What RI crisis means to the region

What RI crisis means to the region

This is the second of two articles based on a paper presented
by Minister of Foreign Affairs Alwi Shihab when opening the
Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP)
conference on Indonesia on March 8. The conference was jointly
organized by CSCAP-Indonesia and CSCAP-Japan.

JAKARTA: There is the need to keep the unity and integrity of
the nation intact. Indonesians' resentment at the peripheries of
the country over the inequities, neglect and oppression under an
authoritarian central government has over the decades taken a
heavy toll on their sense of belonging to a single nation. That
resentment has fed separatist movements.

If we can successfully contend with this fundamental
challenge, there is always hope that we will overcome all the
other challenges. If not, the prospects are bleak that we will
ever manage to tame all the other challenges.

The government of President Abdurrahman Wahid has promptly
responded to these challenges. It has given top priority to
restore investor confidence by ensuring a level playing field for
all who would participate in economic life; it continues to
rebuild the banking sector, help the corporate sector back on its
feet and reform the national economic structure.

It has intensified political and legal reform and sees to it
that people's civil and political rights are as well protected as
their economic and social rights. I am proud to say that there
are no political prisoners in Indonesia today. We are fine-tuning
our social safety net programs. We continue to investigate
anomalies in public office and violations of public trust.

We are enlisting all segments of society in a movement for
ethnic and religious harmony. And we are redressing the
grievances of the regions and provinces by vigorously pursuing
decentralization and equitable sharing of resources, and by
engaging them in sincere dialogue.

And we are doing all these because, in the first place, they
constitute the imperatives of national survival as well as
national dignity.

We are also fully aware that the challenges have serious
implication on the situation in East Asia, especially Southeast
Asia. It is thus a matter of responsibility to the region that
Indonesia should exert its utmost in managing these challenges.

For if we fail to solve our economic problems, the rest of the
region is apt to suffer its contagion. This is the stark lesson
of the Asian financial crisis. Recent experience has also taught
us that any international political issue against any one
Southeast Asian country, becomes an issue against the region,
against the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Widespread social turmoil in Indonesia will weigh heavily on
the region's stability for the simple reason that the 210 million
Indonesians make up 40 percent of Southeast Asia's population.

The political fragmentation of Indonesia and its population of
210 million is nothing less than the possibilities, we
acknowledge our great responsibility to the region.

But more than three decades ago, the nations of Southeast Asia
had already realized that not a single one of them could solve
problems without the cooperation and support of all the others.
That was why ASEAN was founded -- so that all Southeast Asia
nations could form a community that works effectively for peace,
that could conquer the basic problem of poverty and become
globally competitive -- a community that is aware of its common
cultural legacy and shared ultimate destiny.

This vision of ASEAN's founding fathers has been restated for
our time as a set of goals that the Association intends to
achieve in the next two decades, which have been embodied in
"ASEAN Vision 2020."

We believe in this vision of enlightened regionalism.
Indonesia's participation in the work of ASEAN will therefore
continue to be the lynchpin of foreign policy for the simple
reason that we cannot solve our problems in a vacuum.

We must solve them within a social, economic and political
environment and our most immediate environment is ASEAN. A
considerable part of the solution to our economic problems lies
in the success of ASEAN's economic integration, in the
achievement of AFTA, the ASEAN Investment Area and the ASEAN
Industrial Cooperation scheme.

The many initiatives of ASEAN in social and human development
will help Indonesia enhance the quality, especially the
technological competence of its human resources. The instruments
for peace that ASEAN has developed and keeps refining, such as
the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC) and the ASEAN Regional
Forum (ARF), serve to ensure that the economies of East Asia and
the rest of the Asia-Pacific, including Indonesia, are not
distracted from the pursuit of prosperity by the disruptions of
armed conflict and bitter dispute.

When President Abdurrahman laid down our foreign policy
directions at his inaugural address on Oct. 20, 1999, he adhered
closely to the conventional wisdom that is today guiding ASEAN.

He stressed the need for the restoration of Indonesia's
dignity, the maintenance of its unity and integrity, the forging
of closer cooperation among Asian countries, and a policy of
equidistance that entails the strengthening of relations and
cooperation with all nations.

Today, ASEAN is also addressing its international image; it is
moving to restore investor confidence in the region. It is also
focusing on its cooperation with its Asian neighbors,
particularly China, South Korea and Japan. Its newest dialogue
partner is India.

And yet it is maintaining important ties with Europe through
the Asia-Europe Meeting, with the American continent through the
Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, and is initiating
cooperation with Latin America, the Indian Ocean Rim and South
Asia. Everything that Indonesia is trying to do as an individual
country can be matched with and reinforced by a parallel activity
in ASEAN.

For in the ultimate analysis, Indonesia is not in any way
different from the rest of Southeast Asia. Our economic, social
and political problems may be more severe as they are amplified
by the immensity of our population and extensiveness of our
territory, but we are essentially the same as everybody else in
the region. We share the same historical and cultural legacy, the
same contemporary struggle for development and stability, and the
same eventual destiny.

As to what will be that eventual destiny depends on how well
ASEAN and its Asia-Pacific and global linkages work, on how well
we can all make them work.