After a two-year hiatus of diplomatic visits to the region, the minister headed to Fiji and the Solomon Islands where she sought to forge closer ties with Pacific island nations ahead of a forum Jakarta is hosting later this year. Indonesia is expected to host the Indo-Pacific Forum for Development in Bali this December, after it hands over the presidency of the Group of 20 largest economies to India.

In a prerecorded statement circulated on Wednesday, Retno reported the highlights of her visit, which was “tremendously important and strategic” for advancing Indonesia’s “priority agenda” in the region.

At the State House in Fiji’s capital Suva on Tuesday, the minister met with President Ratu Wiliame Katonivere and Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama to pursue efforts to establish the Indonesia-Fiji Preferential Trade Agreement (IF-PTA) to maintain the upward trend in two-way trade.

The deal has been in the pipeline since at least 2019, and is hoped to serve as a guideline for expanding cooperation in trade and investment, infrastructure and connectivity.

“According to the latest data, bilateral trade from January through June of 2022 has increased by 44 percent compared with the previous year – valued at US$20.7 million,” the minister said.

Also in the pipeline was the creation of an agricultural training center in the Fijian district of Rakiraki, which she described as “Indonesia’s outreach hub for development cooperation”.

The partners will sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on tourist cooperation later this month in Bali, while a bilateral Defense Cooperation Agreement (DCA) has also been ratified.

Prime Minister Bainimarama hailed the “progressive cooperation” with Indonesia and acknowledged its support of Fiji’s rebuilding efforts in the aftermath of disasters and the pandemic, the Fijian government wrote in a Facebook post.

He also recognized how Indonesia prioritized issues of importance to the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) at the G20, and reaffirmed Fiji’s commitment to working closely with Jakarta in pursuit of a “greener and bluer and better future for the people of Fiji, the Pacific and beyond”.

A new blueprint

The following day, Minister Retno headed to the Solomon Islands, where the focus of the visit was to enhance cooperation in fisheries, ramp-up trade and infrastructure initiatives and tackle climate change, she said.

Plans to formulate a “blueprint” to better guide the countries’ future collaboration was agreed on by the minister and Prime Minister Mannaseh Sogavare.

“In support of strengthening our collaboration, we have [also] signed a visa-free agreement for service and diplomatic passport holders,” said Retno.

According to a statement from the Prime Minister’s press secretary issued on the Solomon Islands government website, Retno’s “brief courtesy call” focused on development cooperation programs, development assistance that the small island nation benefited from and “other aspects of our bilateral relations and cooperation”.

‘Holistic strategy’

Retno’s visit, both bilateral and multilateral in nature, sought to reiterate Jakarta’s ties with Suva and Honiara, all while underlining ASEAN centrality and advancing its Outlook on the Indo-Pacific (AOIP) document.

As this year’s president of the G20, Indonesia had tasked itself with connecting the leaders of major economies with smaller island nations. In spite of its efforts, however, Jakarta has received some pressure to put more effort into asserting its presence in the Pacific.

Analysts have scrutinized what they saw as a “lukewarm” strategy that tended to overlook consistent engagement with organizations such as the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) and the Pacific Island Forum (PIF) in favor of technical multilateral frameworks such as the AOIP.

Part of this has to do with the complicated political landscape surrounding Indonesia’s Papua policy, they surmise.

For one, the monetary aid offered by Indonesia for humanitarian and capacity-building programs in the region is easily trumped by other donor countries like Australia, New Zealand, China and Japan.

But as tensions birthed from the United States-China rivalry continue to take hold in the Pacific, observers have called on Indonesia as one of the largest countries in the vicinity to step in and prevent the region from becoming polarized. Some even suggest that Jakarta make bolder moves alone rather than marching to ASEAN’s beat.

In her latest visit, Minister Retno emphasized that Indonesia would continue paying attention to the Pacific using a “holistic” strategy covering cooperation at the bilateral, regional and global levels.

“For Indonesia’s chairmanship of ASEAN in 2023, I have conveyed the nation’s plans to bring the Pacific region closer to ASEAN within the framework of Indo-Pacific cooperation,” she asserted.

Papua in mind

Retno’s Pacific trip was timed perfectly before she heads to New York in the US to attend the annual high-level meetings of the UN General Assembly, and coincides with preparations for the next cycle of Indonesia’s Universal Periodic Review, a UN Human Rights Council mechanism, in November.

Dafri Agussalim, an international relations expert from Gadjah Mada University, said Retno’s journey could have been an attempt to persuade certain Pacific island nations from putting Papua on the agenda.

“It is quite clear that the trip is a diplomatic [effort] to prevent the Papua issue from being brought up during the UNGA,” Dafri told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

“It is an undertaking that Indonesia ought to do continuously, and not just in preparation for the UNGA.”

It has become customary for Indonesia to defend itself at the UNGA from attempts to internationalize the murky human rights situation in Papua, with certain Pacific island nations leveling accusations of human rights abuse. (tjs)