[pdiperjuangan] Fw: [Nasional] Indonesia is faring better than it sounds

Sun Aug 11 12:48:01 2002

----- Original Message -----
From: "Holy Uncle" <holyuncle@hotmail.com>
To: <national@mail2.factsoft.de>
Sent: Saturday, August 10, 2002 1:58 PM
Subject: [Nasional] Indonesia is faring better than it sounds


> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Hampir semua masukan menggambarkan gambar negatif dan pesimistik, malahan
> pengamat asing melihat sinar harapan. Dimana kesalahan bangsa kita ini ?
>
>
>
http://www.straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/analysis/story/0,1870,136515-1028930340
,00.html?
>
> Indonesia is faring better than it sounds
> By STANLEY A. WEISS
>
>
> JAKARTA - Headlines say 'Investors flee lawless Indonesia', 'Corruption
> riddles Indonesia courts' and 'Christians massacred'. But, as the saying
> goes, anyone who claims to understand what is going on in Indonesia is not
> fully informed.
>
> Indonesia has yet to recover fully from the 1997-1998 economic crisis.
> Exports are down. Investment is lagging. Few state-owned businesses have
> been privatised. Foreign and domestic debt are sky-high. More than half
the
> population lives on less than US$2 (S$3.45) a day.
>
> Familiar faces of former president Suharto's New Order regime remain, as
> does public anger with KKN - corruption, collusion and nepotism. The
recent
> murder trial and conviction of Mr Suharto's son Tommy is still the
exception
> in a culture of virtual impunity for those who can afford to buy their
> freedom from crooked judges.
>
> Yet, as United States Ambassador Ralph Boyce quips, 'Indonesia is better
> than it sounds'. Subsidies on fuel and electricity are being phased out.
> Inflation and interest rates are down. The rupiah is up. Relations with
the
> International Monetary Fund are better. Economic growth might reach 5 per
> cent next year.
>
> Since regional autonomy was implemented last year, the economy is even
> booming in a few provinces. Whereas Jakarta once received all the tax
> revenues from Riau, for example, local authorities now receive 15 per cent
> of oil, 30 per cent of gas and 80 per cent of timber revenues.
>
> POSITIVE SIGNS PRESENT
>
>
> THE West need not fear that the world's most populous Muslim nation will
> trade its tradition of religious tolerance for an Islamic theocracy. There
> is virtually no chance that Parliament will support the imposition of
> Islamic law.
>
> Any day now, Parliament is expected to amend the Constitution to allow for
> Indonesia's first direct presidential vote in 2004. The secular
nationalist
> President, Ms Megawati Sukarnoputri, is favoured to win re-election.
>
> The military and the police are now expected to relinquish their coveted
> Parliament seats in 2004, five years earlier than planned. Coordinating
> Minister for People's Welfare Jusuf Kalla says 'political and social
> stability has been restored'.
>
> Nor should the world worry about a balkanised Indonesia. Separatist
revolts
> in Aceh (population: four million) and Papua (two million), and religious
> violence in the Moluccas (two million) do not define this nation of 228
> million.
>
> These conflicts may be rooted in politics and religion but, to understand
> why they persist, one must follow the money. In Aceh and Papua, today's
> fighting is less about independence than about who pockets oil, gas and
> timber revenues. Laskar Jihad, which wages jihad against Christians in the
> Malukus, is a Frankenstein monster born of the police's use of local thugs
> in Java to extort shopkeepers.
>
> Indonesia is not unlike other places that have made the slow and painful
> transition from dictatorship to democracy. Four years and one failed coup
> after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian voters hungry for
> law and order handed the Parliament back to the Communist Party.
>
> Four years after South Koreans ousted their military dictatorship in 1987,
> public outrage over inflation, crime and political scandals sparked big
> anti-government protests and a violent police crackdown.
>
> If the world wants to help this diverse, vibrant nation realise its
> potential, it should understand not what the West would have it become
> overnight, but what it is today - a country reborn after decades of
> dictatorship and struggling to live up to the one headline that matters:
> 'World's third-largest democracy'.
>
>
> The writer is founder and chairman of Business Executives for National
> Security, and former chairman of American Premier, a mining and chemicals
> company. He contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.
>
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