T

he hands of Indonesia'€™s presidential candidates and their campaigners must be dog-tired. With millions of handshakes, they sealed their promises with the Indonesian public to win their hearts, minds and trust or, more bluntly put, their votes.

Now that election fever among the 185 million Indonesians who voted has ended, the time for handshakes may seem to be over, but it is not. In fact, it hasn'€™t even really begun until the election is over.

Meeting citizens on the street and informing them rather than governing from on high should become a habit of the newly elected president and his government. Presidents may be entrusted with the gift of speaking on behalf of the population, but there is no need for the latter to lose its voice in exchange.

Having a free hand should not be mistaken for gaining the upper hand. Continued dialogue with civil society is not merely an electoral promise, but a must for the new Indonesian government. With increasingly dynamic and plugged-in civil societies and global interconnectedness accelerating, governments risk their survival when they ignore their (inter)national publics. Involving civil society actors contributes to greater public support for, and understanding of policies and the (inter)national legitimacy and credibility of the government and country.

Leveraging civil society'€™s capacity and expertise into the policy network also enhances the government'€™s own performance. As a rising power in the region and on the world'€™s stage, Indonesia is no exception.

Reaching out to publics and engaging them must also not be limited to obvious areas where the presidential candidates promised change, such as poverty alleviation, reduced corruption and better law-enforcement. It is at least equally pertinent in areas that are generally '€” though mistakenly '€” not seen as bread and butter issues, such as international policy. Notwithstanding this common perception, international policy-making touches most policy domains, and has an outsize impact on Indonesians'€™ daily lives.

Indonesia'€™s foreign and domestic affairs are more symbiotically embraced today than ever before. Yet Indonesian '€œforeign affairs'€ appears to have become perceived as a domain of the elites which is disconnected from everyday Indonesians'€™ concerns and of little importance; not only in the public'€™s and media'€™s eyes but also with politicians scrambling for votes, as has been reflected during the presidential campaign. This is where denial hurts, especially in the long run.

International policy after all starts at home. Improving the people'€™s welfare through international policy can only be guaranteed by their engagement. There'€™s thus an urgent need for the new president, his foreign minister and the hopefully strong team and advisors that will surround them to clear the smog of '€œforeign affairs fatigue'€ from Jakarta.

The good news is that a fix is closer than it may appear, as they do not need to start from scratch. The practice of involving publics at home and abroad in international policy-making and conduct, also called public diplomacy, is not new to the Indonesian government and its Foreign Ministry.

The birth of Indonesian public diplomacy sprang from the international policy democratization of the 1998 reformasi period, wherein involving publics in international policy became a condition as well as an instrument for reaching and consolidating democracy in Indonesia. In the little more than a decade since the Foreign Ministry'€™s public diplomacy division came to be, Indonesia'€™s public diplomacy has progressed significantly.

While Indonesians may be their own biggest critics, Indonesia'€™s public diplomacy gained significant credit abroad for how it served the country'€™s strategic international policy objectives, democratic values, social cohesion and national unity and for how it contributed to improving Indonesia'€™s international image as a modern democratic society with the world'€™s largest Muslim population (e.g. interfaith dialogues).

But success often leads to stagnation. Nowadays, Indonesian public diplomacy risks becoming isolated as an add-on program bolted onto a dedicated Foreign Ministry division, lacking the financial and high-level support it once had and needs again if it is to reach those that matter most: the Indonesian public. Promoted as '€œintermestic'€ Indonesia'€™s public diplomacy has in some ways had more success abroad than at home, but it is the homefront that is most in need of attention.

So, rather than drawing public diplomacy further into bureaucratic isolation until it is lost in oblivion, the new president and his foreign minister need to get their hands dirty. They need to bring the domestic public back into the cycle of international policy making through the broader practice of public diplomacy, while lifting it to a higher level, which Indonesia'€™s rising (inter)national status requires.

To meet the demands of this rising status, drawing public diplomacy activity out of isolation in one dedicated Foreign Ministry division and into investments in the gradual implementation of a whole-of-government approach may prove a better fit.

After all, the practice of public diplomacy (from informing to engaging publics) has gradually grown more central to other Foreign Ministry divisions and to other national governmental departments.

There is, thus, a need to shape Indonesian public diplomacy '€” as a way of working within the government '€” beyond the Foreign Ministry. This type of '€œinternal capacity building'€ could be part of the current -yet implemented slowly internal bureaucratic reform.

Such an approach, however, implies that public diplomacy'€™s coordination and implementation will be handed up and down the decision-making chain. For priority matters it will move up to special interdepartmental task forces, while local governments'€™ role in, and cooperation with, the central government'€™s public diplomacy is a pertinent point of attention for Indonesia'€™s public diplomacy future as well. In this situation it will doubtlessly be a challenging exercise to ensure the left hand knows what the right hand is doing.

 Additionally, Indonesia'€™s position as a rising power is pressuring public diplomacy'€™s dominant narrative (its hallmark of interfaith dialogue) to expand and include other transversal themes that reflect the cross-sectoral, whole-of-government nature of its international affairs. So, drawing greater attention to the ramifications of domestic issues on international relations and the reverse remains the core endeavor for the entire government'€™s future public diplomacy.

Themes that are part of Indonesia'€™s changing regional and global position, such as environmental sustainability and the economy, are so tangible that they can easily turn from looking inward to looking outward, so as to look forward. These also have the potential to draw the broader public'€™s and the media'€™s attention and improve comprehension.

All of these efforts to engage the public after election time are of course thin gruel without backing from the highest level, that of the president. His support above all translates into encouraging an overall culture of public outreach, including in international policy, that does not simply ignore the daily lives of Indonesians, regardless of elite views.

Without this, one must question what all the election time handshakes meant. Were they a symbol of bringing people together to achieve something greater than themselves or just more moves by power hungry politicians?