Skilled diplomacy needed to resolve Papua issue

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.