No easy answer to racial issues

By Benny Subianto

JAKARTA (JP): The Center for Information and Development Studies (CIDES) held on Oct. 28 a "National Dialog on Indigenous and Nonindigenous People in the Perspective of Social Integration and Development Equity" to look for ways to solve problems stemming from ethnic tensions in the country.

The dialog was held to commemorate Youth Oath Day, and CIDES -- a think-tank of the government-backed Indonesian Moslem Intellectuals Association (ICMI) -- intended to formulate an affirmative policy to overcome the widening economic disparity between indigenous and nonindigenous people, which has caused some riots in many places throughout the country.

The Youth Oath in 1928 was a milestone in modern Indonesian history, when privileged youths who were then students at Dutch schools pledged to unite into a nation named Indonesia in spite of the cultural, ethnic, language and racial differences among them. Many believe that it was the birth of the Indonesian nation, 17 years before the birth of the Indonesian state on Aug. 17, 1945.

No doubt everybody is concerned about the recent riots, where minority groups have been the target of people's hostility. Some scholars, politicians and observers argue that economic disparity may have been the cause of such social unrest. There is no single convincing hard fact, however, which shows a direct causal relation between economic disparity and the riots. Economic disparity seems to be one of the factors or, more precisely, a precondition for the riots, but it is not the decisive factor.

Unfortunately, CIDES failed to announce the results of the dialog at the end of the event. Later, in an interview with Ummat magazine on Nov. 10, CIDES director Adi Sasono described four affirmative policies from the dialog.

First, the government should not provide huge tracts of land to big developers who are mostly of Chinese descent. Second, government contracts should go to indigenous businessmen. Third, the government should be more circumspect in evicting people from public places, such as markets, in order not to disadvantage the indigenous for the sake of nonindigenous people. Fourth, the government should help indigenous entrepreneurs to gain bank credits and business licenses.

In short, CIDES calls for more favorable policies toward indigenous businesspeople.

CIDES should be widely appreciated for raising the social justice issue and trying to address one of the nation's crucial problems. However, CIDES' stance in seeing and handling the problem has invited some questions.

First of all, why has CIDES called the gathering a "national dialog"? This might be a trivial question, but such a title can be interpreted as a real dialog among many parties nation-wide to discuss the relations between the Indonesians of Chinese descent and their fellow Indonesians.

In fact, CIDES' "national dialog" was just a one-day seminar attended by some scholars, businesspeople, activists, politicians and retired army officers. It is difficult to view it as a "national dialog", since it represented only the exchange of ideas among a group of Jakarta's elite.

CIDES used the obsolete terms "indigenous" and "nonindigenous". Even though the terms are still widely used, as one of the speakers argued, the terms sound very colonial and smack of racism, which remind us of the Netherlands Indies state which categorized their subjects according to their races, religions and customs.

Moreover, the terms are not appropriate with the spirit of Indonesian independence and the constitution which views people equally, regardless of their origin, race, ethnicity and beliefs. There have been numerous appeals made by government officials, politicians and scholars to abolish these terms.

Why should we treat Indonesians of Chinese descent in a different way from their fellow Indonesians? Perhaps, we follow the misleading presumption that all Indonesians of Chinese descent are wealthy and selfish and we, therefore, should be more favorable to other Indonesians.

Indeed, the New Order government's economic development policies have thus far marginalized small and medium-scale businesses owned or controlled by Indonesians who are not of Chinese descent. During the 1970s, many Chinese businessmen enjoyed cheap credits from state-owned banks. Their managerial skills and business networks with citizens of Chinese origin in the Southeast and East Asian region have strengthened their position.

However, data shows that Indonesians of Chinese descent only comprise about 4 percent of the population, but they control about 60 percent of all capital in the country. In fact, it is quite a small number of Indonesians of Chinese descent who are tycoons who own and control big capital.

Most Indonesians of Chinese descent, particularly in the outer islands, work as petty traders, peasants, farmers, fishermen and manual workers. Thus, to consider that most Indonesians of Chinese descent are rich and accessible to the power elite is a misleading stereotype.

The call for treating this ethnic group differently due to their having Chinese origins is politically incorrect and reflects the practice of racism.

Supporting small and medium-scale businesses based on the managerial skills and character of capital is much more appropriate than using race as a criterion. Sofjan Wanandi, a tycoon of Chinese descent, agreed to support whatever government policies were aimed at protecting small and medium-scale businesses. But he refused to support racist policies similar to ones applied in Malaysia.

CIDES' proposed affirmative policies, should they be implemented, would also intensify government intervention in the economic and business sectors. Such intervention is contrary to the view of economists and businesspeople who have strongly called for government deregulation in the business sector to overcome the country's economic crisis.

It would also be hard to imagine that the government would want foreign investment, while barring domestic Chinese businesses.

The implementation of CIDES' proposed policy would likely create difficulties for small Chinese businessmen or petty traders.

CIDES' call seems similar to the Benteng Politics in the 1950s, which aimed to create strong indigenous entrepreneurs by granting them import licenses so as to enable them to compete with Dutch and Chinese entrepreneurs.

It is true that the Benteng Politics produced a number of successful Indonesian entrepreneurs, such as Soedarpo Sastrosatomo, Hasjim Ning, Rahman Tamin and Dassad. Unfortunately, some of the Benteng's importers simply transferred their licenses to Chinese businesspeople. More than half of the Benteng businessmen failed to repay their bank credits.

The close connection between Benteng entrepreneurs and political parties forced the former to spend a lot of money to help finance party activities, especially in the 1955 general election. No doubt, such a situation weakened the competitiveness of their businesses.

Apparently, the relations between people of Chinese descent and their fellow Indonesians is quite problematic. No instant solution can be successfully offered.

In this regard, we should put the existence of Indonesians with Chinese descent in the context of the New Order state. In the last 30 years, the New Order government has opened big opportunities to a small number of Chinese who have direct connections to the power elite to build their business conglomerates.

On the other hand, the Chinese have been excluded from politics and public activities, badly discriminated against by the bureaucracy and education system, and even worse, they have been a permanent target of racketeering by bureaucrats.

They are also deprived of their cultural rights, such as the prohibition on circulation of books with Chinese characters, the establishment of Chinese schools and the celebration of the Chinese new year.

The New Order state seems to have its interest in "maintaining" the powerful business skills and networks of the Chinese, but at the same time to make them politically precarious, in order to enable the state to keep them under its control.

The question is whether CIDES, under the aegis of ICMI -- which is an institution created and supported by the New Order state -- might launch a reform proposal which is incompatible to the logic and interests of the New Order state?

CIDES should be commended for its endeavor to address the problem of the uneven economic development between Indonesians of Chinese descent and their fellow Indonesians. But at the same time, we should realize that it is an extremely complicated issue which cannot be solved just by the affirmative policies proposed by CIDES.

Any instant solution to the problem, without considering the logic and interest of the New Order state, might be a futile effort. We need a more transparent policy to empower weak and underprivileged groups regardless their origin.

The writer is an observer of political affairs based in Jakarta.