No easy answer to racial issues

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.