Licking our wounds

Indonesia never really had a chance in its legal battle to claim the ownership of Pulau Sipadan and Pulau Ligitan. This much is now clear from the overwhelming vote against Indonesia by the panel of 17 judges at the International Court of Justice in The Hague on Tuesday.

The judges voted 16 to 1 to rule that the two islands off the northeastern tip of Borneo/East Kalimantan belong to Malaysia.

This runs contrary to the claim by the government, in this case the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which led the legal campaign in the Dutch capital, that based on the evidence presented in court Indonesia had a pretty strong case.

The whole country had been led to believe, even as late as Monday, that there was a fifty-fifty chance of winning.

If that had been the case, Tuesday's vote would have reflected it. At the very least, the vote should have been 8 to 9, or 7 to 10. A 15-2 vote would still have made our case look decent.

As if losing was not enough, the 16 to 1 vote was downright embarrassing. It is like reading the scoreline of a soccer match, with our national team being trashed by Brazil. Knowing we had little chance, we should not have made the attempt at all.

Either we never had a solid case to begin with, or the government and its international lawyers (who were retained for a handsome $1.6 million to fight Indonesia's case in The Hague since 1997), have done a poor job. The government had us convinced, or fooled, that we had a chance.

Since the International Court of Justice's ruling is binding and final, there is no sense in ruing our loss. Nevertheless, there are valuable lessons that we should draw from this bitter experience about how we deal with our sovereignty.

The court in its ruling opined that neither Indonesia nor Malaysia had presented a solid legal case in staking their respective claims, because the issue was never determined by the Netherlands and Britain, which respectively ruled what later became Indonesia and Malaysia in the 19th century.

The majority of judges voted for Malaysia solely on the basis that Kuala Lumpur has exercised authority over the two islands since 1930, and thus had de facto ownership of them. Indonesia, the judges noted, only contested Malaysia's claim in 1969.

This was the line that Malaysia had used in its argument after it became clear that the old Dutch and British maps and conventions which both Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta had used in staking their claims were found by the court to be inconclusive.

Indonesia turned to the fact that Malaysia had breached the goodwill that should have been shown, knowing that the islands were the subject of a dispute with Indonesia. While Jakarta refrained from conducting anything that resembled an exercise of sovereignty, Malaysia continued to build infrastructure on the two islands, even as negotiations with Indonesia were being held.

Had Indonesia also tried to exercise sovereignty over the two islands after 1969, the two countries would likely have come to war. And that was just three years after the end of the military confrontation between the two neighboring countries.

Indonesia wisely refrained, even as it repeatedly protested to Malaysia for developing Pulau Sipadan, and later touting it as one of the world's best diving resorts.

One valuable lesson we can learn from the court's ruling is that goodwill counts for little, while the de facto exercise of sovereignty, even in violation of goodwill, counts for a lot more.

This means that Indonesia had better ensure that it exerts physical sovereignty on all the remaining 17,506 islands (down from 17,508 before Tuesday), including the uninhabited ones, lest we let other countries come and take them over.

Still, there is no point in being a sore loser.

When Indonesia and Malaysia agreed to refer their dispute to arbitration by the International Court of Justice after diplomacy failed in 1996, it was with the commitment that both would accept the decision, whichever way it went.

As a responsible members of the United Nations, Indonesia must abide by the ruling, even if it was not exactly fair and square.

Indonesia can look back at this episode and still stand proud that we have given our best shot in defending our territory, without firing a single shot. We abided by international law and codes of conduct.

As hard as it is in accepting defeat, we can say to ourselves that we have done our share in ensuring peace and stability in this region. At the very least, Tuesday's ruling has removed one more pebble from our relations with Malaysia.

The dispute over the two islands never undermined the relations between the two countries as we both believed that the matter was too small in the context of overall ties, and also because we both believed that it could be resolved in a civil manner.

Now that the case has been settled, there is no reason to feel enmity, or for relations to be harmed in any way. We shall continue to leave peacefully as neighbors.

We will just have to put a brave face on it and get on with our lives, secure in the knowledge that we did the right thing.