Susilo's campaign hangover, time for real action

Susilo's campaign hangover, time for real action

Harry Bhaskara, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Had he known from the start, Army General Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono probably might have backed away from his current job.
What kind of a job is he in, when even taking a break from his
daily routine reaps criticism?

The President quipped while he was in the United States that
back-patting, which he got aplenty there, was a rare commodity at
home. He might have been joking, but that could be a serious
question posed to himself.

Although he said he had no time even for coffee while in the
States, the criticism that irritated him was justified. One
criticism goes that he had earlier asked his ministers to scrap
their unnecessary foreign trips to save costs, but now he did it
himself. His entourage totaled almost 100 people, including his
wife and son.

The disheartening irony, is that the UN summit which was
supposed to be the main agenda of the visit, turned out to be a
gathering of the world elite to confirm the lesser status that
developing countries should be accorded to in today's world.

Critics also resented his half-a-billion rupiah Cabinet
meeting via video-conferencing technology. They were costly and
helped fuel speculation that he had less trust in Vice President
Jusuf Kalla.

As he went back to work on Monday here, the total number of
people sick with avian influenza has soared. The rupiah has not
recovered from its downward slide beyond the Rp 10,000-to-the-
dollar barrier and fuel shortages have spread to more provinces.
The list seems exhaustive.

The fight against corruption has been half-hearted, with
seeming impunity for those with the right connections. The same
goes for perpetrators of human rights abuses. Susilo could have
done a lot in those two areas and that would have bolstered his
dwindling popularity.

At the grassroots level, people are taking the law into their
own hands, with the most recent case being another attack against
Ahmadiyah this week, in addition to the attempted expulsion of
the liberal Muslims from their East Jakarta home-base, forced
closures of Christian places of worships and violent chaos
stemming from disappointment of local elections results as
occurred in West Sumatra over the weekend.

A renewed hope blew across the country when Susilo was elected
president last October. Such an optimism is logical since the
country has been marred by a leadership crisis for six years
after Soeharto fell from power in 1998.

Just like the day after a big storm, Indonesian skies seemed
to be clearing up when Susilo and Kalla took the helm. Hence, the
suspected tension between the two now is a setback.

Although such suspicions have been officially denied, some
feel that it was a New Order-esque denial wherein the truth is
often the very thing being denied.

This country has had enough of leadership rifts. Susilo
himself was a senior security minister last year before he ran
for president against then incumbent Megawati Soekarnoputri.

Looking back at history, first president Sukarno and first
vice president Mohammad Hatta fell out in the late 1950s. Sukarno
had strained relations with his successor Soeharto.

The fourth president, Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid won power
after outsmarting his rival, Megawati Soekarnoputri, whose party
handily won the 1999 legislative election -- meaning she really
should have been voted in the legislature at the time.

A leadership rift is thus the last thing the country needs at
this point in time. People are getting impatient now that Susilo
has been in power for almost a year, for there is too much hope,
but too little action. Poverty, unemployment and the sufferings
of the common people have hit rock bottom.

There are reasons to worry that Susilo has been carried away
by the very success of his public relations campaign that won him
the highest office. A candidate from a small and obscure
political party, Susilo defeated Megawati who led the strong and
influential Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) in
the first direct presidential election.

The success might have forced him to struggle in shifting
realities from perceived realities, a pet stuff in public
relations' parlance. Although he has won praise for some things
to carry him forward, most notably being his successful handling
of the Aceh tsunami, still, responses to this nation's enormous
problems have been slow to come. Resoluteness is something
grossly missing in his leadership.

For those who stand in his way in his bid to establish good
governance, Susilo might well ask the same question that George
W. Bush's did after the Sept. 11 attack whether "they are with us
or with them?".

Susilo needs to get up from his presidential campaign
hangover. Someone has to tell him: "Get up Mr. President, the
campaign period is over. It is now time for real action."