Megawati's agenda
Although it lasted for no more than 40 minutes, the first meeting of President Megawati Soekarnoputri's full Gotong Royong (mutual help) Cabinet on Monday gives us what might properly be called the first rough sketch of the President's grand policy design for the coming three-year period. Given the President's earlier statements that reflected her deep concern about the possibility of this nation's disintegration, maintaining the territorial integrity of this sprawling archipelagic country is at the top of the Cabinet's six-point agenda.
Second on the agenda is the continuation of the country's reform movement that was set into motion with the fall of former president Soeharto in 1997, democratization on the basis of a more clear-cut program and respect for human rights. Normalization of the economy ranks third on the agenda, while law enforcement, improving public security and the drive against corruption, collusion and nepotism rank fourth.
Fifth on the agenda is the conduct of a free and active foreign policy and restoring international trust in the country, especially among foreign aid institutions. Finally, sixth on the Cabinet's agenda, is conducting preparations for the 2004 general elections. A few other policy directives, such as improving internal communications and pinpointing the nation's threats and challenges, round out the government's agenda outlined at this first Cabinet meeting. In short, nothing spectacular or dramatic came out of the meeting. Instead, it was plain, rational thinking well in line with Megawati's earlier policy decisions that seems to have dominated.
Although the Cabinet's national agenda is spread over six points, it must not be assumed that those points are ranked in order of priority. Rather, they must be seen as constituting an indivisible whole with priorities allotted as the situation demands. How, for example, can Indonesia's territorial integrity be assured unless the sense of justice of the local populations in each of the country's various regions is met?
Meeting this demand for justice involves not only a more equitable distribution of wealth between the center -- or Jakarta -- and the regions, it also means adjusting and implementing the law so as to properly balance their interests and to assure that human rights are respected.
On a different plane, the fact that reform, democratization and the eradication of corruption and economic reform must go hand-in-hand must be obvious to everyone. The rampant corruption that was one of the major hallmarks of the past New Order regime was born of the fact that democracy was suppressed, thereby giving corrupt businesspeople and officials a free hand in mismanaging the country's economy. How hollow the much-touted "economic progress" under the New Order was only came to light after the Asian economic crisis struck and corporations, which for decades had thrived on favors obtained in collusion with government officials with powerful names, turned out to be unable to pay their huge outstanding debts.
If there is one point that needs to be answered it is how the Cabinet intends to implement its new "free and active" policy. Indonesia in fact adopted this stance of non-alignment almost immediately after its birth in August 1945 in response to the then existing Cold War between the West and the Soviet Block. The newly born Indonesian state at that time opted not to be drawn into the global conflict by adopting a policy of non-alignment, although history shows that the implementation of this policy was not always as consistent as some might wish, veering sometimes to the left or right as policymakers in Jakarta saw fit in the overall Indonesian context.
In our view, whatever appearance Indonesia's new foreign policy may present in the near future, the measure of its success should be in how well it serves the nation's interests, at home as well as abroad. By doing so, Indonesia's foreign policy would help round out the Megawati administration's policy goals as delineated by the Cabinet.