Australians challenge Indonesia: Friend or foe?

Australians challenge Indonesia: Friend or foe?

Sid Astbury, Deutsche Presse-Agentur/Sydney

Many Australians would like to see jailed Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Ba'asyir put up against a wall and shot despite the fact that any court in any jurisdiction anywhere would have been hard pressed to prove that he did anything more than condone terrorism.

They are also demanding that convicted drug smuggler Schapelle Corby be freed from her Bali prison cell, never mind that if her case had come before the courts back home in Australia she would almost certainly still have a lengthy stretch in front of her for a crime that wasn't at all difficult to prove.

The 20 million Australians have some funny ideas about the 215 million in neighboring Indonesia. They don't rejoice in the transition of the world's biggest Moslem nation from the easy-to- understand authoritarianism of the 32-year Soeharto era to the untidy multi-party democracy that started to take hold in 1998. And they haven't altogether let go of the patronizing attitudes that so often upset relations in the past.

Salim Said, a political analyst at the Center for National Strategic Studies in Jakarta, is annoyed that Australians are unwilling to accept the verdicts in the Ba'asyir and Corby criminal trials.

"We have tried very hard to follow procedures in both cases," he said. "But in the Corby case in particular they look to us as if we are an uncivilized country. That is not good for bilateral relations."

It's a view that is supported by Greg Fealy, an Indonesia- watcher at Canberra's Australian National University (ANU).

"For a country that casts itself as knowledgeable about Indonesia, we have displayed ignorance and misunderstanding," Fealy said. "There is a sense in the popular sentiment that our approach is right and that Indonesia reflects a less civilized country."

But the government of Prime Minister John Howard is dead set on improving relations with Indonesia. After winning his fourth election victory in October, Howard declared that mending fences was a priority and that he would be attending the inauguration of Indonesia's first democratically elected president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

"The most important thing I want to convey to him during this visit is how much we admire the way there has been this transition to democracy in Indonesia," Howard said before jetting off to Jakarta for the ceremony.

Since then, Howard and Susilo have become fast friends. Howard has cemented the friendship by contributing 1 billion Australian dollars (760 million U.S. dollars) to the tsunami relief effort. Indonesia is only outranked by Papua New Guinea in the amount of Australian aid received.

Howard is using better relations with Jakarta to prize open Asian regional counsels. At the inaugural East Asian summit in Malaysia in December, Australia has a seat because Indonesia was supporting its invitation.

Howard had to eat a large helping of humble pie to get into the summit. A precondition set by the 10 South East Asian countries was that Australia sign a vaguely worded non-aggression pact that others, including China, India and Japan, had signed.

Initially, Howard ridiculed the pact, saying it clashed with Canberra's military alliance with the United States and was incompatible with his pledge that preemptive strikes could be made against terrorist cells in the region planning an attack on Australia.

His backflip showed that closer relations with the region, and with Indonesia, come at a price.

Hugh White, professor of strategic studies at the ANU, wants to see Howard go further and seek a formal defense agreement with Indonesia that would replace the one Jakarta ripped up in 1999 when Australia caused offense by leading an international intervention force into East Timor, a territory that had been part of the republic for almost a quarter of a century.

"We do need a symbol of willingness to engage with Indonesia," White said. "So much has happened in Indonesia in the past five or six years. We haven't done enough, from the Australian end, to reach out to what is a new and democratic Indonesia and really try and do something new and innovative with the relationship."

Set against that view is a warning from veteran political commentator Paul Kelly that it would be a mistake to think Australia could shape the course of Indonesia's political awakening.

Kelly, writing in The Australian, said: "For 30 years, since the start of the East Timor saga, Australians have deluded ourselves about our ability to change domestic events in Jakarta".

There is increasing evidence that Howard has got a grip on the levers of the relationship and is proving adept at manipulating them.

Last week he refused point-blank to ring Susilo and whine about the remissions given to prisoners - including Ba'asyir - on the occasion of Indonesia's Independence Day. Unlike callers to talkback radio and letter writers to newspapers, Howard kept within the boundaries dictated by respect for Indonesian sovereignty.

Arief Budiman is a former Indonesian student activist who now heads the Indonesian studies department at Melbourne University. He reckons the government is getting it right and warns that a fatal mistake would be to pander to public opinion.

"The Australian public is rather naive," Budiman said. "They only know about Bali. That is why they're always upset about things. They don't really understand them. But the Australian government, I think, is handling it pretty well."