Ethnic Chinese urged to enter political arena

A'an Suryana, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The struggle of Indonesians of Chinese descent to put an end to racial discrimination here will never succeed if they fail to gain influence in the decision making process in the country, a discussion concluded on Saturday.

Titled The Duty and Role of Chinese Indonesians in Building the Nation and State, the discussion underlined the fact that Chinese Indonesians must become well represented in politics in order to stymie the adoption of any potentially discriminatory government policies.

By actively entering politics, Chinese Indonesians could also contribute something to the country, according to the discussion participants.

"Chinese Indonesians should not merely concentrate on business, but must also consider entering politics. By entering politics, they could gain significant bargaining power in the decision making process in the country," lawyer Frans Hendra Winarta told the participants.

All the speakers, and most of the participants during the discussion, which was organized by the Tionghoa Indonesia Association (Inti), were Chinese Indonesians.

The speakers included, among others, Eddie Lembong, the chairman of Inti, Brig. Gen. (ret) Teddy Jusuf and K. Sindhunata.

Despite being powerful in business, the Chinese Indonesian community, comprising 6 percent of the total population of 210 million here, is not well represented in politics. Few of them manage to enter the legislative and executive branches so that there is no powerful lobby to act on behalf of the interests of the Chinese community.

Some political parties seeking to represent Chinese Indonesians have been formed but they have failed to get a single representative into the legislature.

Winarta said that Chinese Indonesians should learn from the Jewish minority in the U.S., which was backed by a powerful lobby.

"The Jews make up only 3 percent of the total U.S. population, but they are very powerful. In the Israel-Palestine conflict, for example, the U.S. government can never go against Israel because of the Jewish lobby," said Winarta, who is also a member of the National Law Commission (KHN).

There were several important politicians and scholars from the Jewish community in the U.S., including Henry Kissinger, Madeleine Allbright and Daniel Lev, said Winarta.

"The parents of Chinese Indonesians should not merely encourage their kids to go into business, but the kids must also be urged to go into politics," he said.

Another speaker, Benny G. Setiono, shared Winarta's view, saying that Chinese Indonesians must come out of "the business cage."

"Politics is not scary and should not be avoided. Rather it should be learned and understood. Chinese Indonesians can form political parties, or join the existing parties to fight for the interests of their community," said Benny, from Inti's Jakarta chapter.

However, instead of thinking narrow-mindedly about political parties, Chinese Indonesians should join hands with other prodemocratic elements in the country to build a democratic and corruption-free Indonesia, said Winarta.

"Should Indonesia achieve genuine democracy, transparency, justice and the other good qualities of democracy, racial discrimination would automatically be abolished in the country," Winarta said.

After the start of the reform era, the Indonesian government had repealed a few discriminatory rules against Chinese Indonesians. However, many others still remained, such as the regulations on Chinese Indonesian's citizenship.