What most captures international imaginations are Indonesia’s fragilities: a geographic destiny of seemingly never-ending cataclysmic natural disasters; a huge multi-ethnic nation with a history of powerful separatist inclinations stretched across an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands; a country that is home to radical extremist Islamist terrorist cells; a democracy but one yet to prove its resilience to serious shock or challenge; a polity in which corruption remains endemic; and a society still wracked by poverty (with a nominal per capita income of only US$2,300) and vast inequality.
Indonesia does indeed face formidable geo-political-economic challenges within. But what seems more important are not the burdens of Indonesia’s past and where it is coming from but the prospects of its future and where it is going. From this perspective, Indonesia is perhaps one of the most underestimated countries in Asia.
Like China or India, Indonesia, as the fourth most populous country in the world, would be important simply because of its size independently of its wealth. Size wouldn’t matter much, of course, if the polity were indeed to blow apart centripetally as some imaginations would have it. But whatever other legacies Sukarno (modern Indonesia’s founding President) left Indonesia, his most abiding was a deeply embedded sense of nationhood against all the odds: bhinneka tunggal ika (‘unity in diversity’, ‘different, yet one’). Indonesian unity continues to more than hang together.
Indonesia is now a member of the G20, and holds new responsibilities in global councils of governance. It plays an increasingly important role in other world forums, such as the WTO the global climate change negotiations. Indonesia has also re-emerged, after the Asian financial crisis, as undoubted leader within and beyond ASEAN.
More important, by all the vital signs, the health of the Indonesian economy, polity and society is improving robustly.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is in his second term as Indonesia’s third freely elected president in a new democracy that is open, transparent and fair. He leads a government that, —however constrained by the nature of the coalition on which it is built, the challenge of the policy tasks it faces at home and its parliamentary obligations and responsibilities — is competent and clean. Long perceived as among the more corrupt of countries internationally, Indonesia ranked 143rd in Transparency International’s Corruption Transparency Index, out of 180 or so countries in 2007. This year, Indonesia’s rank had climbed to 110th. There has been success in confronting extremist Islamic terrorism, and terrorist cells in Indonesia appear to be in retreat. In 2009, Indonesia’s income per head was 108th in the global league, with a share in global income of 0.9 per cent. Indonesian growth did not stall through the global financial crisis and GDP is now growing steadily at 6 per cent in real terms a year. In 1980, the literacy rate in Indonesia was 67 per cent; last year it had risen to 92 per cent.
In this week’s lead essay Thee Kian Wie cautiously suggests that if it can re-build and expand its crumbling infrastructure and address its governance and institutional weaknesses, Indonesia could well be on the way to joining the BRICs.
There is deserved and growing confidence that the corner has been turned on Indonesian economic performance. With the institutions for democracy and economic growth taking root, the prospect is for rising Indonesian economic and political power in the medium to long term. On current growth rates this will be realised in little more than a few decades.
The implications of this prognostication of Indonesia’s future economic power are profound, for Indonesia and for the international community, especially Indonesia’s neighbours in East Asia, including Australia. Now, rather than a few decades hence, is the time for investment in the institutions and relationships that will secure a future in which Indonesia’s power and influence, against the odds that many still mistakenly assign, will steadily grow stronger.
I sympathise with much that is said here, and much in the post by Thee, but I must say I’m still quite cautious about Indonesia’s prospects, partly because of memories of the Asian financial crisis in the late 90s. At that time, some pundits were making confident predictions about Indonesia’s economic potential, and its ability to join “Asian Tiger” ranks before too long. The tragic way things went wrong is a reminder of how dangerous predictions can be in Indonesian circumstances.
Despite steady political and economic progress in recent years, quite startling if you recall how uncertain the first few years of democracy were, there are still plenty of ways in which Indonesia can mess it up. On the political side, the presidential succession in 2014 is quite unclear, and few of the likely successors (as it appears at present) are particularly impressive. The election in 2014 of a short-sighted populist, especially one with little economic nous, could easily damage or reverse the progress made so far.
Indonesia’s social unity and sense of community is reasonably strong, but some negative signs have emerged, especially the tolerance for thuggish bigotry shown by the government in the past few years. Some religious/ ethnic minorities, a few of them are economically significant, must be sensing some pressure at present, including those who would have a “we could be next” feeling. Corruption as negative factor can still not be played down either – movement from 130th or so to 110th in the world is mildly encouraging but hardly a reason for joy.
