Two nations, two women, one aim

Two nations, two women, one aim

W. Scott Thompson, The Straits Times, Asia News Network, Singapore

On the face of it, there is something extraordinary about the
Indonesian and Filipino presidential races. The two incumbents,
born less than four months apart, grew up in presidential
palaces, where their respective fathers lost power in the same
year, 1965.

They have ruled or reigned in the two largest archipelagos --
both of which are inhabited by people of Malay stock, speaking
closely related languages. They are women -- two-thirds of the
ruling heads of state of their gender.

Although both are presidential incumbents, they are both
running their first national and popular electoral race for the
top job. And they have husbands who have very particular
similarities -- that have got both of them into trouble.

And there the similarities end. The real differences
underscore the problem of projecting overarching similarities --
race and gender, for example. It is the same fallacy as saying
all Arabs (or Chinese) are the same. The contrasts between the
two women far outweigh their similarities.

Megawati Soekarnoputri, the eldest daughter of the charismatic
nationalist founding president of Indonesia, reigns more than
rules. "Enigmatic majesty", it's been called.

She is both sarcastically and fondly referred to as Ibu-Ibu
(Mother) for her celebrated tendency to pass tea and cookies to
ambassadors warning her of terrorist attacks or ministers giving
her bad news. Her work habits, not to put too fine a point on it,
do not inspire confidence. The fact of a new constitutional
provision, that a presidential candidate must have a high school
diploma, is a peculiar way of noting that the republic's
president has that and no more.

She and her party came to power after the impeachment of her
incompetent predecessor, Abdurrahman Wahid, in 2001, after a
period of stasis in national politics. Her husband, Taufiq
Kiemas, has been busy indeed, his footprints visible in most
major business deals -- and, so it is alleged, his own hands in
investors' pockets.

Gloria Arroyo, the diminutive daughter of reformer and
nationalist president Diosdado Macapagal -- defeated in his re-
election bid in 1965 by the late Ferdinand Marcos -- in contrast
has a PhD in economics from the University of the Philippines and
a degree from Georgetown University, where she was a classmate of
former U.S. president Bill Clinton.

She was elected vice-president when the appallingly corrupt
and incompetent Joseph Estrada was elected, in 1998. When an also
corrupt Senate failed to impeach him, the people took to the
streets, the military withdrew its support, and the chief justice
swore in Arroyo.

Her husband, Mike Arroyo, a big Chinese landowner, has also
been active in national business affairs. It is widely believed
that one of his many indiscretions led her to renounce a re-
election bid at the end of 2002, a decision she subsequently
reversed last year.

Both women have the enormous advantages of incumbency and
neither has an obvious opponent. Yet neither's re-election is
taken for granted.

Megawati has a variety of opponents, including the former
military chief, Gen. Wiranto, who is widely popular, not corrupt
(by Indonesian standards) and despite the presumptive endorsement
of the now legally cleared House Speaker Akbar Tandjung, can
anticipate much support within the best-organized party,
Soeharto's now reformed Golkar.

Arroyo's most evident opponent is popular movie star Fernando
Poe Jr. But his failure to dominate the polls, the way Estrada
had done, suggests a maturing of the voting public. And his vote
share may well be divided with a former police chief and accused
torturer under the late Marcos, Senator Panfilo "Ping" Lacson,
whose popularity derives from the belief that, knowing crime as
well as he does, he could clean it up swiftly.

If Megawati loses, it will be because she is perceived as
ruling too little, taking it just a little too easy at a time of
multiple national crises. Arroyo suffers from almost the
opposite: That she has twisted and turned, trying to rule
effectively but never truly finding her ground.

Filipino politics, despite the former presidency of Corazon
Aquino, is very much a man's affair, and Arroyo has not been
taken seriously among the men of power. She has tried just about
everything -- even revealing that despite the burdens of office,
she still had plenty of sex while at the palace. But the wags
only replied that she did not say with whom.

These two so similar archipelagic republics have a lot to
learn from each other, given the vast similarities to so many of
their problems and their level of development. It would not be a
rash bet to give fairly even odds that when Indonesians go to the
polls for their first round of presidential voting on July 5, and
the Filipinos for their 14th national vote on May 14, they will
turn both women out of office and try something quite different.

The writer was an assistant to the U.S. secretary of defense
from 1975 to 1976, and served as an assistant secretary of state
in the Reagan administration. He is now a professor at the
Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Massachusetts.