New sensation of being hopeful

New sensation of being hopeful

This is the first of two articles by noted talk show host Wimar
Witoelar on the feelings of Indonesians ahead of the New Year.

JAKARTA (JP): Are Indonesians still too euphoric? Are the
people's expectations currently too high? In a recent interview
with BBC, my reply to these questions was that they must be high
after a constant barrage of blows to the national ego by the
previous governments and by the foreign press, who sometimes fail
to see that their disgust for the regimes preceding the current
one cannot logically be expanded to include the Indonesian
people.

This is the first time the people have been allowed to express
their expectations, and there are as many levels of expectations
as there are people who enjoy the sensation of being hopeful.
Most realize that expressions are one thing and reality quite
something else. What is reality anyway but the state of our
minds? At the end of the day the danger lies not in too high
expectations but the minimal level of reality that people are
willing to accept. Now the people have a lot of patience since
they still remember the deadening desperation of the Soeharto and
B.J. Habibie years.

Foreign observers who do not feel the emotional rush of being
released from a doomed future fear that optimism will create
disappointment. Again, hope and disappointment are very
subjective reactions, but I do not think there is any sense of
disappointment at this point, except among some foreign
observers. When people complain and bicker it is about little
things, like President Abdurrahman Wahid's sarcastic humor or
some incompetent bureaucrat. True, Gus Dur, as the President is
often know, and Vice President Megawati Soekarnoputri gave us
such a legitimate government that we let them succumb to horse
trading and appoint a totally incompetent Cabinet.

But you cannot have everything all at once. At least the big
issues have been laid on the table and they will be handled in
sequence. Apart from the people engaged in corruption, collusion
and nepotism (KKN) and the human rights abusers, I think ordinary
people are only too happy that they are now one step removed from
the danger of violence. They are relieved that the armed forces
is starting to be kept under control, that people are starting to
shop again and get jobs back.

There is a general mood of optimism because the people have
been freed from the shackles of corruption and violence organized
by the government. Whatever ills there are in society are now
against the system, against the government, and that is a big
change from the state-driven scandals of Bank Bali and the
militia rampage in East Timor.

One could argue there has not been any real progress so far in
terms of the economy and that the Cabinet is severely mismanaged
by grossly incompetent ministers. Well, from the viewpoint of the
President and of the masses who brought him to power, the real
danger is horizontal violence: Indonesians fighting against
Indonesians, racism continuing to rear its ugly head and the Army
killing its own people. In contrast to that dark possibility,
even corruption takes second place. Now people are relieved that
violence is localized. It is still there, certainly, but it is
localized, no longer government-sponsored.

So now we can start to deal with the problem of corruption.
One could complain about the slow government action against
corruption, but at least it is going in the right direction. The
Soeharto government created whole paradigms of corruption and the
Habibie government refined the art to a high degree, as witnessed
by Cabinet ministers plundering state enterprises and the entire
banking system. It was really the climax of the New Order. Now
things are going in the other direction and good things are
expected to snowball.

The Bank Bali case might be coming to trial in January, the
Texmaco-BNI investigators have identified the culprits and other
banking scandals are coming to the foreground. In addition to
lonely anticorruption heroes like Teten Masduki, now you have
high government officials like State Minister of Investment and
State Enterprises Development Laksamana Sukardi honestly on the
anti-KKN warpath. All in all, it is a very big and complicated
story, but we should be able to see that things are going in the
right direction.

Unfortunately, while you have people of unquestioned integrity
such as the aforementioned Laksamana Sukardi, AS Hikam, Khofifah
Indar Parawansa, Anwar Nasution and many others among the
mediocre lot in the government, we do not see the emergence of
any real leadership or leaders. Who are the rising stars of
Indonesia's national leadership? There are none. The Gus Dur and
Megawati ticket popped out of nowhere, not even nominated as a
team by the reform movement. Nobody really foresaw that they
would be the ideal combination to lead us through this
transition.

In this transition, civil society is expected to grow and
Indonesia's future leaders will not be people who are in the
headlines now. Gus Dur and Megawati have enough time, five years
or more, for these people to cultivate a new leadership. Gus Dur
and Megawati are probably the only remnants of the old political
culture still equipped with the moral energy to inspire hope. Any
leaders that are present now are second or third generation New
Order, and by definition blemished. We should expect to see
totally new, bright, young (in political age) leaders emerge in
the next five to 10 years from the new competitive climate.