All this is only intended as a cautionary note – on the whole, recent progress has indeed been salutary and we can be justified in feeling some guarded optimism.
Peter: in your weekly message this week you wrote ” How many foreign policy analysts in Washington, Tokyo or Canberra, let alone Brussels, London, Paris or Berlin, really think about Indonesia as an emerging power?” With respect, in important respects I believe that comment is misleading from at least the U.S. perspective.
I can’t speak from the perspective of Paris, Berlin, or Brussels, but it does seem to me that in the minds an time of those who shape and follow United States foreign political and economic relations with East Asia, the place of Indonesia is very, very high. Not in the same way or at the same level with China, but in no sense is Indonesia any longer a ‘forgotten’ place for informed and concerned Americans. Of course President Obama’s recent and unavoidably too-shortened visit helped bring Indonesia to the wider public mind, but in the years and months before that, it does seem to me that Indonesia is regarded absolutely as a “comer” of both present and certainly of longer-term importance. One illustration is President SBY’s recent “partnership” initiative with the U.S., and another is the regular way in which Indonesia is regarded and referred to as the “world’s largest Muslim-majority nation” and but not characterized by the apprehensions often generated by others in the Muslim world.
I recognize that among informed Australians too, Indonesia is also not ignored nor slighted, and my comment is mainly to underline that a widespread view of U.S. foreign policy as characterized by an “Atlanticist” bias mis-states the reality.
Regards,
Bernie
Bernie
What I had in mind of course was the perception of Indonesia as a BRIC. I’m sure your right in terms of the change in Washington’s perspective, but despite the attention given to Indonesia in Washington and elsewhere, I doubt that there is a dominant perception of Indonesia in those terms there or for that matter here, where Indonesia is very much on our radar screens.
Indonesia’s democracy needs a somewhat sharper scrutiny than is offered here. To describe it as ‘open, transparent and fair’ is to overlook several important aspects. Money plays a vital role in Indonesian democracy. Would somebody like Aburizal Bakrie have a political career at all if he were not one of Indonesia’s richest businessmen? Large sums are spent in many political and social organisations to determine the outcome of leadership contests. This flow of money is rarely transparent. Dynasty is also an influential factor. This is shown in every one of Indonesia’s presidential families. Let us take them in chronological order. Megawati owes her political prominence largely to her being Sukarno’s daughter, and she in turn seems to be preparing for her own daughter to succeed her in her party, which seems afraid to elect somebody not related to Indonesia’s founding president as its chair. Tommy, to name one of the brood of six Soeharto children, hasn’t given up hopes of a political career in Golkar, his father’s preferred party, despite serving years in jail. Habibie’s son Ilham has just become chairman of ICMI, the Muslim intellectuals’ organisation his father once led. The late Abdurrahman Wahid was clearly paving the way for his daughter, Yenny, to take over from him. Finally, one of SBY’s sons is now secretary-general of the Democrat Party. This element of Indonesian democracy at least may be described as transparent, but scarcely fair. Openness has its limits, too. There are important restrictions on who can contest the presidency and vice-presidency, insuring inter alia that an independent candidate without party support cannot stand. There were five tickets in 2004 and only three in 2009. Small parties are disadvantaged because of electoral thresholds they must reach to retain their parliamentary representation. Through the power of large parties, parliament sacrifices ‘bhinneka’ to the demands of ‘ika’, or of efficiency or some other value.
Fair points on fairness. But compared with what? Indonesia’s past political system? And internationally? An international gold standard test of fairness? All representative democracies, subject to the same scrutiny, have their limitations, their weaknesses, their barriers to the Athenian ideal. Pressed, I’d argue that perceptions of the fairness of the political system have unquestionably improved and that is undoubtedly one of the things that feeds into growing internal and external confidence in Indonesia’s political and economic future.
I’m not sure what comparisons if any Peter had in mind when he used the terms ‘open, transparent and fair’. I don’t think international comparisons serve much purpose on a subject like this because, as Shiro points out, all representative democracies have their weaknesses. It goes without saying that Indonesia’s democracy is fairer than Soeharto’s autocracy. To take up one point that I raised in my original comment, I would say that Indonesia would be better off if there were no restrictions on presidential/vice-presidential candidacies. The two-round system guarantees that candidates with limited popular support will be shunted aside, and that in a very transparent manner. Preventing candidates with limited support from standing in the first place merely risks fostering discontent that might have destabilising repercussions.