Megawati's warning show courage and vulnerability

The Straits Times, Asia News Network, Singapore

President Megawati Soekarnoputri showed courage -- and underlined her own vulnerability -- when she warned Indonesians their country risked breaking up if they continued to accentuate regional, ethnic and religious differences.

She said this not once, but twice, in as many days -- on Sunday and again on Monday. It is unusual for an Indonesian leader to raise the specter of fragmentation, not at a time when the probability remains, although the danger has receded with the end three months ago of Abdurrahman Wahid's wayward presidency.

The separatist sentiment in troubled regions such as Aceh, Riau and Papua would be hard to douse but, militarily, even rebel forces seem to have had their attention diverted over the American-led anti-terrorism campaign. If intra-national conflicts continued, she said on Sunday, "you can be sure we as a nation will soon perish".

Why did the President even mention the dreaded subject of Balkanisation? It could not possibly help her or her government, as her opponents have been probing for weaknesses in her presidency.

Megawati is a nationalist at heart, yet realistic enough to acknowledge that the legacy of her father, the republic's founding president Sukarno, is not fully secure yet a half century later.

The choice of Sunday's event at which she issued the warning of splintering was, perhaps, deliberate.

This was to commemorate Youth Pledge Day, a historic pledge to build a united nation made by young people from all over Indonesia on Oct. 28, 1928.

Indonesia was then under Dutch rule, but that pledge had a deeply symbolic role in the independence struggle which was to reach fruition 17 years later.

Her father was at that pledge-taking. Megawati, it is clear, also has an eye for theater. After the Sunday appearance, her reiteration of the Balkanisation warning Monday showed what her real concerns were.

This time, her platform was a meeting of governors and heads of regions and municipalities to discuss development priorities.

If each region pushed its own agenda of tribal and religious divisions at the expense of national interest, she said, the country would disintegrate like the former Yugoslavia. "As we can see in the Balkans, the standard of living in the new states based on those narrow concepts turned out to be no better compared to when they were within a greater national union," she said.

The weaknesses of her governance are most apparent here: corruption, loss of respect for the law, administrative inertia and the flight of private and foreign investment.

But her plea for national cohesion is powerful, in that she has presented to her people the stark choice between regionalism and the national good.

Today is President Megawati's 100th day in office.

She has no more succeeded in addressing those shortcomings than her predecessor did in his entire tenure. But she has time on her side.

This she should put to use by exercising leadership in a way Abdurrahman never could or did.

She showed she is capable of that by holding the line between support for the American campaign against terror and keeping a lid on internal opposition to the bombing of Afghanistan.

On Oct. 14, she made the famous remark that "blood cannot be cleansed with blood", while calling for the punishment of terrorists.

The ambivalence is understandable.

She has an enormously difficult job of ensuring that her strategy of containing the opposition works.

Otherwise, if investors stay clear indefinitely, her weekend warnings would resonate.