Keep on talking

The much hyped National Dialog Forum in Bali may have come up with plenty of recommendations about what Indonesia should do to overcome its multiple crises, but at the end of the day it was all nothing more than just another talking shop.

The gathering at the Kuta Beach resort certainly attracted some of the nation's top intellectuals who are not part of the power structure. But following the dialog and the presentation of the set of recommendations, nothing further can be expected. The forum, involving more than 200 prominent public figures and thinkers, does not even have the organizational structure to monitor whether its recommendations are followed up.

The strength of the forum, however, lay in the presence of so many respected figures. Whatever the recommendations coming from the forum, the credibility of the participants is such that they represent a moral voice to which the country's political elite should listen.

The dialog itself was founded upon the shared concerns and disappointments of the organizers over how events have developed since the reform movement began in 1998. Two years later, and after a popularly elected government came to power in October, many people are greatly dismayed. Those who initiated the dialog spoke for the majority of the country's 210 million citizens -- more so than the elected officials in the administration or the House of Representatives -- when they said they were not impressed with the present state of affairs.

The two-day meeting in Bali produced a series of documents detailing everything that has gone wrong in Indonesia, and what steps the country should take to right the ship. Essentially, the forum calls for a return to the ideals that underpinned the reform movement when it was launched two years ago.

Many of the recommendations are not all that different from what the administration of President Abdurrahman Wahid has been trying to accomplish. If the administration's progress has been too slow, that is because of the political realities of this country. Few people who know him doubt the President's commitment to democratic ideals, but even the most visionary leader must deal with the reality of political pressure once in office.

The forum may have been critical of the administration's record, but it did not condemn the President for his failings. Abdurrahman will probably find the criticism in Kuta Beach far more constructive than what he will face when he presents his first-year progress report to the People's Consultative Assembly in August. There already are suggestions the Assembly should move to impeach the President on the basis of his poor performance.

Going by the list of participants, in fact, one must assume the President was very much at ease as he addressed the forum on its closing day. He was essentially one of them, and no doubt he would have been there as a speaker if he was not the President. Similarly, the participants felt very much relaxed with his presence, so much so that they did not realize he stole the spotlight. Most of the media gave extensive coverage to his address to the forum, and little to the forum's recommendations.

The National Dialog Forum may have been just another talking shop, but that is much better than if these shared concerns and disappointments were never aired. If public discourse is the basis of a healthy democracy, then Indonesia should have more such events in order to continue the search for the best solutions and best format to manage this huge and diverse nation.

After living under a tyranny for three decades, Indonesians are still far from adopting the ideals essential to a long and lasting democracy, including free speech and respecting differences of opinions. The bloody conflicts taking place in various corners of the archipelago show that many people in this country still resort to violence to settle their differences. If more talk means less killing, then we should have more dialogs.