Indonesia seeks role as ASEAN 'big brother'

Indonesia seeks role as ASEAN 'big brother'

BANGKOK (Agencies): President Megawati Soekarnoputri, on a
whirlwind tour of the capitals of the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN), said on Saturday that Indonesia must live
up to its title as the "big brother" of the region.

Megawati told a meeting with some 200 Indonesians here that
she wished people would stop putting quotation marks between the
words "big brother" whenever referring to the role that Indonesia
should play in ASEAN.

"In the past, we were called ASEAN's `big brother`. This means
that Indonesia is expected to take the ASEAN leadership in
international fora," she said at the meeting held at the
Indonesian Embassy.

Indonesia should assume the region's leadership role not only
in international politics, but also in the economic and other
sectors, she said as quoted by the Antara news agency.

Megawati, who held talks with Thai prime minister Thaksin
Shinawatra, later flew to Bandar Sri Begawan for the seventh stop
of her tour of nine ASEAN capitals.

She had already visited Manila, Hanoi, Vientiane, Phnom Penh
and Yangon. Singapore and Kuala Lumpur will be her last two stops
before she returns home on Tuesday.

Her choice to visit the ASEAN capitals as her first overseas
tour is not only in keeping with an ASEAN tradition for every
leader to quickly acquaint themselves with their counterparts,
but is also a reaffirmation of her pledge to make ASEAN once
again the cornerstone of Indonesia's foreign policy.

Her predecessor Abdurrahman Wahid, in contrast, snubbed ASEAN
and launched an initiative to set up a new West Pacific Forum
which would include among others, Australia, New Zealand, Papua
New Guinea and the newly independent East Timor.

There has been a consensus within ASEAN that Indonesia takes
most of the initiatives and leadership within the organization
simply because it is the largest member.

But with the country in almost perpetual economic and
political crisis since 1997, Indonesia has not been able to play
that role effectively the way that it did previously.

Megawati said on Saturday that she hoped to rectify that. For
that to happen, she conceded that Indonesia must put its own
house in order first and that this was something that she hoped
to achieve in the remaining two-and-a-half years of her
administration.

The administration must start by tackling the problems of law
enforcement and corruption, she said, adding that should she
fail, the dream of leading ASEAN would never materialize.

In her speech, the first in which she publicly addressed
domestic issues during her present tour, Megawati called on her
compatriots everywhere to build their sense of self confidence.

For Indonesia to be able to take a leadership position, "the
recipe is to build a strong national identity, self respect and
self confidence," she said.

Indonesians abroad, in particular, must never shy away from
publicly identifying their nationality no matter how appalling
conditions in their home country are and no matter what other
people think of Indonesia, she said.

"I have met many people who said they were ashamed to be
Indonesians," said Megawati, who is also the chairperson of the
nationalist Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI
Perjuangan). (emb/dja)