The stakes between Singapore and Indonesia

By Irawan Abidin

JAKARTA (JP): Of President Abdurrahman Wahid's tirade against Singapore just over a week ago, much was said by Indonesians, most of it by way of lamentation, rebuke and outright condemnation.

Yet Singaporeans, according to The Straits Times, should worry that the President might have been dressed down by his countrymen not for the substance of his remarks but for the undiplomatic way in which he exploded.

That is a very valid distinction and therefore a real source of concern among Singaporeans. Unfortunately for them and for Indonesians who would like to see their country adhere to the best moral position possible under the circumstances, no assurances have been conveyed that the President has been soundly rebuked by legislators and the media for both the substance and the manner of his attack against Singapore.

To this Indonesian and countless others who can still distinguish right from wrong, it is the substance of one particular part of that attack that must be lamented and rebuked: you cannot make a threat to the water supply of a country without threatening the very life of its people, no matter how small that country, and no matter how distant or unrealistic the threat.

But President Abdurrahman has been criticized enough. The best counsel that his advisers can give him now, short of making a sincere apology to the people of Singapore, is to work hard and quietly for an earnest resumption of the dialogue with Singapore. Perhaps the assistance of the other ASEAN members could be enlisted in that effort. Singapore should sustain the forbearance that it has always shown to Indonesia and join in that effort.

An immediate objective should be to secure assurance that Singaporean Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew will continue to serve in Abdurrahman's International Panel of Advisers, where he is invaluable not only as a kind of devil's advocate but also as a source of ideas and insights that could be the basis of some really useful initiatives.

The President could call for a meeting of the International Panel of Advisers early next year and if Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew would attend and take an active part, that would be a good sign. The panel could discuss what possible adjustments would be prudent for Indonesia to make in the face of the developments that took place during the ASEAN informal summit in Singapore. The best source of advice on such a crucial set of concerns would then be in attendance.

To ensure a substantive dialog with Singapore, Indonesia should also be making a review of the history of its relationship with Singapore. The review could identify old endeavors that could be revived and new initiatives that could be taken. It could identify ways of getting around problems that could make certain stymied undertakings finally feasible.

One of these could be the projected piping of water from one of the islands off Batam to Singapore. In the light of the recent outburst of the President, that would really be an irony but a pleasant one.

One of the finest adjustments the Indonesian political elite can give to the country's relationship with Singapore is to stop regarding it as a Chinese state and accept it for what it is striving hard to be: a multiracial meritocracy.

If we love to project ourselves as a multiethnic and multireligious nation, then we should have only the best wishes for the success of a neighbor striving for the same goal. And if we are true to that vision of ourselves, then we should start regarding and treating Chinese-Indonesians more like Indonesians than Chinese.

During the past several years, well before the ascendancy of Abdurrahman's administration, some powerful individuals succeeded in introducing a heavy dose of racism into our national politics. Let us get rid of that social virus as quickly as possible.

Let our political leaders, regardless of their party affiliation, behave like the leaders of the kind of nation we keep saying we are. We would then get a great deal more respect not only in Singapore but in every capital that Abdurrahman visits in his pursuit of foreign investment and economic cooperation.

A prolongation of the animosities created by the President's tirade against Singapore will leave the citizens of both countries losers. Many Singaporeans will not sleep easy as long as they believe that they do not have the goodwill of a giant just a few strides away.

Their entrepreneurial spirit will be restive in the face of lost opportunities for profitable cooperation with Indonesia. Indonesians will be losing even more opportunities for economic cooperation with Singapore.

The other peoples of ASEAN could also come out as losers, for the situation would only confirm what the detractors of the association are saying: that ASEAN has lost its solidarity and is therefore on the verge of extinction.

That would further erode international confidence in ASEAN. Thus, in the global scramble for foreign direct investment, ASEAN as a region would become less and less competitive. The national development programs of the member nations would certainly suffer as a result.

In terms of population, Indonesia makes up 40 percent of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Singapore is its financial hub. Put 40 percent of an organization against its own financial center and that organization has lost much of its relevance.

In the dynamics of its cooperation with the big economies of Northeast Asia (China, South Korea and Japan) and the South Pacific (Australia and New Zealand), ASEAN will not have enough leverage to prevent its being absorbed into the embrace of a new club dominated by economies that were once its dialog partners.

Then ASEAN would cease to be. And the nightmare that engulfed Southeast Asia in the l950s and early 1960s could start all over again.

This means that much more is at stake in the relationship between Singapore and Indonesia than the pride of their leaders. At stake is the future of ASEAN itself. With the pressures of globalization and the skepticism of the rest of the world bearing hard upon the Southeast Asian region, the hour is getting late. Singapore and Indonesia must rush to reconciliation and to the resumption of their cooperation.

The writer served as Indonesian ambassador to Athens and to the Holy See before his retirement earlier this year.