US President George W Bush has come and gone for his quickie summit with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, leaving his hosts to pick up the bill and the pieces. Local authorities released an estimate of Rp6 billion (US$660,000) for security costs of the visit, which included a 2-kilometer security cordon around Bogor's Presidential Palace, 8,000 police officers, school and business closures, and the shutdown of mobile-phone networks. That figure doesn't nearly capture the visit's true costs, however.
At the famed Bogor Botanical Gardens, world leaders from Belgium's King Leopold to North Korea's Great Leader Kim Il-sung to Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen have enjoyed the flora and planted trees to leave behind something of value from their stay. Bush, on the other hand, leaves behind a pair of helipads that required the relocation of a rare lotus from its pond. Nothing during the two leaders' chat of less than an hour and the news conference that followed contradicted the impression that President Yudhoyono had gone too far in welcoming the leader of the unpopular, if not illegal, invasion of Iraq to the world's largest Muslim-majority nation. On a question about Iraq, remove Yudhoyono's mention of a withdrawal timetable, and his response citing the need for progress along three tracks would have done former US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld proud. Globally televised impressions to the contrary, Indonesian protests during the past week were mainly orderly and small. Sunday, a day ahead of Bush's visit, saw the largest number of protests, and the count of demonstrators nationwide was 20,000 in a nation of 220 million. About 10,000 people braved the rain in Bogor - a suburb of sprawling Jakarta - to denounce the visit. But tens of millions of Indonesians - the country's moderate, tolerant backbone still hard pressed to overcome the Asian economic shock of 1997 and its aftermath - questioned why the visit took place at all.
Both presidents were in attendance at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Hanoi the day before. Many viewed Bush's visit as a waste of time and money with little positive upshot for Indonesia. The opposition Islamic Prosperous Justice Party seized on these perceptions in a bid to regain its populist appeal. Smothering embraceThe Indonesian public is understandably wary after US support propped up former president Suharto's authoritarian military regime for three decades. Yudhoyono suffers politically in Bush's smothering embrace as the United States' best friend in the Muslim world. In response to that popular distrust, Indonesia announced in advance that the presidents' agenda would be restricted to bland issues such as education, health - Indonesia has the world's largest number of reported bird-flu deaths - and technology. Pity the poor reporter from the Indonesian government broadcasting company who read Bush a lengthy question on biofuel development, which elicited a well-rehearsed reply from Bush. Small increments in aid for education and health, which could have been announced in Hanoi or by routine news release, are dwarfed by the growing budget for military and counter-terrorism cooperation that was out of bounds for discussion. A popular view here is that the US forced Bush's visit on Indonesia out of arrogance.
Indonesia was reluctant to sign on to the United States' "global war on terror" campaign in the direct aftermath of the September 11, 2001, but former army general Yudhoyono has been a more willing conscript. Hundreds of suspected Muslim militants have been detained without charge during Yudhoyono's tenure, a U-turn policy that no doubt has gone down well in terror-obsessed Washington. The impunity with which the US has pursued its global counter-terrorism campaign jibes well with the superiority- flaunting behavior of Indonesia's elite. Writ small, it's about cutting in line at the bank or store. Writ large, it's about low-ranking military personnel assassinating non-violent Papuan independence leader Theys Eluay or clear military-intelligen ce links to the in-flight poisoning of human-rights activist Munir Said Thalib. King TommyHuotomo Mandala Putra, better known as Tommy Suharto, is widely viewed as Indonesia's unofficial king of impunity. Arguably, the son of the former president the US backed with aid and arms - the ill-gotten family fortune is estimated in some monitoring quarters at more than US$10 billion - singularly advanced the art. Tommy got his start cashing in on Indonesians' love affair with clove cigarettes. With help from his family, Tommy created his own monopoly over the aromatic bud, requiring farmers to sell him their cloves and cigarette makers to buy only from him.
In each case, he set prices that were fair - for Tommy Suharto. After his father unceremoniously left office in 1998, Tommy found the business climate more challenging. Transfer of government land for a private development wound up getting Tommy convicted for a penny-ante offense by family standards. Usually judges can be persuaded to overlook such indiscretions, but in the reform spirit, Supreme Court justice Muhammad Syafiuddin Kartasasmita sentenced Tommy to jail time. Judge Syafiuddin was later gunned down in Jakarta's morning rush-hour traffic and, according to a court verdict handed down in 2002, Tommy had ordered the judge's assassination. He was sentenced to 15 years in jail and sent to Java's Nusa Kambangan, a remote island prison also home to Bob Hasan, the highest-ranking Suharto crony to be jailed on corruption charges. Because the jail is hidden from prying eyes, with police tightly controlling access, there were widespread rumors that Tommy actually spent little time there. On appeal, Tommy's sentence for ordering the judge's death was cut to 10 years, or half of what an Australian gets for carrying 4.3 kilograms of marijuana. With that reduction, plus remissions for good behavior, Tommy was released at the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in October, after serving less than five years. Future historians will find two things that stand out in the Tommy Suharto story. They'll be amazed that any court had the audacity to send the son of a former president to jail. They'll also be amazed that given his cozy arrangements at Nusa Kambangan, he and his pals bothered to win an official release. But that's the essence of impunity. It's not enough simply to get your way - you also have to make sure everyone knows it.
There's a special lesson in Tommy's story for democratically elected Yudhoyono as he embraces the US and Bush: impunity is an art, not a science. As Tommy's time in hiding and behind bars shows, even in Indonesia, no matter who you are, you can go too far and have to pay a price. But the pointless summit with the extraordinarily unpopular US leader may finally prove a Bush too far for Yudhoyono's strained relations with the Indonesian electorate. Gary LaMoshi has worked as a broadcast producer and print writer and editor in the US and Asia. Longtime editor of investor rights advocate eRaider.com, he's also a contributor to Slate and Salon.com, and a counselor for Writing Camp (www.writingcamp. net).
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