A test of leadership

President Soeharto's accountability speech delivered to the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) yesterday must have been the toughest he has had to prepare since 1973. The rosy anecdotes of progress achieved under his leadership which peppered his previous five accountability reports have gone. Achievements have been overshadowed, in some cases even eliminated, by the economic crisis that has gripped our country since the middle of 1997.

This year's speech did make reference to some positive developments, but only after the President had discussed the grave situation facing the country. A sense of optimism can still be detected in his speech, but it is tempered with a reasonable dose of reality.

He said the economy grew by a paltry 4.7 percent last year, against an average annual growth of 7.1 percent in the previous four years. Per capita income, in dollar terms, fell from $1,155 to $1,089 in 1997. These two indicators alone tell us enough about the bleak state of our economy and negate some of the progress crafted by Indonesia since the last accountability report was presented in 1993. It is possible, with the crisis expected to worsen before it gets better, that the economy will grind to a halt or register negative growth this year. If that happens, income will drop even lower.

This is indeed the worst economic crisis Indonesia has faced since Soeharto came to the helm of our country in 1968 and launched his five-year development plans a year later. The plans were designed to lift the nation toward prosperity from the abject poverty into which it had fallen. The Sixth Five-Year Plan, which ends on March 31, 1999, is still expected to pay dividends, if only dividends that fall short of the high returns to which the nation has become accustomed.

In the corporate world, a chief executive officer not only presents a report of accountability, he or she is grilled by shareholders over company performance during the reporting period. Shareholders can choose to accept or reject the report. If they are very displeased, they can also replace the chief executive. The shareholders' meeting is essentially a place to test the chief executive's leadership.

The MPR General Session is not terribly different from a shareholders' meeting, in which the MPR represents the sovereignty of the people -- our nation's shareholders. Soeharto, in his capacity as the country's chief executive, yesterday gave an account of his leadership for the past five years. Since all five of the MPR political factions had agreed to return Soeharto to power before the session began, we can assume they would accept his report, as they have done in all previous General Sessions.

But this does not mean that the factions should blindly endorse it. At the very least, the 1,000 members of the MPR should give the report a thorough and critical look, before giving their stamp of approval. That much is owed to the 200 million people they are supposed to represent.

While Soeharto's report was frank and honest about the triumphs and failures of his leadership, it did not address some of the underlying factors which are now widely accepted as having contributed to, if not caused, the current crisis. Many senior government officials have admitted that corruption, collusion, nepotism and monopolistic practices have exacerbated the crisis. Some people would go further and say that these factors caused the crisis in the first place. Although not mentioned directly in the report, we can still take heart because many of these issues have been addressed by the IMF reform package to which President Soeharto reaffirmed his commitment.

While we firmly endorse Soeharto's appeal to refrain from seeking scapegoats, the MPR has a duty to identify factors which are responsible for, or have exacerbated, the present crisis. Laying the foundations for clean government and good governance is the greatest contribution the MPR can give the new government.