Postcrisis a turning point in history

Postcrisis a turning point in history

By Mehru Jaffer

JAKARTA (JP): East Asian nations are bound to return to the
main stage when global history is determined by the interaction
of not just western powers, but all Asians as well.

This was an observation made by Australian writer Greg
Sheridan, author of Asian Values, Western Dreams and foreign
affairs editor of The Australian.

Sheridan stopped in Jakarta recently to address a function
arranged by management consultancy firm the Castle Group, before
rushing off to interview President Abdurrahman Wahid.

The message of colonialism was to consider Asian values and
culture inferior to that of the West. If anything was going to
knock Asian values off the rails it was the economic crisis, he
said.

On the contrary, Asian values have stayed intact around the
region, coping brilliantly in the challenge posed by the crisis
and having even reestablished themselves, Sheridan said.

There is a tremendous sigh of relief coming out of the West
because of the crisis. It is like "thank God East Asia is not
going to challenge us after all". But Sheridan's conclusion is
that Asian values are very much on the road.

"There is incessant talk of American and European values but
the same leaders regard the discussion of Asian values as
illegitimate. Why is that?" he questions.

He answers, "because the West is uncomfortable at the deeper
historical process that is to bring East Asia back to the main
stage of global history, a place it has not occupied for 500
years."

He said that the election of Abdurrahman from within the
political elite as a compromise candidate for the presidency was
a reflection on the culture of this country. Even a year ago the
situation was unthinkable. The only alternatives at that time
were B.J. Habibie and Megawati Soekarnoputri.

Then somehow the hand of God came down and selected
Abdurrahman whose government has now established international
legitimacy, which his whirlwind travel schedule only reinforced.

Sheridan feels that this is a message that has not gotten out
internationally enough, and that the Indonesian political elite
and culture deserves credit for having come up with this sensible
and so far working compromise.

"I am full of praise for the President who has proven to be
performing much better than we had any right to hope or to
expect." Sheridan feels that western analysts who tend not to
recognize complex human beings or societies are just about making
up their mind that Abdurrahman is a hero and an enormous asset
for a country to have.

Sheridan said western analysis of the initial crisis all over
the region was extraordinarily poor, especially of Indonesia, and
was mainly due to a lack of understanding of the country's
historical, cultural and political peculiarities.

The economic crisis was certainly the most dramatic in
Indonesia. Sheridan continued, "Western intervention into
Indonesia was more or less catastrophic and the fewer western
helpers the country had seen in that period the better off it
would have been."

He termed Australia's policy toward Indonesia in the last few
years as a series of strategic miscalculations and one blunder
after another.

The strategic intimacy that existed in the past was destroyed,
making it a net loss for Australia, Indonesia and the region.

Many in the West, he said, implied that the crisis had swept
away Asian values and that this was the time to produce liberal
democracy that would look just like California in due course.

However, what was seen in Indonesia was the durability and
resilience of Asian values, he said.

The dynamics for political change were already there in
Indonesia, and all intelligence assessments in Australia in the
mid-1990s concluded that the New Order regime of former president
Soeharto was on its last legs.

What is absolutely tragic is that the move from
authoritarianism to democracy was not gradual, but had the
character of a revolutionary movement, largely due to Soeharto's
reluctance to face up to the question of succession.

Sheridan recalled the first time he met Abdurrahman more than
a decade ago when the then Indonesian ambassador to Australia
introduced him as the next president of Indonesia.

"At that time there was an ironic, jocular quality to the
introduction, because who could imagine in those days
anyone challenging Soeharto?"

And yet even then it was clear, he said, that forces were
moving to change Indonesia fundamentally and that the trend
toward greater democracy was going to accelerate, not because the
West imposed it, but because Indonesians wanted it.

Sheridan describes the crisis as a combination of structural
imbalances in the economies affected combined with the way
international financial institutions operate.

While changes are taking place in most countries in East Asia,
there is no evidence to show that reforms are also taking place
in the international financial architecture as well.

What worries Sheridan most is that when the sense of crisis
subsides, will the impetus to reform also be gone?