Mental Revolution : New ministers in the same old limos

Mental Revolution : New ministers in the same old limos Endy M Bayuni  ;   A senior editor of The Jakarta Post

JAKARTA POST, 14 September 2014

                                                                                                                       

                                                      

When the new ministers under president-elect Joko “Jokowi” Widodo leave shortly after their installment in October, they will be driven in the same old limousines that their predecessors used. One can assume that Jokowi and vice president-elect Jusuf Kalla too would be chauffeur-driven in old cars after their inauguration on Oct. 20. You are not what you drive, or what you’re driven in. Never mind what cars they use, Jokowi and his team will bring a new mindset into an administration that is clearly stuck in old conventional ways. Jokowi’s famous “Mental Revolution” will likely begin with his own inner circle, including his ministers and most of all with the bureaucracy. And so it must be. The peaceful revolution had started with the incoming president prevailing in his first fight with the State Secretariat, the government office that looks after presidential affairs, over the plan to replace all the limos for the new incoming ministers. Although he is not yet president, Jokowi has openly said that his ministers would not need the new cars and that they would make do with the existing limos, bought five years ago. The money, he added, would be best spent on his priority social programs. Sudi Silalahi, the current minister who heads the State Secretariat, had rejected the unwanted intrusion, declaring that the money had already been earmarked in the 2014 budget and that the procurement contract had been tendered and the winner picked. In short, he was telling Jokowi: That’s the way we do things. Put up and shut up. On Thursday, Sudi relented. The procurement contract, worth Rp 94 billion (US$8.5 million), was cancelled. Too bad for Mercedes Benz and tough luck for those vying for Cabinet posts for the perks more than for the dedication for the work that comes with the job. Here is another reason for them to not join Jokowi’s Cabinet: His meetings will likely be dry, without lavish lunches or dinners. As incoming president, Jokowi had been privy to the details of the 2015 budget prepared by the outgoing administration and was aghast at finding a Rp 18 trillion item for “meetings of ministries”. “We can meet without food and drink,” Jokowi remarked, adding that he would reallocate this money for higher priority social programs. The battle with the bureaucracy marks the first of many that Jokowi will likely face once he moves into the Presidential Palace. Not everyone is on board with his idea of revolutionizing their way of thinking and doing, least of all the bureaucracy. The money saved from the new limo procurement may seem insignificant and one could even argue that the ministers, as well as the president and his deputy, deserve to be driven in new limos. It is a small cost to pay for the prestige of the office — so the argument goes. But that is precisely where they are wrong. They fail to understand the concept of Mental Revolution: that it should begin with reforming your mindset. The bureaucracy, famous for sticking to set procedures and ways of thinking and doing things, is the prime target of the revolution. Most other government institutions have already gone through massive reforms since the end of Soeharto’s dictatorship in 1998. The military and the police have gone the farthest, followed by political institutions like political parties and the House of Representatives. The judiciary, independent of the executive branch, has also gone some way. The bureaucracy, in contrast, has been virtually left untouched. Anyone wondering why the pace of reforms has slowed, stalled or is even backtracking should check out the role played by the bureaucracy. Re-reading Jokowi’s article in Kompas in May elaborating on his “Mental Revolution”, one can sense that the new president intends to fight the mentality that prevails in the country, particularly among those responsible for the running of the government. Fortunately, the incoming president knows how to fight his battles with the bureaucracy from his experience as governor of Jakarta since October 2012 and as mayor of Surakarta in Central Java for the seven previous years. In Jakarta, he introduced meritocracy into the administration, auctioned the positions of chiefs of districts to the best candidates and replaced many of the top echelon officials for failing to keep up with him or to come on board his quiet revolution. He was able to save money by slashing many unnecessary spending items here and there, including the frequent replacements of printer and photocopy machines. His budget efficiencies allowed him to come up with the money needed to launch the Jakarta Health Card system offering universal health care, two months after his inauguration. In contrast, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono took years before launching the National Health Care System in January 2014 and even then the government needed five years before the system would become fully operational and truly universal. With Jokowi soon taking charge, we could just see him moving the 2019 deadline forward. All it takes is a change in mindset and some creative ways of managing budgets. But how do you fight the powerful bureaucracy that is bound to put up resistance? That is when Jokowi will turn to public opinion. As he argued in his Kompas article, the Mental Revolution can only take place if everyone is on board. ●

Revisiting Indo-Oz defence treaty sans mutual trust   Sabam Siagian and Endy M Bayuni  ;   Senior editors at The Jakarta Pos;  Siagian served as Indonesia’s ambassador to Australia in 1991-1994

JAKARTA POST, 09 September 2014

                                                                                                                       

                                                      

