Mental switch a must for better ministry: Official
Mental switch a must for better ministry: Official
JAKARTA (JP): The foreign ministry must increase its standards
of professionalism and internal coordination to further enhance
its performance, a senior ministry official said here yesterday.
The secretary-general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
Abdul Irsan, said the ministry needed to transform itself into a
merit-based system with increased internal coordination in order
to enter the 21st century as a modern organization.
"The current organization is a product of the 1980s which has
been oriented to a sectoral job distribution and hierarchic
career level," Irsan told a workshop on New Concepts and
Strategies to Enhance Indonesia's Image Abroad.
Irsan said the ministry had developed a corporate culture in
which each department in the ministry was inward-looking.
Hierarchies within each department were territorial regarding
the projects assigned to them and coordination outside certain
hierarchical structures was limited.
Moreover, he said, there is a mentality among the ministry's
staff to merely pursue a hierarchic job status, instead of
professionalism.
"Most of us (in the ministry) are not ready to accept that
someone can be promoted for his or her performance, instead of
for his or her seniority," Irsan said.
Irsan admitted that with the prevalence of such a "corporate
culture", it has been difficult for the ministry to carry out its
duties effectively as Indonesia faces an era of globalization.
He noted that the ministry's handling of projects and jobs was
no longer suited in dealing with the intertwining issues in
international relations.
Furthermore, he said, the ministry's hierarchical structure
was deemed too slow in formulating concepts and action plans to
deal with the multidimensional issues in international relations.
Irsan mentioned a number of global changes which have made
management transformation an urgent need. These included the
emergence of environmental, human rights and democratization
issues.
He said that as part of the transformation to a "new" ministry
of foreign affairs, the ministry had been drafting a foreign
affairs bill and foreign affairs projection in the Seventh Five-
Year Development Plan.
These two documents were expected to be the legal and
operational basis for Indonesia's foreign affairs in the 21st
century, he said.
"We have been an independent nation for 52 years, but we have
not had any legal basis for foreign policy implementation," he
said.
In his paper, Irsan also noted the strategic significance of
the recent formation of the Indonesian Council on World Affairs
(ICWA).
He said that ICWA was expected to be a think tank for
Indonesian foreign policy.
The council is comprised of several former ambassadors along
with respected military and foreign policy experts.
Meanwhile, assistant to the Armed Forces Chief of
Sociopolitical Affairs Maj. Gen. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who
also spoke at yesterday's workshop, admitted that a number of
riots throughout the country during the last several years had
given Indonesia a negative image.
He noted that events, such as the Dili Incident in 1991 and
the Ujungpandang riots in 1996, remained a constant source of
condemnation abroad despite the fact that authorities were
already taking corrective measures.
The workshop also featured other speakers which included the
University of Indonesia's mass communications expert Bachtiar
Aly, former Indonesian ambassador to Vietnam Djafar Assegaff and
an official of the National Development Planning Board, Fasli
Jalal. (10)