in an ugly coup as the desperate
Nationals struggled to hold on to power.

As the country's first elected female Prime Minister, Clark
feminist credentials are impeccable. But some question how well
Clark, who has no children, can really understand the New Zealand
family.

"I'm not going to make myself ordinary," she has said. "If
ordinary means I have suddenly got to produce a household of kids
and iron Peter's shirts, I'm sorry, I'm not interested."

Clark has always taken a keen interest in Indonesia. She has
repeatedly urged Jakarta to bring to justice the killers of New
Zealand peacekeeper Leonard Manning, murdered on patrol in East
Timor. Clark complained that the six-year sentence given to one
of Manning's killers in 2001 was too lenient and expressed her
unhappiness in March this year when three alleged accomplices
were acquitted.

In recent weeks Clark has hinted New Zealand - which took some
of the refugees emanating from Indonesia during Australia's
recent crackdown on people-smuggling - might look at taking more
refugees from Indonesia.

She returns home on Tuesday to begin in earnest preparations
for New Zealand's general elections, due in November. But Clark
isn't looking too worried - her popularity is the highest for any
New Zealand prime minister for the last 15 years.