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Jakarta Post

Obama urges India to lead, applauds RI

What a big contrast of capabilities within the two countries which share similar historic roots: India and Indonesia

Shanti Shamdasani (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Tue, November 16, 2010

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Obama urges India to lead, applauds RI

W

hat a big contrast of capabilities within the two countries which share similar historic roots: India and Indonesia. The is made clear and seconded by US President Barack Obama’s statement, India has the capacity to lead and Indonesia to remain tolerant.

The question is: Can Indonesia too become a leader and remain tolerant? Or are we a tolerant follower of global demands and regional agenda? The world economy continues to recover faster than anticipated, thanks to Asia; however, challenges still loom like a hungry wolf in the forest.

The recovery is fragile and often cosmetics, what is non-negotiable here, is the importance of sustainable access to public finances.

While Obama takes his trip to India and Indonesia, the G20 commences in Seoul; bringing us back to the agenda agreed upon at the Toronto Summit of strengthening foundations for strong, sustainable and balanced growth and our financial systems are aiming for international cooperation and supported by the IMF.

On the flip side, on restoring financial integrity, transparency has proven to fail with the numbers of unresolved corruption cases by big names, and the government remains tolerant of those big names while keeping aside the G20 commitment.

The G20 Seoul Summit is a call for the governance reforms to witness actual manifestations of the agenda. The reforms entail a shift in quota share to emerging market and developing countries of at least 5 percent from over represented to underrepresented countries; to which leaders have committed on the size of the quotas.

On the other side, the World Bank has agreed to shift 3.13 percent of voting power to developing countries and has on several occasions hinted at Indonesia as the new emerging market.

Indonesia’s participation at the G20 was considered a big win but along with that came the demands of leadership commitment as Indonesia takes its journey toward becoming a global player and experiences a changing environment as well as mounting challenges.

One thing clearly stands out that both leaders of the countries — the US and Indonesia — have made various attempts of par excellence leadership on several fronts to address nations and G20 agendas.
Both, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Obama have earned the respect of the world as thriving leaders in the most challenging time.

Yet, results are minimal if compared to the efforts; and here is where a detailed analysis of strategies versus situations is called for.

What went wrong? The causes are several: The emerging of India and China; the changing pattern of economic strengths and distribution, the power shifts and the resilience of many countries to thrive in economic and natural calamity challenges.

Economic poaching is what our leaders witnessed today; and the solution is clear and simple, that is reduce complexities, bureaucracy, population, fat profit making companies and consumerism.

This will calm the imbalance created by overgrowth that came too fast too soon in all spheres, which includes growth in population, growth in consumerism and growth in economic engineering.

All these resulted in over competitiveness and the creativity that resulted in a nation’s downfall,  such as the out-of-the-box thinking policies by US financial sectors that actually resulted in self generated downfall.

What we are currently doing is allowing ourselves to be fooled by India’s and China’s consumerism marathon to capture the market; and we ran along with it to capture whatever economic benefits we could either via ASEAN FTAs or bilateral FTAs or other means.

What we are forgetting is that consumerism only fuels one small aspect of our economic engine, for sustainability, we need to apply measures internally to ensure that such an economic ambition does
not lead us in the direction of further downfall.

We must not be tolerant to the idea that we are used by various parties to become a country of buyers and not sellers; a country that can be exploited down to its last drop of sand, a country so tolerant that we will oversee the abuse and misuse of our people and resources.

Leaders must remind their people of the future economic disaster; and yes, Indonesia too can lead
its people with patience and tolerance; while being mindful not to get carried away by India and China’s appetite for growth of its own nations.

It is perhaps high time for Indonesia to apply the economics of “Bhagavad Gita”; that is (a) minimize greed, (b) put a policy in place on corporate profit fixing, (c) do not create jobs, create entrepreneurs especially in the farming sectors (more than 50 percent of Indonesians are farmers), (d) do not pump in more money in to the economy, it will just make the rich richer and the poor poorer; but pump in resources and access to bureaucracy that will make things easier and faster, (e) favor the poor and newly started entrepreneurs by providing policies that protect them from the monopoly of the giants.

These are not socialist measures, but a more balanced and realistic view of what the economy in Indonesia needs and how our tolerant country can step up to display state-of-the-art leadership without getting too carried away by two competing giants or handsome foreign suitors who came to take us out for a date.

Remain focused, agile, lead with realistic measures and yes, remain tolerant to an agreeable degree.


The writer is senior regional adviser and president director at ASEAN OUTREACH Consulting.

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