Skilled diplomacy needed to resolve Papua issue

Cecep Effendi, Jakarta

Former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives the late Tip O'Neal could have given a little advice to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono when he said that all politics is local. President Susilo may have distaste for the idea that the U.S. Committee on International Relations of the House of Representatives needs to intervene in what can be regarded as Indonesia's domestic affairs.

But, the President's distaste does not, in any way, prevent foreign intervention in Indonesia's domestic affairs, as long as Indonesia fails to settle its domestic problems in order to improve its diplomacy. The President's advisors could have advised him that he did not have to exaggerate the issue, given the fact that only a small percentage of bills will eventually become laws and therefore affect relations between the two countries.

A bill proposed by the majority members of the U.S. House of Representatives does not automatically become a law. It has to get approval from the U.S. Senate. Usually, deliberations in the Senate tend to be much longer than in the House.

Even if the Senate agrees to accept a bill proposed by the House of Representatives after lengthy and exhaustive discussions on the Conference Committee, the U.S. President can still veto the bill. Here, the U.S. President needs to consider much broader perspectives of his constituents as well as regional and international interests of his country before he accepts or vetoes the bill.

If the President finally vetoes the bill, both the Senate and the House need to conduct a plenary meeting to be attended by two-thirds of the members to reject the veto. The complicated procedures of proposing a bill in the House and the Senate help to explain why only a small number of bills will finally become laws.

Learning from my personal experience while working on the Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific of the U.S. Committee on International Relations in the 2003-2004 period as an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow, Indonesia's lobbying at the House of Representatives was felt less than that of China, India, Taiwan and South Korea.

The Indonesian Embassy only has one liaison officer whose job it is to maintain contacts with the staff of the members of the House and Senate. Unfortunately, the man in charge of this job is too old to be effective. The staff of the Chinese and South Korean embassies have developed personal and informal contacts with the staff of the U.S. Committee on International Relations.

Compared to those two countries, the visits of the members of the House and Senate to Indonesia are few and far between. Worse than that, information concerning recent developments in Indonesia in English is hardly available.

Meanwhile, the Papua Freedom Organization and the Aceh Freedom Movement persistently send information through their supporters in the U.S. concerning recent developments in Indonesia from their perspectives.

China, India, Taiwan, and South Korea have long abandoned their single-track diplomacy. Instead, those countries have adopted multiple-track diplomacy. The embassy is not the only means to influence the decision making process in the House of Representatives and the Senate.

They also continuously provide current information about the developments in their countries in various forms and through various means.

The information is very much needed by staff members of the Congress as a source of information which competes with information coming from various sources such as non-governmental organizations, lobby groups and dissident groups living in the U.S. and Europe.

China, India, Taiwan, and China also use informal means to conduct diplomacy. Each member of the House of Representatives needs to contest for reelection every two years. They need money and support from the citizens of their electoral districts. The citizens of the U.S. of Chinese, Taiwanese, South Korean, and Indian origins use their voting rights to ensure only candidates who have favorable attitudes toward their countries will win the election.

Unlike the citizens of those countries, Indonesians are small in number and the majority of them are illegal immigrants.

Time has come for the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the State Minister of Information and Communications to build a partnership in projecting Indonesia's image abroad. The partnership ought to begin by assessing the obstacles to improving Indonesia's international diplomacy.

The problem of quality of human resources of Indonesia's diplomatic corps, especially in expressing their verbal and written ideas in English is one thing, the lack of data available in English about current developments in Indonesia, especially in Papua and Aceh is another.

Indonesia also needs to develop strategic partnerships with various think-thanks in Washington DC. China, Japan, South Korea, India have long built partnerships with The Brookings Institutions, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Center for Strategic and International Studies of the Woodrow Wilson Center for Exchange Scholars, and the Heritage Foundation.

Those research institutions have gotten endowments from those countries as well as from business groups in their respective countries to conduct research, to publish books, and to organize discussions about current developments in their respective countries.

Even Malaysia granted enough money to the Center for Christian-Muslim Understanding at Georgetown University to invite Malaysian Professors to teach there. None of those research and academic institutions offer Indonesian research. The argument is clear: No funding to start.

Fortunately, Washington DC still has the United States- Indonesia (USINDO), a private think-thank established by former officers of the State Department to help to project Indonesia's image.

The problem is how much USINDO can gain support from Indonesian private business groups and government agencies.

C. Effendi is researcher at the Indonesian Institute, Center for Public Policy Research and former staffer of the Committee on International Relations, The House of Representatives, Washington DC (2003-2004). He can be reached at andi.effendi@theindonesianinstitute.com.