Own up to ethnic problem

Today, the Center for Information and Development Studies (CIDES) is scheduled to hold a seminar to address a problem that should have been discussed a long time ago: Precarious ethnic relations, more specifically the relations between the dominant pribumi (indigenous ethnic groups) and the descendants of ethnic Chinese, the largest minority ethnic group in Indonesia.

The issue has always been considered too politically sensitive to be discussed openly. It is considered taboo even as ethnic relations have reared their ugly heads in the form of riots with anti-Chinese overtones. The official line has always been that these riots, which claimed lives and property on both sides of the ethnic divide, had nothing to do with race and the problem was left at that.

CIDES, a think-tank arm of the influential Association of Indonesian Moslem Intellectuals (ICMI) should be commended for its decision to discuss the problem in the open. Former minister of home affairs Rudini, one of the speakers in today's seminar, has also given his endorsement to the seminar, saying that it was time that the nation owns up the problem once and for all, instead of sweeping it under the carpet. Rudini says that further postponement would lead to national disintegration.

The various anti-Chinese riots over these past months -- in Situbondo, Tasikmalaya, Pekalongan, Rengasdengklok, and Ujungpandang -- have become too frequent to keep denying that Indonesia does not have any problem with ethnic relations. And with each riot seemingly more violent than the previous one, our greatest worry now is less on when and where the next riot will hit, but how severe it will be.

While we praise Rudini for his statesmanship for being one of the first public figures to push the pribumi-nonpribumi issue to the forefront of the national agenda, we tend to disagree with his analysis, and much less with his proposal.

Rudini argues that the wealth gap is at the root of the problem in ethnic relations, with the wealthy Chinese, who are dominant in commerce, on one side, and the relatively poor pribumi on the other. Some of the anti-Chinese riots, he says, have been provoked by jealousy created by this gap, and by anger that the mighty Chinese traders were now intruding into small businesses that had been the domain of the small pribumi entrepreneurs. Rudini proposes that a law be enacted to preserve the businesses of pribumi entrepreneurs by barring Chinese traders from entering these sectors.

The widening wealth gap has certainly played its part in some of the attacks on Chinese descendants and their property, but it was not necessarily the decisive factor. It might have been the decisive factor in such riots in the 1970s and 1980s, but the income disparity that exists in Indonesia now is no longer along the old ethnic lines. There are now many conglomerates controlled by pribumi who also hold monopolistic and oligopolistic powers just as the Chinese-controlled conglomerates have. They can be just as menacing to small-scale enterprises. With companies going public or forming joint ventures, it is even more difficult now to identify the ownership of companies along ethnic lines.

The chief problem facing small entrepreneurs is their lack of access to capital, technology and management. Now with the advent of free trade and economic globalization, they are coming under even greater pressure from competitors. Any desire to help them should focus on ensuring that they get the necessary access. This means the enactment of a legislation on small and medium scale enterprises that would apply across ethnic lines. To protect them against monopolistic and oligopolistic practices, an antitrust law should suffice, because it would prevent any tycoon, whatever their color of skin, from intruding into small business sectors in an unfair manner.

A law that favors one ethnic group or discriminates against certain ethnic groups will be the first step toward institutionalizing discrimination practices, something like Malaysia has with its bumiputra policy but one that Indonesia has managed to avert all this time. Even the United States is now rethinking the effectiveness of its affirmative action policy designed to promote the lot of the disadvantaged minority groups.

Such a law in Indonesia would only strengthen ethnic divisions and would take us further away from our goal of national integration. Even in the absence of such a legislation, the ethnic Chinese community has already had to take the brunt or the wrath of the people every time something goes wrong with this country or the economy. Any discriminative legislation will only strengthen this kind of stereotyping, and may even encourage more Chinese bashing.