Indonesia according to Journalist Tim Dodd

Tantri Yuliandini, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

"Indonesian traffic is like a school of fish, it swims down the road and goes around things, and weaves in and out of the obstacles," outgoing Australian Financial Review correspondent Tim Dodd said about Jakarta's traffic.

While many foreigners are horrified with the chaos and refuse to drive, to Dodd, managing traffic is simple: "Just think of yourself as a fish and move along with all the other fish, and you'll be fine".

Apparently, Dodd has found the key to living in this country -- perhaps it was the Chinese blood he inherited from his mother, but he is not sure -- that things here do work but you have to find out how, and that was how he survived the four years of his assignment as AFR's correspondent for Indonesia.

"I think it's a mistake to say that things in Indonesia don't work, it's just that they work differently and in different ways than it would in the West," the 42-year-old said.

But knowing how things work was not all that easy as Dodd found out during the first year he was assigned to Indonesia, in 1999.

"I was arriving in a country where press freedom had only been enforced for less than one year. Of course I couldn't expect press releases to appear on the fax machine or the e-mail saying what people think about a particular topic, or announcing when press conferences were going to be, it just didn't work that way," he said. Since then, he has learned to rely on his network of friends and other journalists to get news.

Nevertheless, Dodd was proud of the opportunity to work in Indonesia, for being in the center of the world's news at the time.

"It was less than a year after Soeharto had fallen, Indonesia was about to have its first fully democratic election in 40 years and Habibie had decided he would have a popular consultation in East Timor, so it was a hot news story back then," he said, admitting to having requested the posting.

Dodd and his wife, Francine Paton -- whom he had just married at the time -- had not realized they would eventually see the ascension of four presidents during his four-year stint.

"Indonesia is a big case study in development, in how a country which was formerly a colony moved to the point where it becomes a successful state, and it's very interesting to watch that process," he said.

Born to an orange grower in Adelaide, South Australia, Dodd was mainly concerned with physics during his teenage years. Little did he know that one day he would become a journalist.

"I was fascinated by it (physics) because if you want to know how the world ultimately works, I thought you had to look at physics," Dodd, who had studied mathematics and physics at Adelaide University, said.

But as the editor of the university's student paper, Dodd became more interested in journalism than science.

"I was actually more interested in the real world. After spending a year editing the student newspaper at university, and meeting some journalists, I was interested in it as a profession," he said.

Dodd's first job in the profession was as a cadet at the Fairfax Group's Sydney Morning Herald in 1985. After spending a year there, he moved on to the Group's Sun Herald for two years, then to its Australian Financial Review where he has worked for the last 15 years.

As the newspaper's correspondent in Indonesia, Dodd saw that his role here was to interpret Indonesia for Australians, "to move outside of the stereotypes and fears that many Australians have about Indonesia and introduce them to the fascinating sides and to what is actually happening to Indonesia," he said.

"Because Australia and Indonesia are so different, I think there are lots of misunderstandings on both sides about the other."

However, after four years covering the economics and politics of Indonesia, Dodd could not help but notice there was something very wrong with the country.

Despite the country's potential -- having the fourth largest population and abundant natural resources -- Indonesia was being held back by its elite, he said.

"They are far more interested in stuffing their own pockets with money than advancing the interests of their own nation," Dodd said, citing the elite's disinterest in getting back the money the country had loaned tycoons to bail out the banks during the 1998 economic crunch.

"The fact that so many bank owners have not repaid this money, and the elite is not interested in getting it back. They would prefer to have a few million in bribes in their back pockets and see the country robbed of billions of dollars," he said.

The press -- whose role it is to expose the misuse of power and create public demand for rectification -- was also under pressure, Dodd noted. "You saw what happened to the Tempo offices. They were threatened after Tempo had criticized Tomy Winata, a powerful businessman.

"So there are many forces in Indonesia that are more than happy with the way things are being held in certain strata and societies," Dodd said, adding that it was a shame because if the situation continued, instead of rising along with other developing powers like China and India, Indonesia would keep sliding backwards.

Nevertheless, Dodd's message to newcomers to Indonesia is "to keep an open mind and remember that even if the situation seems extremely frustrating in Indonesia, it almost always works out well in the end".