Indonesian elections: stand & deliver

By Terry Lacey

(July 09, Jakarta, Sri Lanka Guardian) The eighteenth century British highwayman Dick Turpin would hold up the rich in their carriages at pistol-point, demanding money and jewels, by shouting “Stand and deliver.”

Now a generation of British politicians, Members of Parliament and banking chiefs who have robbed the people are being thrown out of their jobs on a wave of discontent at their salaries, bonuses and unjustifiable expenses, while people are losing jobs, salaries, pensions and houses.

Across the big ditch President Obama masterminds reform to the echoes of the old song of Pete Seeger that you can rob a man with a six-gun or with a fountain pen. The bankers and finance gurus who led Americans to disaster now face jail and ruin. Even their wives won´t back them any more.

Asia with its corruption and a largely discredited political class has to move smartly, so that the global political tsunami now sweeping the US and Europe, destabilizing parts of Africa and Latin America, will not rebound again across the Asian region.

Thailand, with 7.1 percent economic contraction faces political crisis and a separatist Southern Muslim rebellion. Malaysia faces 6.2 percent economic contraction in a period of political fragility and transition. Singapore faces recession and knows political change has to come.

China, despite signs of recovery, faces the loss of up to 20 million jobs from the downturn, fears what will happen to its huge reserves in US bonds and its over-dependence on a US dollar that could be hit by high inflation, while facing a wave of discontent from the Muslim Uighur minority in under-developed Xinjiang.

The economy and development are the key. The real enemies are the economic gap between haves and have-nots, the sensitivities of the coincidence of economic privileges with ethnic groupings, and a revolution in rising expectations hitting a hard wall of harsh realities. These are dangerous times.

In the past the Asian way of consensus, softly-softly and step-by-step could cope, but the new global conditions need a sharper response and firmer faster leadership.

The best internal defense is development that reaches the poor.

Public administration reform becomes even more necessary than anti-corruption drives and the latter must become part of the former.

Policies cannot work without implementation and Asia needs speed. Too little too late will be the political epitaph of the leaders that fail.

But now Indonesia has a good chance. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) has cruised to victory in the direct presidential elections on July 8th leading a coalition of his Democratic Party and Islamic allies, with 60 percent of the votes on a 72.5 percent turnout of 176.4 million voters.

This 2:1 victory potentially buys five years of stability and legitimacy.

SBY made a good start in his first term, with 4.4 percent growth this year, the highest consumer confidence in several years, the lowest inflation in nine years, a 25 percent drop in poverty in four years, a 40 percent stock market recovery in nine months, local conflicts under control and a start to public administration reform.

Now he is stronger, but the world is a harder place. The Indonesian ship of state must sail with a steady hand on the tiller through a stormy sea and emerge as part of the economic leadership of the world.

Without firm leadership from Indonesia, China and India the world recovery will be delayed and Asia will pay a higher price.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has taken his stand. Now he must deliver.

Terry Lacey is a development economist who writes from Jakarta on modernization in the Muslim world, investment and trade relations with the EU and Islamic banking.

-Sri Lanka Guardian