For the past eighteen months, the most talked about issue in Indonesian policy circles has centered on governance as the key solution to Indonesia’s economic recovery. Governance__both in officialdom, as well as in corporate as well as in civic society__was the key to stabilizing the economy as macro economic indicators began to improve: inflation was well under control, the government’s reserves peaked at $43 billion, economic growth rate at a respectable if not spectacular 5,4%, and there are plans to repay ahead of schedule the IMF $2.4 billion__about half of Indonesia’s outstanding debt.
Governance was the issue at all levels__national, provincial, local (regency, district) because the key problem since May 1998 was that as Indonesia was becoming democratic (at least for those who can afford it and whose basics needs are met) everyone recognized that democracy had to be substantiated by efficacy. The ability of the government, of private corporations and of all civic groups to make things happen and get things done rested on this single ability to energize government, corporations and advocacy groups.
Governance was the buzz word in all multilateral agency discussions. And it all depended on decisiveness and drive on the part of all government officials, from the top down to the lowest local unit. Both decisiveness and drive would ensure the most cherished dream among all government planners: the ability to deliver.
People talked about no democracy but substantial efficacy during Suharto’s time. Post May-1998, there was democracy aplenty, but little efficacy. Presidents Habibie, Wahid and Megawati, according to a former senior economics minister who served under Suharto, were just “passing through presidents”. Both Sukarno and Suharto, he said, were “real leaders who commanded authority and respect; whatever your opinion about their respective personal shortcomings, their personal authority made bureaucracy able to deliver.” He went on to warn, rather ominously, ” We cannot afford SBY to fail, and we must help him regain the ability to get his personal authority be felt within the myriad layers of the bureaucracy.”
The trick, of course is to balance the imperative to maintain of consensus-building through constant re-alignments within each faction in government (the vertical aspect of coordination and implementation) as well as in harnessing cross-departmental synergy (the much more difficult horizontal governmental inter-face). Getting things done may entail the need to be firm and___ when necessary___ authoritarian, if only temporarily. At some point, leaders at all levels must be able to occasionally show their sharper edges and be ruthless.
Governance and delivery will be the key issues in the run up to elections of 2009, particularly in the economic realm. With 36 million Indonesians living on less than two dollars a day, 10 million openly unemployed and 60 million needing direct cash transfers until the end of 2006, the “great ascent” for the next 18 months will be to aim for more efficacy, more governance and more delivery. In the perennial debate between democracy and efficacy, no perfection solution can be achieved. Indonesia is too diverse to govern efficiently.
But sixty percent success rate should be enough to halve the numbers of the poor, the unemployed and the desperate to enable them climb the social ladder, replenish their audacity of hope and reinforce governmental confidence to improve governance and deliver for the next set of challenges.
“…key problem since May 1998 was that as Indonesia was becoming democratic (at least for those who can afford it and whose basics needs are met)”
🙂 I agree. People hardly think about democray when their stomach is empty 🙂 So I guess, the number one problem that this country should solve is how to ensure that people’s basic needs are fulfilled?
For that reason, I pray, not only wish, that the recent government won’t fail.
great article – guess blogs give automatic permission to publish it? and yes, thank you for your testimonial on my book.
great blog…
It seems that the new authority has been recognised by the old bureaucracies, especially in regard to the keyword “firm”.
For example, there are a few development projects (Keb.Lama underpass sprung to mind) which got halted because everyone is too scared. They’re too used to taking a slice from all projects, but they can no longer do so freely now.
So they’re scared that if they do the project, then took a slice again (probably out of reflex) – then they’ll got busted for good.
This kind of news is just won’t happen on Orde Baru’s time, but it’s happening now.
This remind me of an event which occured to me yesterday.
A man broke into our house, but stopped at the veranda. We were surprised and my family was scared because of it, but he said that he’s just hungry and asked in a low voice, if we could give him something to eat.
He’s a travelling sandal seller, but he doesn’t seem to be making a fortune.
I could get the security to throw him out, but I got curious to see if he’s genuine or not.
So I calmly told him that I will give him food and drink, but you’re trespassing, so do please wait outside.
Surprisingly, he said ok, and asked for my apologies before he exit from the gate.
Needless to say, we fulfilled our promise to him.
