Megawati's warning show courage and vulnerability
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.