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It’s gradually getting through. Today a Dutch on line news site reported unrest in Papua is growing. What’s going on in the tropical empire?
I’ve always kept my slightly worn old school atlas. It’s the at the time famous Bos “Atlas der gehele aarde” ( Atlas of all the world), 37th print, 1947, Groningen – Batavia.There are several maps, nrs 33 – 36, dedicated to the archipelago. Each island named by it’s colonial name: Borneo, Celebes, Nieuw Guinea. No surprise here.The war of independence was still fought.The Dutch government officially still referred to what it considered to be a colony as “Nederlands Indië’ ( Dutch Indies). But the Bos Atlas obviously had a slightly subversive trait; two years before transfer of sovereignty would take place the name of the country in our school atlas was Indonesia already.
Actually it’s remarkable we today can put an equation mark between Nederlands Indië ( the colony) and Indonesia (the thriving regional power): NI = RI. For what else but a hotchpotch of peoples and cultures the colony was. An administrative reality only. It was far from being a nation. It actually was a huge gamble when the revolutionaries opted for turning that hotchpotch integrally into one new independent nation practically over night. I guess primarily thanks to the political genius of Soekarno and his companions that merely administrative unity didn’t fall apart. It even became a unitary state with a supreme central government.
However major inherent tensions and contradictions were not solved and have not been solved since. Therefore from day one Indonesia coped with inherent flaws.
There is no denying. For instance Aceh, Papua and Bali have very different interests and cultures. Authoritarian rule kept them together. And concealed the problems.
But after ’98 RI is a young democracy. The tension and contradictions surfaced. The new policies of Reformasi brought decentralisation. And the government’s grip loosened. Power and money ( and one of the major political vices of New Order, corruption) have been transferred to the periphery and the many districts. Now centrifugal forces are affecting both “Sabang and Merauke”.
Elisabeth Pisani wrote about it in her reflections on this “culture corruption and corpses”. In a lengthy essay in Prospect she shows what is happening on the outer islands. I’m convinced it’s time for the politicians in Jakarta to wake up. The article tells that Indonesia is thriving not because of but in spite of government. The rise of bupatis creates ample room for machinations at district’s level. They even sometimes manage to tap the revenues of the country’s treasures. It’s boom is jeopardized by corruption and lack of identity. The structure and form of the state needs urgent maintenance.
I would recommend ministers, parliamentarians and civil servants ( and everybody else who is interested in Indonesia’s welfare) to spend one quarter of an hour or perhaps half an hour to read “A make-belief nation”.
well at the moment, ***port = VOC, Java = NL, Papua = Dutch East Indies. the government could deploy thousand military personnel to papua but is completely sissy when facing FPI. how nonsensical is that?
@ calvin: Although one could say the situation at any moment always is the result of processes of historical logic – but usually it is not the predestined outcome. The fact the geographical borders of the colony-1949 are factually the borders of RI-2012 to me is a very explosive reality.But a reality all the same.
As for the government it’s impossible to look into their heads, but one hypothesis is FPI has an alliance with ( ex-) military who are part of the old-boys’ network. In that reasoning it’s their strong arm to “talk” officials into profitable business bargains. Which the Papuan people can’t provide. And another hypothesis is FPI may be a very naughty member of the religious majority family, but it’s still a member of that family. Papuans are not. Or perhaps it’s a combination of the two hypothesis.
Indonesians will usually try to apportion the blame for the country’s ills on outside forces and foreigners. In the case of Papua, however, the dead-end in which Indonesia finds itself in is wholly of its making. It has no one but itself to blame for it. Thanks, Sukarno.
@ Mauricio: The republic exists over 60 years, so I think all the accomplishments and all the failures are own responsibility. The ills in this case are pre-eminently of their own making. I admire the way Indonesians ( and Indonesia) usually don’t dwell on the past. Yet there are some loose ends the country has to come to terms with. ’65 for instance. Also some of the mistakes made in architectonic design of the state (in the faraway and more recent past) deserve attention and mending now.
One of the reasons that Indonesians usually don’t dwell on the past is the forced amnesia forced upon the population by the New Order.
When discussing East Timor, many “uber-nationalist” Indonesians cite a sham referendum (in 1999) for the loss of that territory. It has always struck me a rather quaint that on the issue of the sham Papua referendum that paved the way for the so-called integration of Papua they are always wholly silent.
@ Mauricio: The deal between Australia and Indonesia at the time of the Portuguese Carnation Revolution in ’74 and the Indonesian occupation was a shame really. And the Indonesian military was to blame for the semi genocide which followed. Unfortunately it’s no exception nations are in denial in cases like these.
For the doomed start of Papua/ Irian in the mid sixties there are three culprits in my opinion. First the Dutch government, more in particular the minister of foreign affairs in those days, Joseph Luns, who doggedly and foolishly kept on manoeuvring to hold on to the last part of the colonial “empire” till the ‘peace-treaty”of ’62. Secondly the president of Indonesia, Soekarno, who obviously without clear plans for the future of that territory for internal political reasons played the nationalistic card. And last but not least Robert Kennedy who, looking over his shoulder to the war in Vietnam, wanted to please Indonesia to keep the communist influence in RI in check and therefore forced the Dutch government to comply. The UN was abused as fig-leaf.
Apparently nobody did or does really care for the interests of indigenous people.
I am a civil servant, I’ve spent some times to read her article, and I am interested in Indonesia’s welfare. I agree with her on the rise of the Bupatis, the come back of the feudals,and rampant corruptions in Indonesia. Any witted person will agree with her.
But I can’t help feeling that her way of representing Indonesia is somewhat orientalistic in nature. She said that Indonesia is a-make-believe-nation. She made it as if that phenomena were specific to Indonesia. What about the US of A? Reading her history, USA is also a-make-believe-nation. And on progress in Indonesia she made it as if the progress were not the result of some calculated machination of some kind and hard work of some genuine leaders but a miracle!
