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.