Punishment Has an End, Service Does Not

In life, not everyone is given the opportunity to experience two things at once: reaching the peak, then falling to the lowest point. Even fewer are able to stand back up without harbouring resentment towards their circumstances. Most people stop when their reputation is wounded. Some choose to isolate themselves. Others spend the rest of their lives defending the past. Very few continue to choose to work, think, and serve, as if life is not yet finished.

It is there that I found an interesting lesson during a long conversation with Burhanuddin Abdullah. He did not speak much about his achievements. Instead, the words he repeated most often were optimism, integrity, the future, and stay on course. Those phrases sound simple. Yet, when spoken by someone who has experienced both the highest honour and the greatest test in public life, their meaning becomes far deeper.

Decades ago, while still working at the IMF, Burhanuddin Abdullah read an internal study on the careers of the institution’s directors. The findings contradicted common assumptions. Those who reached top positions the fastest were not the people placed in comfortable environments from the start. On the contrary, they were the ones assigned to the most difficult units, full of pressure and lacking popularity. Difficulty breeds resilience. Difficulty forces a person to think differently. Difficulty shapes a character that cannot be taught in a classroom.

Perhaps that is why, when speaking about his own life journey, he never referred to the hard times as a calamity. For him, difficult times taught patience, sincerity, sincerity, wisdom, and the ability to still see the future when others only see today’s failure. Such a view feels increasingly rare amidst an instant-gratification culture. Today we live in a society that wants everything finished immediately. Success must come quickly. Recognition must arrive now. Results must be visible tomorrow morning. Burhanuddin Abdullah calls this tendency a lack of deferred gratification—the inability to delay pleasure for a greater result in the future. Perhaps this is one of the greatest ailments of the modern nation.

We too often measure service by the rewards that are immediately visible. Yet history almost always works in a different way. Service, for Burhanuddin Abdullah, is not a job. Service is the ability to think beyond oneself, society, the nation, the state, and the world. Whatever is greater than personal interest. Such a perspective may sound idealistic. Yet interestingly, his life journey shows that the space for service is never truly closed.

After leaving Bank Indonesia and going through a difficult period, he founded a cooperative society. Not long after, he was entrusted to lead the Indonesian Cooperative Institute (IKOPIN) as rector for many years. After that, another space for service opened up. He was trusted to become Chairman of the Expert Council of the Gerindra Party, involved in various national strategic discussions, remained active leading the Indonesian Economists Association (ISEI), wrote, taught, spoke at various forums, and continued to contribute ideas. It was as if life was sending a simple message: positions can end, but service never retires.

In Indonesia’s economic history, Burhanuddin Abdullah’s contribution is not a small footnote. While leading Bank Indonesia, he helped bring Indonesia to repay its IMF loans about a decade earlier than expected. Repaying the IMF debt a decade early was not just a matter of figures. It was a sign that Indonesia was beginning to stand on its own feet after the crisis. During the same period, Bank Indonesia began implementing the Inflation Targeting Framework as a new foundation for modern monetary policy. He also pushed for the creation of Regional Inflation Control Teams (TPID), a coordination mechanism that remains an important instrument for controlling inflation in various regions to this day. Today, the public may only know inflation from the figures announced each month, but behind that price stability lies a policy foundation built years earlier.

In the banking sector, post-crisis restructuring was realised through the Indonesian Banking Architecture, which strengthened the foundation of the national financial industry. In the area of exchange rate stability, the courage to make strategic decisions in foreign exchange management also became a hallmark of his leadership. When entrusted as Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs during the era of President Abdurrahman Wahid (Gus Dur), he helped simplify the Letter of Intent with the IMF from 128 points to just 32 points, expanding the space for sovereignty in national economic policy-making. During the same period, the long-delayed Cipularang Toll Road project finally received a strategic decision to proceed.

These contributions were followed by various recognitions: receiving the Bintang Mahaputera twice, being named one of the world’s five best central bank governors in 2007, becoming the best alumnus of the University of Michigan, and leading ISEI for two terms. These achievements are recorded in history. Yet for some people, one episode in his life is still considered more important than all of that service. Indeed, that is how the public sphere works. It often remembers wounds longer than merit. When I asked if he ever thought about changing his past decisions if given the chance again, his answer was brief: “No.” The reason was also simple: “I would do the same thing because that was the best thing at the time.” That answer, of course, is not an attempt to avoid responsibility. It is the voice of a person who has made peace with the past without needing to erase it.