State of blandness

It was arguably the most important scheduled political speech since the President took office in October. It was not bad, but it was certainly far from inspiring.

Economists may by poring over the numbers and statistical data presented by the President during his first State of the Nation address, but to the average layman it was uninspiringly average.

A disappointment, really, for someone who has built up a reputation as being a skilled public performer.

Filled with platitudes and triteness, the speech utterly failed to inject renewed hope at one of the most important stages of the year.

Instead, the President stuck to his typical style of making lofty promises and declarations of intent. His vocabulary has become predictable and his delivery stale.

To be fair, the President did do what was required of him in such an address: a general account of the state of the nation, his past achievements, challenges for the future, a general elaboration on the budget, and the immediate targets of his administration.

It is a time-tested formula that has persisted for four decades under presidents Soeharto, B.J. Habibie, Abdurrahman Wahid and Megawati Soekarnoputri -- perhaps this also explains why they too were often uninspiring.

One cannot blame Susilo for playing it safe. But one would also have hoped that a President so well versed in public relations would have used the opportunity as a rallying point to galvanize the nation, especially on the heels of the historic Aceh peace treaty and the eve of Indonesia's 60th anniversary of independence.

We believe that apart from the technical necessities, a State of the Nation address should be a source of motivation for the difficult work what lies ahead.

There was some impromptu improvisation on the part of the President during his speech, but this were not particularly rousing. Maybe it was the President's delivery, or perhaps the President needs a new speech writer. Whatever the case, Tuesday's State of the Nation address left no lasting impression, if any at all, on most Indonesians.

Many parts of his speech sounded like campaign slogans with pledges of "this" and "that", but little in the way of how these pledges are going to be achieved.

For example, the President acknowledged fuel price increases "may even cause an increase in poverty". He goes on to claim that the government is "striving to adopt" promotion programs in education and welfare.

Frankly, these remarks wear thin on the millions of parents being fleeced by elementary school registration fees while the government's (empty) pledges of free education still ring loudly; or the millions who have to line up for hours for gasoline and kerosene at inflated prices because of poor management in the supply and distribution chain.

Susilo further talks about agriculture, fishing and forestry as being "the core solution to solving unemployment and poverty".

While these three sectors have great potential and can contribute much, does he mean that we are about to send millions of young Indonesians each year into the fields or out to sea on fishing boats?

The President in another part of his speech addresses the question of infrastructure development. He carefully neglected to mention that the Infrastructure Summit held earlier this year has not produced anything like the expected results.

Most major infrastructure investors continue to be hesitant due to various factors, including a lack of government guarantees. Those that have been convinced and are expected to start work in the coming year are only doing so because they have been promised concessions for natural resources exploitation.

Even the government's seven developmental priorities for 2006 are a redundant wishlist. They are verbose in that all of these areas -- including eradicating poverty, increasing investment and employment opportunities, improving law enforcement, etc -- are issues that the government should be fully focusing on anyway irrespective of whether they are on any list.

The question is: What is he going to do about the problems facing the nation? Any sort of answer would have provided hope and direction to the increasingly impatient millions.

If Susilo thought before Tuesday's speech that it was merely a ceremonial affair, he was wrong!

Someone should remind the President that the election campaign is long over, and political promises have a short shelf life.

What Indonesians wanted to hear, they did not get.