What is your number?: Lawmaker Tantowi Yahya of the Golkar Party (right) records the mobile phone number of Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa (left) before a hearing with the House of Representatives’ Commission I, on Wednesday, at the House building. JP/P.J. Leo
The new foreign minister laid out Wednesday his first 100-day program and foreign policy directions in a hearing with lawmakers that touched on a range of issues from migrant workers to protection of sovereignty.
Answering questions from lawmakers of the House of Representatives’ Commission I, Marty Natalegawa said his first 100-day program included the repatriation of Indonesian illegal migrants from a number of Middle Eastern countries and also from Hong Kong, Singapore and Papua New Guinea.
“Repatriation of [illegal] migrants from the Middle East had amounted to 635 [cases] and from Papua New Guinea 311 since being launched in October,” he said in a hearing with Commission I overseeing defense, foreign and information affairs.
As a score of lawmakers questioned the new minister over his plans to improve working conditions of migrants, many of whom have been continuously underpaid and mistreated, Marty said these problems rested on weak coordination between institutions, leaving the foreign ministry at the end of the line to fight for them alone abroad.
He outlined the problems that lay ahead once some migrants had their documents fabricated by domestic institutions to make them eligible to go abroad but they instead ended up in human trafficking networks where his ministry was hard-pushed to trace their details back to the migrants’ hometown to settle the issues arising.
Marty also said the government has exercised total diplomacy in all directions including the ministry’s efforts at attracting more investment from the Middle East as well as tapping the huge potential job market out there for our huge work force.
Tantowi Yahya of Golkar Party said the government had emphasized too much diplomatic efforts to secure Indonesian interests in legal and security aspects and image-building at the expense of neglecting overseas economic potential that could benefit our migrant workers as well as investors.
“Bringing more welfare to people should become our new focus in a world that has seen many changes in global political constellations; [foreign policy should focus] not merely heavily on legal and security matters but also on weighty economic issues for the real benefit of common people,” he said.
Marty also said that the future of Indonesian foreign policy would remain in its “active and free” framework, which has been so since early independence but was now he said translated into the ability “to make independent decisions” after the end of the Cold War that pushed some actors into favoring certain decisions.
“The ‘free and active’ principle now is not that we do not tilt towards any [particular] contending powers as the world is not in a bipolar situation anymore... but maintain an independent decision-making approach that addresses our national interests. It depends on the situation,” he said.
Marty also mentioned Indonesia’s position on the US decision to send more troops to Afghanistan, saying it recognized the importance of this and that the decision: “would cater for the need of more resources for civilian efforts, and so for efforts on the political side because in the final analysis.... the solution to the situation on Afghanistan requires political settlement and the need to increase the capacity of Afghanistan itself.”
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