Then, Halmahera is…”a mishapen octopus”; …”a[n] amoeba-like splitting of the district; and Indonesia is … “a shape-shifting beast.”
Mmm…..geographically speaking, Indonesia is bestial in nature. So, what about the inhabitants? Let’s start with the leader. Sukarno is…”a demagogue” despite visionary; Habibi is a a mosnter since he is…”chimerical”; and the halmahera bupati is [a] beast [which is] imperious [in] nature. Well, Indonesia is a bestial country lead by beasts.
What’s more? the country’s independence is not the result of a well thought plan and the leader’s savvyness in seizing the opportunity to finally free the nation from the shackle of colonialism, but something which is …”blurted out”, a diction that really belittles the essence of a declaration of independence.
I believe that her intended readership are not Indonesians. Her narrative is a modern day travel narrative like those written by travellers such as Thomas Diaz or Henrique Diaz or Marcopolo. Like her predecessors, her account contains some misinformation on purpose or a mere lack of knowledge.
She writes for those at (her) home. And her account seems to (me) make her intended readers feel good about themselves.
@ delvi: Yeah! You did! I tempted you to read the article! Like it should be done: critical.
So, well…Now I have a cognitive dissonance experience. Let’s see if I can solve it
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Your first and very relevant objection is the Orientalist perspective of the article. It looks like a plausible one because the author can’t but look with Western eyes ( just like I do for that matter
).
Yet..
The fact she labels Sukarno as a ( visionary) demagogue doesn’t mean she is absolutely wrong. Nor does she say Ronald Reagan wasn’t a demagogue. Since I very much admire the most important founder of the nation, I would rather describe him as a verbally very talented visionary though. Nor does she necessarily think of Indonesia as bestial if the shape of a part of the country reminds her of an octopus. I also think there is a striking similarity
. And as for president Habibie – keeping the grandiose but failed aircraft enterprise in mind- the word “chimerical” can pop up. Like the word criminal can pop up thinking of George Bush jr.
These examples, nor the other metaphors, do make me think of bestial people or a bestial country. So there we disagree. I don’t think of the US as a bestial or criminal people either I might add
.
Secondly you read the accusation of amateurism. Independence as kind of accident. The present economic boom not by smart and able administration.
But I read something slightly different. The implication of the article is not that getting rid of the Dutch was random luck ( on the contrary – it took the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and wasn’t possible without huge intellectual and civil sacrifices over half a century or more). But the declaration of independence and the aftermath actually were very much random and improvised. Much later the decentralisation decision was also worrying incomplete. In both cases the leadership didn’t bother much about the devils in the details. It is partly the explanation of present problems.
I think being very critical about administrations since ’45 is justified. And I think the witted persons you refer too would agree that history will not only praise 60 years of leadership as very able and very effective. Not leadership in an administrative way that is. Indonesians have brought about progress and growing purchasing power without much help of a leading hand. Rather in spite of great administrative leadership. That’s the miracle.
It’s a huge compliment to Indonesians.
Next you think she writes for those at home. I guess that’s right.
You feel it’s her intention to make those readers ( I am one of them) feel good about themselves ( in the sense that looking down on the amateurs in the South East can make anybody feel good
). I don’t know about the author’s intentions of course. But I do know I did not feel good nor bad about the image the author gave of the country. But I thought “very well done”. Unlike you I got the impression that the author loves her subject ( Indonesia). Though she stays at distance by definition, she did pay attention to details of daily life.
And was critical as she should be
Let’s just say that by the late 1950s Sukarno had become part of the problem. He, himself, was eaten alive by his very illusion that Indonesia was, in 1945, ready and politically mature for independence. That miscalculation alone has cost the country dearly.
The elimination of the Dutch was indeed luck. The colonial order was dismantled and the colonizers expelled, not by Indonesian nationalist armies, but rather by the Japanese occupation and then by the U.S. Navy as it drove back the Japanese back to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On the eve of WWII there was little to suggest that the Dutch East Indies would not have lasted another couple of decades. Indonesian independence was contingent from the get-go.
@ Mauricio: Of course decolonization was on the agenda after the World Wars. Europe was in ruins, Dutch colonial authority had been swept away in ’42, the balance of power had 100% shifted to the US, the US favoured independence movements in European colonies, old colonial countries like France, United Kingdom and the Netherlands were depended on US Marshall Plan, so…Yes, that was luck to Soekarno and Hatta. But smart politics is to grasp opportunities. The nation’s founders had built the conditions in previous decades and did use the chances offered to them in ’45/’49 ( well, without the extremely able guerilla fighter general Nasution, it might have taken more than four years to throw my compatriots out).
The best example of a country doing well despite its government lies in Europe. Italy, despite incessant political instability and corruption, managed to make it to the G7.
I think it’s pretty clear from the events that transpired from 1949 to 1965 that Indonesia was far from ready for independence. It all came to head with the coup in 1965 and the massacre of around 1 million people that followed.
@ Mauricio: Italy? A fascinating, beautiful, charming country abundant with excellent food, wine, culture etc etc. And almost European football champion. But eh, doing well??? Uh.. Well, let’s say that’s not the general idea in North and North-West Europe
. But, then, there also is a difference between North and South in Italy.
Practically all countries that gained independence after ’45 weren’t “ready”. Be it the British colonies did significantly better on average. Which may indicate the initial success largely depended on the conditions the ex-colonial power left behind.
The coup d’etat in 1965 resulted in a historical tragedy indeed. Catastrophic outcome of a risky presidential political balancing act by Soekarno. And a crime of unknown dimensions in the aftermath. By Suharto.