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.