I

n May 2011, as Barack Obama and Michelle Obama sat down for Guinness at a village pub in Moneygall, Ireland, home of Obama’s maternal great-great-great grandfather, the people of the proud nation cheered.

The Irish community back home in the United States perked up, and so too did millions of immigrants in that country. Obama, apparently, had something in common with them. He too is a descendant of an immigrant.

The stop in Ireland was only the beginning of a successful European tour for the man who, back home, was busily preparing his reelection campaign. But as images of the smiling Obama were played on screens all over the world, welcomed almost like Europe’s hometown hero, not everyone was so impressed. Making use of social media, then GOP-presidential-hopeful and former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty tweeted, “Sorry to interrupt your European pub crawl, but what was your Medicare plan?”

“Domestic clutter,” that’s what I call it.

In Indonesia, it is no different. Despite successes abroad, here at home, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono also frequently faces such muddle.

Especially because this time around, the election hustle-and-bustle has come early, adding political weight to every attack directed at the President and his government.

Just the other week pundits went ballistic over the President’s use of the word “tidak waras” (insane) when addressing conspiracy theories surrounding his meeting with visiting World Bank managing director Sri Mulyani Indrawati and his attending the Golkar Party anniversary.

To those questioning, it’s benumbing to overlook the sensibility of such a high-profile agenda.

Indeed, the President was right, and has the full right, to address such attacks as insane.

In the context of political communication, the President’s message is loud and clear, and is by no means an “uncertainty” among strangers, as some have proposed through the application of Berger and Calabrese’s “Uncertainty Reduction Theory”. Simply put, the President and his constituents are no strangers. They elected him to office! Shy from any uncertainty, it suffices to say that what drives the interaction between the people and their leader is actually the desire for predicted outcome values, to borrow the term coined by communication studies professor Michael Sunnafrank.

President SBY’s government is the people’s government. So when the government speaks of its achievements, it is of and for the values of the 240 million people it serves. And despite accusations of the President’s deliberate image-building, his policies do not always come in glory.

In Honolulu last weekend, the President told the world of some of the painful efforts he had to take to rebalance the economy through fiscal consolidation as well as structural reforms and restructuring. Though never a popular move, oil subsidies were cut. But so far, “the result has been worth the effort,” the President told fellow APEC leaders. Indonesia’s economy today “has much better fundamentals, and is much more resilient in withstanding the impact of global financial crisis.”

In other words, positive outcome values.

Remember that time when the nation was united in pride to support our national soccer team? The good news is that we have a much better reason to be proud of ourselves. It’s high time for Indonesians to realize that as the strength of our country increases, so too does its global standing, and hence, the political prominence of its leader.

Our President today not only presides over his own countrymen. He also serves as the voice representing Southeast Asia in the major economies forum of G20, the current leader of the geopolitically strategic ASEAN, and an influential voice at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation.

Now, let such achievements be the driving force for us to go the extra mile. Reality shows there is still much to gain.

One example is our Human Development Index that, despite its progress in the last three decades, still lags behind in such aspects as life expectancy, literacy, education and standards of living. Never mind that more than half of the world’s population are listed with “medium human development”, Indonesia can and must fare better.

In targeting such problem areas, the government has devised strategies like the one launched this year, named the Master Plan for Acceleration and Expansion of Indonesian Economic Development (MP3EI).

As a master plan, the MP3EI aims to synchronize political and economic stability with development progress, registering problem areas such as the widening of social gaps and the inefficiency of government bureaucracy.

This time, as envisioned by the President, the government shall not walk alone. Central and provincial governments aside, state and private entities have enlisted, and so too academics. It’s a collaborative effort that takes a nation to succeed. When it does, the world will once again nod its head at us.

Insane dream? Definitely not.

The writer is an assistant to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s spokesman. The views expressed are her own.