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."