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Jokowi’s Myanmar envoy idea loses steam
Still no government follow-up on military engagement ‘strategy’: Sources.
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resident Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s one-off suggestion that Indonesia might send a general to pursue military engagement with Myanmar’s junta seemed to be losing traction, those familiar with the matter said on Monday, as the Indonesian Military (TNI) had yet to receive any instructions from its Commander in Chief on the matter.
With no word either from the Foreign Ministry and a lack of confirmation from the TNI and the Executive Office of the President (KSP), questions have arisen as to whether Indonesia, as this year’s ASEAN chair, was still considering military engagement as its strategy to address the Myanmar crisis.
Jokowi first made the suggestion in a recent interview with a foreign news agency, but it soon became clear that it was an off-the-cuff and not an actual strategy, even as some analysts noted that a military-to-military dialogue might have merit and the idea had a successful precedent.
Instead, private conversations over the idea indicates the strategy might have an inherent weakness in, including a notion that Myanmar’s junta regime did not perceive the TNI as a model for how an armed forces should be positioned in relation to government.
More than two years after the military junta deposed Myanmar’s democratically elected civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi in a coup on Feb. 1, 2021, there was still no indication that the defiant regime of Min Aung Hlaing was going to comply with the ASEAN Five-Point Consensus, calling for the cessation of violence and holding inclusive dialogue toward reconciliation.
The two previous special envoys of the ASEAN chair on Myanmar, appointed by past chairs Brunei and Cambodia as outlined in the consensus, have also made barely any progress.
With the ball now in Indonesia’s court, anticipation climbed to its highest point after the President expressed his intention to appoint a high-ranking general as the next ASEAN special envoy on Myanmar.
However, the plan seems to have been grounded before it even started taxiing to the runway.
T.B. Hasanuddin, a senior lawmaker from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) faction and a former general, admitted that the needle had barely moved since Jokowi made the surprise suggestion.
“As far as I know from the foreign minister, there has been no follow-up on the matter yet,” Hasanuddin, the deputy chairman of House of Representatives Commission I on defense and foreign affairs, told The Jakarta Post.
Asked if the military was in communication with the Foreign Ministry over the President’s suggestion, TNI spokesman Rear Adm. Kisdiyanto had nothing new to add on Monday, only replying: “We are still awaiting further arrangements.”
Could still be effective
Analysts concurred that military-to-military engagement was neither baseless nor foolproof as an approach to encourage talks. If the Myanmar junta envisioned a win-win situation in which both democracy and a strong military presence could coexist, they said, then the TNI would be a great example to follow.
However, if military supremacy was the junta’s goal, then Indonesia’s idea to send a general was bound to fail.
There was still a “significant possibility” that the strategy could backfire if the junta was indeed hostile to the idea of transitioning away from a military regime, though it was still worth a shot, said Lina Alexandra, head of international relations at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Jakarta.
“Myanmar as a country is fully aware of Indonesia’s past, and it has closely monitored the military reforms here. I think a friendly reminder may go a long way, regardless of whether” the junta would welcome the engagement, Lina said on Monday.
“That said, we haven’t quite figured it out entirely, either. We still don’t know what to do with perpetrators of past crimes” by members of the military, she continued.
“There is also no guarantee that the junta would welcome the TNI. If they were to reject our general [as an ASEAN envoy], Indonesia would be humiliated.”
Senior foreign policy analyst Dewi Fortuna Anwar, who was part of the 2007 military engagement team on Myanmar under then-president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, told the Post that today’s junta regime was different than the past regime.
While parallel engagement between the militaries of Indonesia and Myanmar worked in the Yudhoyono era, she warned that today’s junta was more defiant and closed off.
In 2007, Indonesia offered institutional assistance that eventually helped pave the way for Myanmar’s flirtation with democracy, though more recent analysis suggests the junta had not shaken off its sense of being sidelined.
Dafri Agussalim, an international relations expert at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, also said that having the TNI set a good example was a difficult case to argue.
“Track record is an important asset in diplomacy. I am not certain that we have a clean one,” he told the Post.
The Foreign Ministry has yet to appoint a special envoy, and has instead set up the Office of the Special Envoy that reportedly brings together some of the best in Indonesia’s foreign service.
Other ASEAN member states, such as Malaysia, have meanwhile urged fellow members with military regimes like Thailand and Cambodia, which experts consider to be more closely aligned to Myanmar’s junta, to do more to support national reconciliation in the conflict-ridden country.
Myanmar’s military regime justified its 2021 coup d’etat by accusing the civilian government of election fraud, despite the landslide victory of Aung San Suu Kyi’s ruling National League for Democracy in the 2020 general election.
The junta is reportedly planning another election that has been widely criticized as a sham.
