Fisher wants to devote career to resolving conflicts

Fisher wants to devote career to resolving conflicts

By Riyadi

JAKARTA (JP): Until he was 20 years old, Ben Fisher thought he
was going to be a professional baseball player. But his eyes
started to go bad, so clearly unable to play baseball for a
living, he went to college and then graduate school. His career
eventually took him to the World Bank's Jakarta office, a stint
that lasted many years and only recently ended.

Besides his work as the World Bank's country program
coordinator, Fisher still manages to find some free time to play
baseball and softball.

He says his love affair with baseball has made him more
passionate in dealing with day-to-day problems, and he often
employs this passion to understand contemporary developments in
Indonesia.

After completing his dissertation on urban planning and
economics in 1971 and receiving his PhD from the University of
North Carolina, Fisher left the U.S. to work with the Ford
Foundation in India. After three years in India, the Ford
Foundation's Jakarta office offered him a job, which he accepted.

Fisher arrived in Jakarta in late 1974, with his wife and
three children. Fisher's primary focus in Jakarta was assisting
the National Development Planning Board in establishing
provincial development planning boards and teaching at various
universities, including the University of Indonesia's School of
Economics.

After spending five years with the Ford Foundation in Jakarta,
Fisher left Indonesia to return to the U.S. In 1980, he joined
the World Bank in Washington, where he held various positions
dealing with East Asia, Indonesia in particular.

Then in 1990, Fisher was sent by the World Bank to its Jakarta
office, with his main duty being to study the environmental
impact of World Bank projects in the country.

Fisher eventually fell in love with Indonesia, and chose to
remain in the country longer than any other person from the World
Bank.

"It's unusual for anybody in the Bank to stay in one country
for so long, but I did that by preference," he said.

In 1993, Fisher was appointed chief of the environmental and
social impact unit at the World Bank's Jakarta office. Then in
1997, he was promoted to deputy director and country program
coordinator for Indonesia.

Earlier this week, Fisher ended his duties in Jakarta and
returned to Washington. Before he left, Fisher spoke with The
Jakarta Post. The following is an excerpt from that interview.

Question: You have been in Indonesia for a long time. What
have you done here during this time, especially with the World
Bank?

Answer: In 1990, I came here to be the first environment
specialist. During the 1970s and 1980s, the World Bank invested
in some projects without doing environmental impact assessments.
One well-known project is called Kedung Ombo Dam, the project
that the World Bank started to support in 1984, without adequate
analysis of the impacts on people living there. By 1990, the
World Bank decided that that must never happen again. That was my
primary job from 1990 through 1993. It seemed to work well.

Another part of my job was to open up the Bank, make it more
transparent. Beginning in 1994, we made all World Bank
publications available to the public. Up until then, most of our
documents had been kept secret. And that was not good because it
was difficult to get meaningful feedback or criticism from the
press, the NGOs (non-governmental organizations). So, around the
world we started to disclose everything we possibly could within
the law. We tried to do that, and we succeeded here, I think.

Then on July 1, 1997, I was appointed country program
coordinator, but on July 5 the Thai baht collapsed and the
economic crisis began and everything changed. And the last three
years, we had been working in the crisis environment, like
everybody else.

All of our lendings were called projects lending, that's
lending to finance irrigation, roads and other projects. And then
with the financial shocks, we had to move for the first time ever
in Indonesia into a substantial program lending, budget support
lending or quick disbursing lending.

At the same time, we were continuing with our ongoing
operations. At that time we had some 85 loans and 35 grants under
implementation across the country. They were not programs but
projects lending, and they still had environmental impacts, they
still had implementation problems, still had tendering, collusion
and corruption.

What about corruption in the government, and also the World
Bank? There was a leaked internal memo from the Bank saying 30
percent of the Bank's lending to Indonesia was lost through
corruption.

That figure emerged in a discussion which I was in. We simply
did not have scientific analysis, we simply asked our colleagues
in the government, private firms, ourselves, how much was really
unaccounted for. Of course, 100 percent was accounted for on
paper, but we knew that could not be true. But finding specific
proof was very difficult. We never had specific proof. But it did
not make sense to continue to talk among ourselves as if there
was no KKN (corruption, collusion and nepotism). KKN is anywhere
in the system, and it must be affecting us also even if we can't
say how much, as all of our money goes through the government.

