Market signals for change
With only two weeks before Indonesia's presidential election, billed as the most democratic in the country since 1955, increasing numbers of businesspeople have become more outspoken about the qualities and characteristics expected in the new president and her or his administration.
Many market players are even bolder in expressing their opinions, hoping that the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) will seriously listen to the arguments that back up their aspirations.
The associations of textile and exporting companies have warned that the market economy, already crippled by the prolonged multidimensional crisis, will totally collapse if President B.J. Habibie remains in power. Most economists and foreign consultants share the same view, noting the market is now in a desperate condition, adrift aimlessly, because it no longer holds any trust in the leadership of a man thrust by circumstance into the presidency by Soeharto's resignation on May 21, 1998.
The President's staunch supporters understandably choose to view these warnings as nothing more than attempts to derail the Habibie presidential juggernaut. They may reject the opinions as insulting to discerning minds, deriding the use of market reaction as the yardstick to assess such an important political process. They will no doubt argue that it is disdainful, if not unfair, to measure a candidate's worth according to the rupiah, stock price movements and other market parameters.
But this is not the first time Habibie's prospective ascent to a higher position of power has agitated market sentiment. The rupiah's exchange rate to the U.S. dollar plunged to an all-time low in February 1998 after Soeharto's selection of the maverick aeronautical engineer as his vice presidential running mate. Singapore's senior statesman Lee Kuan Yew then made the same observation, obviously for the good of his country's immediate neighbor. Lee was right to state that when the market is uncomfortable with a nation's leaders, all kinds of major problems lie in store.
The stark truth is that almost all of the horrible eventualities foreseen in the leadership combination of Soeharto and Habibie have come to pass and continue to pound the country. There has been huge capital flight, a virtual drying up of capital inflow, bankruptcy of many companies, loss of jobs for millions, with millions more finding themselves living below the poverty line, not to mention the riots and unrest which have caused untold suffering.
No wonder that while South Korea, Thailand and Malaysia, the other countries most heavily hit by the region-wide contagion, have returned to a path of respectable recovery, Indonesia's economy remains mired in a deep recession.
Lawmakers in the MPR should realize that there is nothing personal in the market players' assessment of President Habibie. Whoever was in Habibie's seat would receive the same thumbs-down if they showed the same equally appalling record on law enforcement, public accountability, transparency and the determination to combat corruption, collusion and nepotism -- the main prerequisites for good governance.
It boils down to the plain fact that any leader bearing such an outstandingly poor performance as Habibie during his short term in office will not be able to build good governance, foremost among the prerequisites to lead the nation out of its crisis, and to regain the trust of the people. Slick maneuvering and backroom money politics may keep Habibie in power, but another term would be brief. A dissatisfied and unmerciful market will assail him as relentlessly as it did to Soeharto until Habibie, like his mentor, must finally bid goodbye to his ivory tower.