Will the real Habibie step forward?

Will the real Habibie step forward?

By Donna K. Woodward

MEDAN, North Sumatra (JP): When B.J. Habibie assumed his
presidency in May 1998, few believed that he would stay in power
longer than a couple of months. But he has beat all the odds by
staying in the top office for more than a year now.

As the People's Consultative Assembly's General Session is
approaching, it might be useful to look at what he has done
through all this time.

Habibie was so distrusted and resented that when his
designation as vice president was announced in January 1998 the
rupiah took its deepest dip ever. He has been publicly
discredited, humiliated and even threatened by his former number
one mentor: Soeharto. The media has happily portrayed Habibie's
clown-like moments, and he himself sometimes seems to welcome
this persona. Where Soeharto affected a transcendental air and
the aloof demeanor of pseudo-royalty, Habibie has been
disingenuously himself.

He has won overseas degrees, academic distinction and
accolades for the creativity of his inventions and applications
of technology to industry. He almost single-handedly promoted
Indonesia's modern aircraft industry. He is one of the few
cronies whose accumulation of wealth seems at least partly built
on real accomplishments, albeit aided by an exceptional degree of
unhealthy favoritism from Soeharto.

He began his accidental presidency by releasing long-held
political prisoners and acknowledging the right of the people of
East Timor to determine their own political destiny. He resisted
resorting to strong-arm military tactics to secure his position
during even the darkest days of his presidency, and maintained
the model of civilian rule.

His government administered a general election that was
democratic enough to yield an outcome which, for the first time
in 30 years, was not dictated by the ruling party. He has
permitted an unprecedented degree of press freedom and tolerated
the most cutting verbal attacks on his person and his presidency.
He has even permitted public criticism (though it has been mild)
of his family members.

He promised to bring the erring members of the Indonesian
Military (TNI) to justice for their decades of crime in Aceh but
has failed. He promised to prohibit the military from supporting
the Timorese prointegration forces but has failed. He promised to
prosecute corruption cases against Soeharto and his children and
Andi Ghalib and now the Baligate thieves, in accordance with the
rule of law.

In all these promises he has so far failed, and his time is
about to run out. Who is B.J. Habibie and what kind of president
does he really want to be, finally?

Habibie is a modern man of science with a scientist's
fundamental respect for objectivity and factuality. He is also an
Indonesian with a judgment and a conscience ready to defer to
those of his seniors and his benefactors.

His education gives him a respect for those with independent
expertise in a subject, and his cultural values incline him to
yield to their professional opinions. Though Habibie has a
healthy appreciation for his own brainpower and achievements, he
has never pretended to have great insight into political
questions.

Do President Habibie's official blunders and failures to
implement reforms result from an arrogant disdain for the will of
the people? Or is it possible that the President has relied too
much on ministerial advice that is based less on ministers'
professional expertise than on their very unministerial self-
interest?

Let us look at the prosecution of corruption -- rather the
failure thereof -- by President Habibie's regime.

State Secretary/Minister of Justice Muladi and former attorney
general Andi Ghalib have been President Habibie's key legal
advisors.

Muladi was a noted leader in the legal academic world before
his elevation to a high government position, Ghalib a general and
military lawyer. They had the professional expertise that Habibie
respects. Whether a particular activity constitutes a crime;
whether a civil or a military court should have jurisdiction;
whether there is probable cause to investigate someone's conduct;
whether there is sufficient evidence to name a suspect; whether
there is sufficient evidence to sustain a conviction in a court
of law: on all these questions, it was Ghalib and still is
minister Muladi whose opinions President Habibie heeds.

The legal opinions and conclusions the Muladi-Ghalib duo have
announced in the last year, so flagrantly detached from legal
principles and logic, bring disrepute and dishonor to Indonesia's
legal establishment. Why?

One need only think about the alleged out-of-control
corruption within Muladi's ministry to infer how little interest
he might have in a serious campaign against corruption. As for
Ghalib, there is no need for an inference. There are black and
white bank account statements that explain Ghalib's allergy to
prosecuting corruption.

Or consider national security. In the days following the
departure in disgrace of Soeharto, Minister of Defense and
Security/Armed Forces Commander Gen. Wiranto looked good. He
looked professional, temperate, devoted to the nation's common
good. With each passing month this poster-boy general has
retreated more and more into the usual role of the heads of the
Indonesian military: protecting his own turf and that of his
subordinates, at all costs.

Witness the failure of discipline he has tolerated in Aceh, in
East Timor, and last year in Jakarta. What self-respecting
professional military officer would accept such insubordination,
and such lame excuses for it, from his troops? Where are Gen.
Wiranto's professionalism and his military honor?

A president is ultimately responsible for the advice he takes.
But a professional career politician might have made much better
decisions about how far to trust advisors than President Habibie
has made. Habibie was thrust into the office and the role without
warning. When he has operated on instinct, as in the matter of
the release of political prisoners, his instincts seem to have
served him and the nation well. When he has deferred to the legal
and military heavyweights in his government, the results have
been disastrous.

This is not meant to sound an apologetic note on Habibie,
though, to be transparent, his office once reacted promptly and
rendered effective assistance in getting results with corruption
problems in Medan. Nevertheless, Habibie should not even dream of
serving another term as president, in view of the voters' choice
of Megawati.

And there is still the possibility that he is more directly
involved in the Bank Bali crimes than is yet alleged. But for 15
months B.J. Habibie has been a fascinating study in
contradiction, incipient idealism struggling with his demon The
Status Quo.

In the end Habibie succumbed to the temptation that overcomes
so many public figures, to sacrifice principle and the common
good for the sake of his political survival.

But it is not the end yet. There is time left for him to leave
a reform legacy. There may not be time to cleanse his government
of dishonest ministers incapacitated by conflicts of interest.
But he can let his decisions be infused with advice from new,
uncompromised quarters: the Indonesian Corruption Watch, bona
fide representatives of the Acehnese and Timorese people, other
true reformers. Hear their advice on handling corruption and
military abuse of power. Habibie should also hear and heed his
own idealism.

The writer is president director of PT Far Horizons.