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.