I think we cansafely bet that there are lots more, and even worse, stories like this all over Indonesia.
We, the people, can only do so much. The government, on the other hand, possesses much more power. And for our own sake, I pray that you will wield that power wisely, to the benefit of your people.
Thanks.
I think SBY is doing a good job. There are instances when I scratch my head in wonderment, but the overall direction Indonesia is taking under SBY is certainly the right one. As long as the NGOs, the media and the public keep the government on its toes, Indonesia will achieve a lot.
What might be one of the most pressing short term issue is, to make the people of Indonesia understand that they cannot expect much more significant short term changes than they see now.
Pak Juwono,
You are partially correct to suggest that Governance and Delivery should be the key issues.
But, how about Law Enforcement issue? I was wondering why such a critical aspect of administering a nation was never mentioned in your writing above.
By order of priority, don’t you think that Law Enforcement shall be first on the list?
PS: My analogy, imagine having a soccer tournament without a referee. Similarly, Governance and Delivery will never get anywhere without Law Enforcement being reformed beforehand.
Pak. Juwono,
Perhaps my penny may chip in. Not being overly ambitious, our reserves of $43 billion is a truly pretty number and fortune for us but they are not our full potential yet. And even $100 billion reserve will not do justice if we do not play the game right.
Rather than worrying about outstanding debt, why if we try to re-invest in what I call ‘small wheel’. In my theory (of course everyone can make much better theory), there are two wheels: The big one and the small one. The big one will move the wheel of economy to grow steadily. The smaller is the one that will make the big one run even faster to grow exponentially. But they all have to be balanced in the super duper extra careful calculation (not over-heating or wrong direction).
My guess Pak Boediono and Pak Kwik calculation (regarding the debt payment) can be compared to each other ( Just examples of being a little conservative on one side though). But we really need to do a bit experiment to do forward leap successfully. Transportation (like subway), electricity, e-commerce (as an industry), bio-diesel projects are the type of ‘small wheel’ I was talking about.
For sure, I believe we are racing against time especially after the world’s inflation and the rising price of gasoline around the world. Poverty and unemployment are just like real time-bomb for us all. The poor will get influenced easily and do bad things as long as they can survive. Lacking of information (slow internet spreadout) is also a disadvantage as people do not get the right information over a situation. TV programmes are just as poor and not educating. Traffic jams reduce inefficiencies in transportation and supply-chain, which later will increase price of foods or raw materials for factories (also combined with pungli and uncertainties in business).
But those things can still be turned around into good things. On the bright side, we are rich of natural resources. Our human resources are not that bad at all either. Our former president, Pak Harto, had previously discovered good fundamental concepts in KUD, KB, ABRI masuk desa, etc. in what used to be called (menggerakan ekonomi rakyat kecil if I’m not mistaken?).
It’s the new era’s duty to find an even better concept/formula. After all, I think 220 million + people in our country is a great asset, especially they are all unarguably great great great shoppers (no class or course needed) no matter how much income they earn. Yummy for all investors overseas. No need to work hard to find investors, they’ll come in rush even though they need to risk many things. If done right, we may be able to catch up with the 10 years we have been lagging.
Indonesia’s defense minister is blogging
I was shocked to find out through Shel Israel that Indonesia’s Minister of Defense, Juwono Sudarsono, is blogging*. His latest post discusses the challenge of governance:For the past eighteen months, the most talked about issue in Indonesian policy c…
Indonesia has come a long way
Pablo links to a blog of Indonesia’s defense minister (which cannot be independently verified). Even if this is a hoax, I think everyone would agree that Indonesia has come a long way since time of Suharto. Earlier posts which talked about corruption…
Jowono’s Defense Blog attracting interest
It seems that Jowono’s defense blog that I wrote about in an earlier posting and later carried as an article in The Jakarta Post, is attracting some interest, among them Naked Conversations‘ co-author Shel Israel, The Private Sector Develop…
Mr. Sudarsono, take a look at
Global Guerrillas!
“Networked tribes, infrastructure disruption, and the emerging bazaar of violence. An open notebook on the first epochal war of the 21st Century. By John Robb.”
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/
May I suggest another interesting blog on national security issues?
Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog
http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/
Mr. Sudarsono, what do you think of this speech by Anwar Ibrahim recently at World Bank;
Development as Accountability
http://truckandbarter.com/mt/archives/2006/06/development_as.html
I agree with your opinion that governance all depended on decisiveness and drive on the part of all government officials, from the top down to the lowest local unit. In my opinion, however, it will automatically depend on our culture, Indonesian culture.
How is our culture? The learning proccess of democracy in our country is not the same of democracy in other countries. And how is capitalism in Indonesia? Our debt scheme leads us to capitalism, but our (i.e. Indonesian people) culture is not capitalism yet. What can we do? This is our challenge.
Dear Mr. Minister,
I used to think that : in “New Order” era, Soeharto has created a kind of “black box” system in which there are some mysterious processes inside, so that, whatever the input entering the system the output will always be the same, (that is “Corrupt”), as a result of absolute power given to the input / (input = anybody who entering the system).
The downfall of Soeharto Era has given us a chance to change the Soeharto’s “Black Box”/centralised/undemocratic/untransparent system with a democratic, decentralized, transparent , and accountable new system.
This changes has given us so much hope, that is : a reformed system will soon accelerate Indonesia recovery and bring prosperity to the people.
But this is not the case. Eight years after the reformation era proclaimed, Indonesian recovery is still long way to go. And even worse, the outcome of this new system is (more less) remain the same with the old “New Order’s system, that is : multidimensional corrupt system.
Indeed, in term of corruption, we have to admit I that there are some “improvement” already in place. Improvement in the effort to eradicate it and also (sadly to say) the number of the corruption cases itself.
This circumstances makes a word like “Good governance” is a word that we could never find it in our dictionary.
So, What’s wrong with this? Is there anything wrong with the new democratic, decentralized, transparent , and accountable system?
Or… I hate (and forgive me) to say this, the problem is not lies in the system itself , but the problem is lies in the quality of the ‘input’ to the system.
Yes, input here means us: Indonesian people.
Whoever sitting there in parliament house or official position: is the best selected people among us who had been chosen through democratic process by us. Their conduct represent ours. If our representative in parliament unethically demanding significant salary increase despite of high inflation and bad economy situation– its actually (hopefully not) reflecting how “unethical” our society is.
(I have written some crabs about this – if you are interested- in my blog as follow: http://mahendrahariyanto.blogspot.com/2005/09/korupsi-oh-korupsi.html)
Perhaps I’m too scheptical about this (the possibility to achieve goord gorvenance culture shortly).
But, I’m optimistic, we can change it gradually by providing good eduction system for the next generation. Education which is not only give them technical skill and knowledge, but more than it shoud develop their integrity as Indonesia’s future generation.
Looking forward to an interactive discussion on such issues Pak! Sering ketemu di istana, tapi wawancara terus, hehehe… Governance and Democracy are indeed the backbones, but so far we’re patching and patching without knowing if things will ever collectively work out 🙁
congratulation sir.
your blog is a breakthrough for the complexity of indonesia governance problem.
this kind of public relation of one of important figure of current government institution like ministry of defence serves as a pipe of briliant but unheard voice of prominent policy maker.
indonesia is a multi ethnic and multi religion country. indonesia as a unity country will survive as long as its civilian leader has great vision like prof. sudarsono.
merdeka!
Pak Yuwono:
Very useful insight. Our major problem, however, has always been how to turn words into effective and doable action.
If you have more detailed and feasible action plan, I am all ears.
Let’s work together to improve our country.
“Semua kekuatan unsur kenegaraan ini memerlukan koordinasi bersama sehingga aparat negara baik sipil maupun militer bisa mengamankan lalu lintas niaga maupun lalu lintas kapal perang”, ungkap Menhan kepada wartawan usai menjadi Keynote Speaker pada acara Focused Group Discussion dengan tema “Maritime Government”, Rabu (18/6) di Auditorium Istana Wakil Presiden, Jakarta.
That is a flat opinion. I have never heard your maritime defence policy, real maritime defence policy not opinion. You had better explain your policy and its implement. Chalange your staff to makes and to implements maritime defence policy, break the wall of land defence policy. Dig the archipelagic state to explore it, refer to Article 3 Defence Law.