The agreement on the code of conduct on surveillance signed by Indonesia and Australia marks the resumption of full normal ties between the two countries that drifted apart after revelations in November that Canberra had been tapping the phone of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, his wife and a number of top Cabinet ministers. The agreement, signed by the countries’ respective foreign ministers Marty Natalegawa and Julie Bishop in Bali on Aug. 28, should lead to the restoration of all security and defense cooperation programs that Yudhoyono revoked when he downgraded bilateral ties. But nice diplomatic parlance aside, there is one thing that neither side can restore immediately, if ever: mutual trust. An essential ingredient in any relationship, Australia’s belligerent attitude in the wake of the espionage scandal made sure that whatever trust the two governments had painfully built over the years went out of the window. The agreement was hastily pushed by both sides, without looking deeper into the implications the spy revelation had on bilateral ties, presumably to provide Yudhoyono with a respectable exit as he leaves office in October. After all, he had invested his personal reputation in strengthening bilateral relations more than any Indonesian president had ever done. If he felt deeply betrayed by his Australian friends, this agreement probably soothed his feelings a little. But the message from Canberra is loud and clear: Australia has no intention of stopping the espionage activities on Indonesia. It never has, even from the beginning when the espionage activities were first disclosed by the Snowden files. The code of conduct signed in Bali flies in the face of Indonesia’s good neighbor foreign policy. It took Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott all this time to agree to sign this agreement and, even then, Canberra insisted on calling it a “joint understanding” ; hence the wordy official title: The Joint Understanding on a Code of Conduct between the Republic of Indonesia and Australia in implementation of the agreement between the Republic of Indonesia and Australia on the Framework for Security Cooperation. The code of conduct, or joint understanding, is supplementary to the existing umbrella defense and security cooperation agreement the two governments signed in 2006, known as the Lombok Treaty — so named after the Indonesian island where it was signed. Can the Lombok Treaty seriously be retained given the loss of mutual trust that had pinned their relationship on defense and security cooperation? With the Yudhoyono factor out of the picture, incoming Indonesian president Joko “Jokowi” Widodo would do well to review this aspect of the relationship with Australia. A recent Reuters item from Sydney reported that Abbott is pursuing “a muscular foreign policy that has moved him closer to the United States on crises like Iraq and Ukraine, but has some worried over the risk of alienating China.” In pursuing relations with its southern neighbor, Indonesia should not allow itself to be dragged into a position that contradicts its active and independent foreign policy, which historically has been its principled position. Now Indonesia knows better that Australian intelligence operates independently from the administration’s declared foreign policy. Next time an Australian prime minister states that “no country is more important to Australia than Indonesia”, echoed first by Paul Keating in 1994 and repeated by all his successors since, including Abbott, we should take it with a grain of salt. As far as their intelligence operation is concerned, Indonesia is still treated as a potential enemy and a threat to Australia’s security. The fact of the matter is that when it comes to intelligence operations, Australia is beholden to the masters in Washington through a complex web of alliance treaties dating back to the Cold War era. Then prime minister John Howard was revealing Canberra’s true identity when he described Australia as “America’s deputy sheriff” in 2004. The Lombok Treaty may not have to be abrogated, but we need to send it back to the drawing board to allow Indonesia’s foreign and defense officials to review and adjust to the real Australia we have come to know now. With little or no mutual trust, relations in defense and security should be pragmatic at best, if not strictly businesslike: We should ask what Indonesia can get out of it, in the same way that Australia will be asking what it can get out of Indonesia. Indonesia and Australia should continue to forge all other aspects of their relationship, from trade and investment, education and cultural exchanges, scientific research, to tourism, civil aviation, meteorology and others not related to security and defense. Some security cooperation such as fighting the drug trade and counter-terrorism can continue, but all others will have to be frozen, terminated or scaled down. We should be cautious about any suggestion to elevate relations up a notch to a “comprehensive partnership”. Comprehensive partners do not spy on each other. Given the close linkages between Australia and US intelligence agencies, clearly Indonesia and Australia have different strategic outlooks. More specifically, we recommend that the periodic meeting between the heads of government be scrapped, as they can always meet on the sidelines of international summits like APEC, G-20 and the East Asia Summit. The joint meetings of foreign and defense ministers should also be postponed. They can meet when the need calls. Indonesia should review the many joint strategic cooperation programs since the countries do not necessarily share the same interests. On the perceptions of the China threat, the people-smuggling problem and the spread of radical Islamic ideology, the overlapping areas of common interests are not as large as many assume. Cooperation in these areas should be limited to where Indonesia really benefits from it. Australia is coming up with a new 2015 defense white paper, while Indonesia has long passed the 2013 deadline to publish its own defense white paper. These documents will outline their respective threat perceptions. In addition, Jokowi will likely want to implement his foreign policy vision of Indonesia as an “Indo-Pacific” axis of power, and a maritime power, which is a major departure from current policy. Indonesia, with a long coastline facing the Indian Ocean, will cooperate with Australia and other littoral states within the framework of the Indian Ocean Rim Countries Organization to establish a cooperative regime. All these developments as well as the changing nature of the relationship should be taken into account as Indonesia reviews its defense and security ties with Australia. Australia will continue to be an important neighbor for Indonesia by geographical definition, although now less so in terms of shared geopolitical interests. If Australia regards Indonesia as a potential enemy, Indonesia too should consider Australia as a potentially hostile neighbor. As far as defense and security cooperation, relations beyond this point and for the foreseeable future should be kept cordial in the absence of mutual trust. That probably works in the best interests of the two nations as long as Australia is not quite ready to conduct an independent and active foreign policy befitting a sovereign nation. ●