ALI ALATAS: (JP/J. Adiguna)

I once asked a young diplomat what he thought of Pak Ali Alatas. He fell into an awed silence, then he said softly: “To me he is a god.”

It is not difficult to understand why many people are worshipful of the late Mr. Ali Alatas, foreign minister of Indonesia from 1988 to 1999. By reputation he was larger than life. His vision of Indonesia’s geopolitical role had grandeur in spite of an underpinning of realism.

He delivered his speeches, even the simplest of them, in majestic cadences. Often his instant remarks in an informal conversation were as flawless as if they were drafted and revised the night before, yet he spoke with ease and spontaneity. His presence was commanding. He could stop an argument by simply arriving on the scene.

But to regard him as godlike would be the wrong perspective. He was first and last a human being. A great one.

He had no illusions about himself but was conscious that he was playing a role on the international stage. And he played that role to the hilt. He acted out and articulated the magnificence of Indonesia’s aspirations in countless multilateral forums.

At the same time, he regarded himself as a worker for peace, which to him meant not only the absence of war but also the prevalence of goodwill, mutual understanding and mutual appreciation.

He meticulously prepared for every speech: weeks ahead of delivery he would discuss with me, as his speechwriter since 1992, the substance and the thematic line of the speech.

He encouraged me to contribute my own thoughts. And when I had produced a draft, he would challenge every paragraph, sometimes line by line. I became his audience of one when he rehearsed delivering key paragraphs, an activity that we both enjoyed. With a 10th edition of Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, he made sure he correctly pronounced every unfamiliar word.

The lawyer in him loved the Latin part of the English language. He once stubbornly resisted my suggestion that the monosyllabic “is” be used in place of the legalistic “constitute”. As in “this is a travesty”, instead of “this constitutes a travesty”. But he relented that time. It took me years before I could persuade him to banish forever the term “inter alia” from all his statements. And even then I did not totally succeed.

After working with him in this way for years, I could joke that we were the poor man’s version of the John F. Kennedy-Theodore Sorensen speechwriting team. He never hid the fact that he was working with a speech writer and editor. Confident in his own skills, he proudly announced to colleagues and visitors my presence and my role in his office. It was he who coined the term “dijamilkan”, after my first name, and meaning “to thoroughly edit”. If the word finds a permanent place in the Indonesian language, I will not exchange that honor for the Nobel Prize.

On the whole he gave me more credit than I deserved. I know that.

He deemed writing and delivering speeches serious and useful business. Words, he thought, could help change reality if they had the right impact on the right audience. And he was always trying to create that impact for his country.

But now and then he dropped the mask of diplomacy and those around him saw him smile at the comedy of human affairs. He had a great sense of humor. In an ASEAN ministerial meeting, he once disarmed objectors to the Indonesian position by threatening to give a four-hour lecture on Pancasila.

Pak Alatas had a heart attack in 1994, after playing 18 holes of golf. The then Philippine Foreign Minister, Roberto Romulo, sent him a handwritten get-well note saying, “I hear your golf game was so bad that you put yourself in hospital as an excuse”.

While he was still in his hospital bed, we had fun composing a reply that in effect said, “No, but I know you are spreading the rumor that I went into hiding to secretly perfect my game, so you will have an excuse the next time you lose”.

Though publicly he was a passionate debater, personally he had great respect for all his diplomatic opponents. Many of them became close friends of his. Years ago, Timor-Leste President Jose Ramos-Horta, then a dissident in exile, was quoted as saying, “I like Ali Alatas but he does not like me”. He was mistaken. Ali Alatas liked him too, but at that time was not vocal about it, lest it be misunderstood.

The ferocity with which Ali Alatas defended Indonesia’s positions belied his gentleness.

Once I removed a reference to the NAM Center in Jakarta from a draft speech. The Center was the pet project of another veteran diplomat, Ambassador Nana Sutresna.  It was his “baby”.

“Why did you throw away that paragraph?” Pak Alatas asked me.

“Because you said you wanted the speech shortened,” I said.

“No, you put it back,” he said. “Or Pak Nana will be mad at us.”

I am sure he was not afraid of Pak Nana’s ire. He just did not want to hurt a friend’s feelings.

When we were putting the finishing touches to his memoirs on the East Timor debacle, The Pebble in the Shoe, Pak Alatas agonized a long time on one detail: whether or not to include a photo of the letter of the then Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, to then President Habibie. On that letter President Habibie had written the fateful marginal notes that would eventually lead to Indonesia’s loss of East Timor. In the end he decided against it because, he said, reproducing that letter in the book was sure to hurt Habibie’s feelings.

He had a keen awareness of human pathos. He worried aloud about the troubled marriages of friends from way back. About the careers of their children. About the health of old comrades. I often imagine his shoulders wet from the tears of relatives, friends and strangers.

He marveled at people who struck him as humble when it was his own humility that was  amazing. He profusely thanked subordinates for small services they rendered him, as if these were monumental favors. “I am so grateful,” are words that often came out of his mouth.

At one time the myth grew around him that he could always solve any diplomatic problem. He had nothing to do with the myth nor did he fall for it.

On one occasion in 1997, he had been expecting a draft statement, an urgent and important one, on the issue of human rights from an Indonesian embassy in Europe. I was supposed to marry that draft with one prepared by a unit in the Department. The draft from Europe came late and so poor in substance that it was unusable.

Pak Alatas fumed for a while. Then he called the ambassador concerned on the phone and expressed his dismay. But instead of humiliating the ambassador, he made an impassioned appeal.  

“You’ve got to support me, dong,” he said. “I cannot do this alone.”

He had the courage to lay bare his humanity, his need for support, to one he could have simply berated and blamed. Some people say he had a temper. Maybe he did. He was a fighter, after all. But he was also a gentle soul, full of affection and kindness for fellow human beings, especially those who were in trouble.

In that combination of hard and soft lies his greatness.

The author was recruited by then Foreign Minister Ali Alatas as his speechwriter in January 1992. They then formed a writing partnership that lasted until the death of Mr. Alatas on Dec. 11, 2008.

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