Miles of wrong priorities

Miles of wrong priorities

Bantarto Bandoro, Editor, 'The Indonesian Quarterly', Centre
for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), bandoro@csis.or.id

President Megawati Soekarnoputri's first year in power has
witnessed nearly 100,000 miles in foreign trips. So far her
globetrotting has not helped our recovery. Now, Megawati has
added another 10,000 or so miles to her travel log. The latest
included her visit to Johannesburg to attend the World Summit on
Sustainable Development, from where she continued to Algeria. Now
she is in Hungary, and will continue to Bosnia, Croatia and
Egypt.

This trip takes place amid some acute domestic problems,
particularly the migrant workers deported from Malaysia. The
President has hardly issued any meaningful statement on the
issue. The country still faces security problems, the latest
potential problem being an attack by gunmen in Papua on two buses
carrying foreign and local employees of PT Freeport Indonesia.

Megawati's foreign trip to Africa and Eastern Europe would
gain public support if it offered clear and concrete benefits to
our development process. For the president, showing what is
perceived to be a sense of a leadership of the most influential
country in the region is greater than a sense of crisis; meaning
a lack of priorities. Domestic problems are sacrificed for the
sake of letting the world know that Indonesia still exists.

Apart from public concerns as to what policies will emerge
next year in regards to our recovery, there are still concerns
that Megawati's government is unwilling to follow the spirit of
reform that the country now needs. Instead, her government seems
to prefer incremental, insignificant steps.

In a defensive mode, a legislator from Megawati's party, the
Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, Tjahjo Kumolo, stated
that critics against the President's trip were part of an attempt
to uncover her alleged wrong-doings. He was quoted as saying that
the current East European and African trips were meant to promote
Indonesia's global interest through multilateral forums.

Tjahjo seems to overlook that fact that the public has, from
the outset, detected Megawati's inability to understand national
issues, the economy in particular, and that her past record
provided very little indication that she had the vision and
strategy to carry out the reform agenda.

Therefore, present criticism against the President should not
be seen in isolation from the previous criticism raised
immediately after she replaced Abdurrahman Wahid.

Tjahjo's argument is not supported by the logic behind the
need to develop better and more stable external relations and
multilateral diplomacy. If foreign policy is an extension of
domestic policy, then attempts to strengthen and promote
international diplomacy will not achieve its objectives unless
fully supported by a highly stable domestic condition.

This newspaper reported that she spent some Rp 22 billion of
the public's money for her various trips in her first year, not
including the current one, which included an entourage of 111
people. Perhaps the money would be better spent to reduce the
burden of the expelled workers or to handle forest fires in
Kalimantan and Sumatra.

The presidential trip also takes place at a time when
Indonesia is again in the spotlight as among the world's most
corrupt countries. This means the public cannot trust officials
in eradicating corruption. They might see corruption as something
that reflects the wealth or privilege of officials, resulted
among other things from such overseas journeys. Unless concrete
steps are taken such as reducing such trips and thus giving more
priority to the settlement of domestic problems, such a view will
be reinforced.

Megawati once stated that "we have to be realistic in that
there is no instant and quick solution for the complex problems
we are facing now". This is among the classic arguments put
forward by our leaders when criticized for slow response to
crucial issues. Her trip is also considered by many to be
unrealistic regarding efforts to resolve all our problems.

Addressing the Johannesburg summit, Megawati said world
leaders must take concrete steps in eradicating poverty. Even if
citizens here listen to this statement, the image here is of a
corrupt state which clearly is a failure in terms of poverty
reduction.

Megawati's statement reflects her apparent unawareness of the
fact that her government has yet to become a strong government
that can provide long-range planning necessary for rational
growth patterns. Thus she can only appeal to world leaders to
wipe out poverty while implicitly covering the fact that
Indonesia is still poor, meaning that it does not have the real
capacity to generate adequate savings. Her statement would only
have had some weight if there were some consistency in measures
of fighting poverty at home.

The 2004 general election is still two years away. But the
issue of which political parties will survive and win have
already become hot topics. The election will take place at a
time when we will still be facing a domestic crisis, perhaps even
more severe if the current government fails to initiate a fresh
approach to our real problems. Whoever will be president, he or
she must not be detached from national problems.

The question now is will the first few months of our next
government witness another 100,000 miles of foreign trips,
ignoring sensitivities at home?