Remember `Konfrontasi'?

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.