I

just read an article written by the former Malaysian information minister Zainuddin Maidin about the former Indonesian president BJ Habibie. Below is my opinion.

It seems that Zainuddin felt insecure about Anwar Ibrahim’s moves try to influence Malaysia with ideas of reformation. I don’t think we should take offense at what Zainuddin said in the article. It seems that he’s just trying to justify his attack on Anwar who invited Habibie.

I don’t detect any personal vendetta from him against Habibie. We shouldn’t get riled over things like this. His labeling of Habibie as a “dog of imperialism” clearly indicates his misunderstanding of the situation at the time.

We don’t consider Habibie a reformist (though he did a good job in laying out the foundations for us to recover from the crisis and our political problems).

The reformists at the time were Abdurrahman “Gus Dur” Wahid, Megawati Soekarnoputri and Amien Rais. Sometimes we include Yusril Ihza Mahendra too but it turned that out he became the first guy to take a bullet for Soeharto.

Habibie wrote a proposal to the UN to hold a referendum in Timor Leste, although partly caused by international pressure; there seemed a big chance that most Timorese would prefer integration.

He was wrong of course, but who wasn’t? Most of us were surprised too, this was mainly due to the lack of information available to evaluate the situation.

The Timor militia somewhat buoyed our confidence that the Timorese were still loyal. Even if the Timorese did choose to separate, we had nothing to lose. We were in the depth of a financial crisis; we couldn’t maintain the logistics and other costs to continue our presence in Timor Leste.

Not to mention that during the 24-year occupation, we got nothing from Timor Leste other than a bad international reputation and continuous war. Habibie’s decision to grant a referendum was actually the best decision for all.

Habibie is a very smart person. Almost every move he made came from a thorough analysis of what would benefit him personally and the country.

Just as an example, when he asked the poor to fast every other day during the crisis it was to imitate the South Koreans whom we admired at the time in their response to a crisis.

Actually, it’s also what Harry Truman asked of Americans in his food-conservation program in response to famine in Europe, and they recovered after the Marshall Plan. Many people muttered back grumpily at the time; “maybe you lead us, you fast first”.

Look what Habibie did: The rupiah went from Rp 15,000 (US$1.55) to Rp 7,000 to the US dollar something no subsequent president has been able to repeat. The liberation of political prisoners, the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), etc. and he did all that in his less-than-two-year term.

Kabayan
Jakarta