That's the kind of conversation we had. And 30 percent was
actually never stated, except as one of the numbers that came up.
You can't say it's right. We think (the figure) is less now
because we try much harder, we do everything possibly we can, but
we do know that we can't completely protect our projects.

You are leaving Indonesia when the country is still battling
the economic crisis. What do think of Indonesia today?

What I do think is that if we step back at this point of
history, Indonesia is far better off today than it has been in
the past. Current problems are mostly inevitable consequences of
overdue change.

But if you look at it last year and you look at it today, do
we have a government closely in touch with the people? The answer
is yes. Do we have the beginning of legislature and legislative
democracy? Yes. Do we have the enthusiasm for building legal and
judicial institutions? Yes. Do we have a public that is now
participating in politics? Yes. Do we have an open press? Yes.
All those things are good.

But some people say reform is moving at a snail's pace.

Again, like in the game of baseball, we have innings where a
lot is happening. You know, there are runners in scoring
position, there are good pitchers, there are weak players in the
field. And you know something is going to happen. And you are in
a better position now than earlier in the game, but it can go
either way, we could win or lose. I feel good about the long-term
situation, but worried about the day-to-day.

I'm, without any qualifications, delighted with the days when
the institutions of democracy are evolving. It has gone further
and faster than I thought possible three years ago. I wish it
could go faster, maybe it can. But again, like in baseball,
passion is essential. I don't know the right speed, I would
rather score a lot of runs right away, but I know if we take too
many risks trying to do that, we may lose. And so, I think, maybe
historians may be able to judge whether it is too slow or not,
but I can't. What I can do is be happy as things seem to be
moving generally in the right direction. And that's good.

You must be leaving Indonesia with certain impressions. What's
your impression of the country, and what will you do after you
leave?

Most impressive, of course, has to be the people of Indonesia,
and their ability to live together. It seems strange in the
history of Indonesia now, but at least in Java, people are able
to live together in very dense circumstances. Nothing made me
happier over the years than my personal friendships in Indonesia.

But now, I'm starting to see more serious tensions and I'm
worried about that. Somehow, I think it's not the problem of
basic Indonesian characteristics; some of them must be provoked,
some of are because of the crisis, hardship, and some of them are
exaggerated. But it's very serious and worrying.

One thing I valued more than anything else here that I found
unique is that people could communicate seriously without
speaking loudly. And this is something that connects with me. I
don't like raised voices. There is something about the culture
that developed in Indonesia and which is still strong: that is
politeness.

And secondly, the great diversity in Indonesia. I like my
country, the United States, a very diverse country, diverse
cultures, diverse people. But Indonesia is a country of
diversity. and when these cultures can work together, I'm really
thrilled. I know from the United States that that's not easy.
There are frictions between people, depending on where they are
from, or depending on their race, their educational level or
income level or something else. And Americans do manage cross-
cultural communication pretty well, but not as well as most
Indonesians do it most of the time. But again, I'm deeply
troubled by some of the recent tensions, some of the recent
conflicts.

And that brings me to what I think I will do if I do not
continue working in Indonesia. Probably what I'm going to do is
to enter a new field at my local university in the U.S., George
Mason University in Virginia, what is called the Center for
Conflict Analysis and Resolution, a new subject in the United
States.

And that's dealing with the analysis and resolution of
conflicts at all levels, from the level of family, conflicts
within the family, to community conflicts, among neighbors, among
different neighborhoods, to conflicts between labor and
management in factories, in industries, to political conflicts
between political parties, racial conflicts at the national
level, diplomatic conflicts. And that, I think, is what I would
like to learn about most in the next step of my career, how to
deal with conflicts at the regional scale, the sub-national
scale.

And the exact reason I'm interested in that is because I'm
worried about conflicts that are now emerging in Indonesia, in
Aceh, in Maluku and elsewhere. And I don't know what to do about
those conflicts. My education, training, does not really seem to
fit those needs. So I would like to consider ways for the rest of
my career to deal with conflicts. But I don't know what that
means. But I do know that I don't know enough to help very much,
and therefore I have to learn more.

I leave Indonesia very happy with the evolution of the
political culture. But I leave Indonesia deeply troubled by the
conflicts that seems to be very serious and increasing in various
pockets of Indonesia. And the reason I'm upset, so upset, is that
conflict is antithetical to, is exactly the opposite of what I
value most about Indonesian culture, that's the ability to live
together happily in a kind and smiling way. And I face those two
opposing forces. One I love very much, one I hate. I'm leaving
with unfinished business.