Remember `Konfrontasi'?

The government of President Megawati Soekarnoputri is facing its most important test to date, as it considers how best to respond to Malaysia's controversial decision to deport 450,000 Indonesian workers.

This will be as much a test of character and integrity as a test of leadership. Unfortunately, on all three counts, Megawati's scorecard has thus far been very poor.

Megawati has not personally responded to the announcement from Kuala Lumpur on Sunday that Malaysia would halve the number of Indonesians registered to work in the country from the estimated 900,000 at present. Vice President Hamzah Haz says he is trying to organize an official visit to Malaysia, in the hope of discussing the matter with Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. Minister of Foreign Affairs Hassan Wirajuda said Malaysia's plan to deport Indonesian workers would be raised at the next meeting of the join border commission in mid-February.

That is as far as the government has officially and publicly gone in responding to Malaysia's unilateral action, which has serious and wide-ranging implications for Indonesia.

Yet this is a ruling that will put an end to the livelihoods of millions of Indonesians, if we include dependants. This is a ruling that will raise Indonesia's already high jobless figure by almost another half a million. But most of all, this is a ruling that flies in our faces. It contravenes the spirit of neighborliness and the solidarity among members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Indonesia has made all the right and necessary neighborly overtures following the outbreak of riots by Indonesian workers in Malaysia last month. Minister of Manpower Jacob Nuwa Wea has even gone so far as to express the government's regret. Malaysia, for its part, has rounded up the culprits responsible for the riots, prosecuted and convicted some of them, and deported the rest. As far as diplomatic and legal processes go, this matter should have been put to rest.

But Malaysia obviously has something else in mind. Initially, Kuala Lumpur simply attempted to freeze the number of Indonesian workers by appealing to employers to place Indonesia at the bottom of the list of countries to import labor from.

And then, on Sunday, Malaysia decided to go one step further: Without prior warning or even consultation with Indonesia, it announced that it would cut the number of Indonesian workers, who are working legitimately in Malaysia, by half.

The Malaysian government has decided that having too many Indonesian workers in the country was undesirable and posed a significant security risk. How it reached this conclusion, based on a handful of riots conducted by a few hundred workers, is a mystery. But we do know that the Malaysian government is taking out its anger over the bad behavior of a few hundred rioters on all Indonesian workers.

Malaysia knows more than anybody else how the sweat of cheap Indonesian workers helped make its economy what it is today. Indonesian laborers were mostly employed in the construction and plantation sectors, the two most important motors driving the country's rapid economic growth rates.

Malaysia turned a blind eye to people smuggling activities, knowing that its economy was thriving even more because of the unlimited supply of cheap and easily exploitable Indonesian workers. Things have obviously changed today. Malaysia has ruled that Indonesian workers are now dispensable and disposable.

As deplorable as Malaysia's decision is, the official Indonesian response, or rather the lack of it, is abominable. The least the government could do is stand up to Malaysia and speak out on behalf of the 450,000 Indonesians whose futures are now in jeopardy.

There was a time, not so long ago, when Indonesia would not take such a belligerent act from a neighboring country lying down. Megawati's father, Indonesia's first president Sukarno, even went to war against Malaysia in the 1960s because he felt personally insulted by the process of decolonization in British Malaya.

Whatever the historical circumstances that forced him to declare a "Konfrontasi" against Malaysia, Sukarno at least showed we had a national pride worth fighting for, or defending.

We are not suggesting that Indonesia go on the war path again with Malaysia, but the least Megawati's government could do is take a stronger stand on the question of Indonesian workers in Malaysia, and make its displeasure at Kuala Lumpur's ruling known to the Malaysian and Indonesian public.

Like father like daughter? Hardly. If ever there was a positive trait of Sukarno's that Megawati should emulate, it is his strong sense of national pride and his commitment to standing up for it and defending it. We were even poorer back then in the 1960s, but we had a leader who constantly reminded us that we had our pride as a nation. Today, we seem to have none.