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."