Effective leadership needed in reform movement

Effective leadership needed in reform movement

Sayidiman Suryohadiprojo, Former Governor, National Resilience
Institute (Lemhanas), Jakarta

Although some people say that our reform movement is on the
right track, many others are of a different opinion.

There are even people who consider the movement to have failed
or to have been defeated by the "anti-reform" people. At least we
must agree that the movement is stagnating. Can we recover from
this situation?

In 1998 when the movement started, the situation was very
different. Most Indonesians were unified because they wanted
immediate change -- an end of the authoritarian regime of
president Soeharto that had brought so much suffering. The
students responded to this strong demand for change and pioneered
the reform movement.

The people's unity and the students' dynamic spirit made the
movement effective enough to lead to Soeharto's resignation.
There was no strong and distinct leadership that guided the
movement; the unity of its supporters rendered this unnecessary.

However, after having toppled Soeharto, the reform movement
faced an entirely different situation. The reformists had agreed
to the need for change, from authoritarian rule to democracy,
with all its freedoms, such as freedom of the press and freedom
of opinion.

They had also agreed on the need to end the widespread
corruption, collusion and nepotism, or KKN, that had accumulated
during the Soeharto regime and which had made Indonesia one of
the world's most corrupt nations. Therefore legal supremacy had
to be restored; the widening gap between rich and poor had to be
addressed and an economic system was needed that placed the
highest priority on the role and the prosperity of the common
people. There needed to be more autonomy for the provinces to
enable people to make their own decisions. Moreover, revenue from
natural resources had to be used to enrich the people located in
these areas.

However, after four years of this movement toward "reform" it
seems that people who are not used to having so much freedom do
not know how to make use of it for creating a healthy life.

Many groups with different aspirations and objectives only
think of their own interests. Corruption is increasing because
more people are now involved. Politicians in the central and
regional legislative councils shamelessly demand money from
everybody who depends on their decisions. They could not do that
when Soeharto was in power, because he made all the decisions
himself. Officials in the bureaucracy and in the judiciary are
continuing with KKN as usual. It is quite possible that the
amount of corrupted money today has increased from the amounts
involved in the past.

Criminality has increased in terms of quantity as well as
viciousness, because of the ineffectiveness of law enforcers,
including the police. People take the law into their own hands,
even burning suspected criminals to death.

The newly acquired freedom has also activated ethnic
sentiments. Physical conflicts between ethnic groups have very
dire consequences and are worsening domestic security. This
became more acute when Muslims and Christians started to fight
each other. National unity has become endangered, with several
provinces threatening to separate from the Republic.

Neither has the economy improved, still mired as it is in the
legacy of the crisis of 1997, while most of the East Asian
nations that were also affected are on the way to recovery.

It is worse when badly needed new investors are not willing to
take the risks caused by the poor domestic security. Many
companies are closing their businesses here and moving to
neighboring countries with more conducive conditions. Obviously
all these developments are cause for increasing unemployment,
worsening the deterioration of social and security conditions.

The ineffectiveness of the government from the beginning of
the reform movement is a significant factor in our stagnation.
President B.J. Habibie's government is often mentioned as the
right government at the wrong time; meaning that Habibie
personally could have become a good president, but his basic
weakness was that many people looked at him, rightly or wrongly,
as the continuation of Soeharto.

Abdurrahman Wahid, who replaced Habibie in 1999, initially had
the support of many who saw in him a democrat and a humanist.
However, he could not control himself, which led to his downfall
in 2001. President Megawati Soekarnoputri, his replacement and
the leader of the country's largest political party, seems to
have difficulty in being decisive.

The result is that the law today is still far from supreme,
corruption is increasing daily, domestic security is not
improving and the nation is without a clear direction.

Also, Indonesia is being badly harmed by the actions of
foreign countries that are seeking to strengthen their interests
in Indonesia, as the largest nation in Southeast Asia with a very
significant strategic location and important natural resources.

Not only is the existence of the unitary republic endangered,
the fate of Indonesia as an independent nation-state is now at
stake.

The current stagnation is likely the result of a lack of
effective leadership. All the presidents and governments after
Soeharto were unable to demonstrate the leadership required to
steer the reform movement in the right direction. Without a
strong and effective leadership the movement became split into
many parts, each going its own way. The lack of leadership also
badly influenced morality, which was already low during the
Soeharto era.

Social solidarity is non-existent when everybody and every
group does not want to listen to one another, let alone
harmonize their interests with others.

If we want to overcome our weaknesses in leadership we have to
look at our political parties, which in a democratic system have
the most important role in political developments. However,
looking at the personalities in the parties and considering their
track records, one cannot place too much hope in the political
parties to make any improvements in national leadership.

Indeed, there are many smart people among the party members,
but smart people are not automatically effective leaders. And
without the ability to develop strong and effective leaders, the
political parties will not be able to unite the nation.

It is therefore questionable whether general elections with a
proportional system, favorable to political parties, can solve
the leadership problem.

Recently senior journalists from the Indonesian Journalists
Association (PWI) declared a movement to promote unity among all
the people who still value patriotism and nationalism. The PWI
plans a national campaign in the provinces, but without the
participation of the political parties that are now distrusted by
many people.

This gesture will hopefully have a positive influence and help
prevent actions that jeopardize the reform movement -- such as
the reported intention of certain people to spark a revolution by
manipulating frustrated students and other people. There is no
sign of a capable and effective leadership in this planned
"revolution" -- it would instead only increase people's
suffering.