Reflections on Australia-Indonesia ties

By S. Wiryono

CANBERRA (JP): As Australia's former prime minister, Malcolm Fraser, once remarked, "life was not meant to be easy". That is surely true for career diplomats such as myself, whose main task in life is to represent their country to the rest of the world.

Since no country on earth is totally free of unhappy incidents or episodes in its present or past, this is not always a comfortable position to be in. Indonesia is, of course, my reason for being. We are still growing into the nation we aspire to be, and naturally we are experiencing many difficulties and growing pains. Inevitably there are moments of doubt and frustration when the government's policies and one's own beliefs and values clash.

Much is being written and said in Indonesia at present about Australia and Australians that reflects deeply hurt feelings. But although partly spontaneous, it would be wrong to conclude simply that Indonesians have suddenly come to hate Australians. At the same time, much discussion of Indonesia in Australia at this time is also based on a lack of understanding of, and sensitively to, my country and its present circumstances.

This is not really surprising. Despite the rapid expansion and deepening of relations on a wide range of levels, most Australians know little of Indonesia, just as most Indonesians know little of Australia.

It is important for Australians to appreciate that Indonesia is going through a very traumatic period. The smoothly functioning democratic process that is taken for granted in Australia is yet to be established in Indonesia.

Australians have a healthy disrespect for their politicians, and the well-established electoral process allows voters to tip governments out of power if they feel their interests are not being looked after. On occasion, they feel that they need to go further by demonstrating on the streets about issues of particular concern, but they have the luxury of knowing that they can do so without fear for their safety.

The Indonesian people hoped that with the resignation of former president Soeharto and the successful staging of the legislative election in June, democracy would be firmly established in Indonesia, but things are clearly not so simple. Indonesia has been experiencing increasing political turmoil since the election. While Dr. Habibie's ascendancy to the presidency last year was in accordance with the Constitution, he does not enjoy widespread popular support. Yet, because of the nature of the presidential election process, there will have been a hiatus as long as a year-and-a-half since Soeharto resigned before we know who will be our first truly elected president.

Unfortunately, no single party gained a majority of the seats in the House of Representatives, which means that we are forced to go through a period of several months during which the various parties, and the military -- which also holds a substantial block of nonelected seats in the House -- must try to form a coalition strong enough to command a majority of votes. All kinds of methods are being employed in trying to win this battle, some of which surely were never intended by those who fought for our independence and framed our Constitution.

The recent tragic events in East Timor have been played out against a background of this great national effort to form a new government to bring Indonesia into the family of democratic nations. It is important that Australians understand that the institutions they have built up over a hundred years of nationhood -- a democratic electoral process, a strong and independent judiciary, a free and reasonably responsible press, a largely noncorrupt and highly competent civil service, a decentralized system of government in which strong states counterbalance the strength of the national government -- are things we Indonesians aspire to, and are just beginning to enjoy.

Our strongest institution is the military, although in line with our democratic aspirations, its dual function is in the process of being phased out, perhaps before the next election. We are acutely aware of our own vulnerability to the dark forces within our society that are able to be harnessed in a manner that results in such terrifying episodes as the suffering visited upon Indonesians of Chinese descent in May last year, and social upheaval in places such as Ambon, Kalimantan and so on more recently.

At the same time, Indonesians need to have a better understanding of Australian motivations toward Indonesia, and it is helpful to look back further than just the past few months if this is to be achieved. At the government level, Australia was one of the first nations to pledge financial assistance to Indonesia after the monetary crisis began to get out of hand late in 1997. At the individual level, I cannot forget the two young women university students who rode their bicycle around Australia in a magnificent people-to-people fund-raising effort to support Indonesian families hard hit by the crisis. Looking back much further into the past, we need to remember also that Australia was the country Indonesia chose to represent it in the UN Good Offices Commission when we sought to wrest our independence from the Dutch.

The Australian and other international media's reporting on East Timor reflected people's sense of outrage as to what they saw going on. But many of the broadcasted images were angled and spliced so as to be almost entirely weighted against Indonesia, and to picture the proindependence side in highly sympathetic terms.

The fact is that the situation in East Timor is very complex, not a black and white case of angels fighting devils. The animosity between the disputing parties has been building up over many years. Violence has been committed by both sides, and episodes in which the perpetrators were proindependence supporters have almost never been reported.

Nevertheless, while I realize that there have been all kinds of statements coming from Australia that are perceived in Indonesia as over intrusive and boastful, I feel that Australia's motivation now is no different from before. If we are honest with ourselves, we must recognize that many East Timorese people suffered during integration, just as we suffered under the Dutch, despite all the funds we contributed to the development of the province. We can draw no other conclusion from the result of the recent referendum, which was a vote of 78.5 percent to 21.5 percent for independence.

Indonesian diplomats have suffered personally as a result of the tragedy in East Timor. As the Indonesian Ambassador in Australia, I have had to bear the brunt of media accusations, criticism, sharp questioning -- in some cases, virtual interrogation.

It has not been a pleasant experience, and I have to say that I have little respect for those members of the media who seem intent on stoking the fires of Indonesia-oriented xenophobia to build their own ratings or circulations, rather than making a positive and constructive contribution to informing the general public and discussing the issues in a thoughtful manner. Some could, indeed, be accused of seeing East Timor as an event to be exploited as a form of entertainment for their audiences.

On the other hand, I have been much heartened by many letters and calls expressing sympathy and regret for the unenlightened behavior towards me and my country by some sections of the media. But not all members of the Australia media can be characterized as irresponsible. And in Indonesia, we cannot say that our own media are perfect. We are just starting to become used to having a free press after decades during which it was firmly controlled, and in some cases this new freedom is also abused.

In addition, although sometimes I have been on the receiving end of behavior I considered to be intolerable on the part of the Australian media, I note that, indeed, life is not meant to be easy for politicians or diplomats, and it is not the job of the media to make their life easier.

On the contrary, if we care about transparency and accountability, we are unlikely to get it unless the media are free to make government officials and their political masters somewhat uncomfortable from time to time.

Nevertheless, the media would do well to contemplate the considerable power they have at their disposal to influence public opinion by reporting current events in a balanced and objective manner, and thus positively to influence the course of relations between our two countries.

If there is one plea I would make on the eve of my departure, it is that the media in Australia and Indonesia recognize their responsibilities in this regard more than they have done in recent weeks.

An ambassador should seek not only to project the face of his own nation within the country to which he is posted, but more generally should aim to build stronger ties between both countries.

To this end, it is also possible for people such as myself to project the realities of the host country, in this case Australia, back home to my own people. At no time have these tasks been more important than now.

I am glad to be going home after many years away on foreign soil, but I am sad to be leaving at a time when Indonesian- Australian relations have deteriorated so greatly. But there is a great deal of goodwill in each country toward the other, and I am confident that this will form the basis of efforts to heal the wounds and bruises in the months and years to come.

For the time being, people on both sides need to keep their emotions in check and to look for the right moment to begin rebuilding the relationship. God has made our two countries neighbors, and our economic and security interests link us inextricably. It is the challenge, and the grave responsibility, of men and women of goodwill on both sides not to allow the relationship to be damaged further.

The writer is the Indonesian Ambassador to Australia who completed his three-and-a-half year tour of duty in Canberra on Sept. 30, 1999.