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.