Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono can be forgiven for feeling smug ahead of Wednesday’s presidential polls — he is overseeing one of the best performing economies in the G20 amid a global crisis.
The liberal ex-general has a huge lead over his main rival, former president Megawati Sukarnoputri, and is hoping to avoid a September runoff by winning a clear majority in the first round of elections.
Indonesia’s economy is growing at more than 4 percent and is expected to rebound to around 6 percent next year on the back of strong domestic demand and revived export sales.
PHOTO: AFP
Such numbers should make Indonesians of all political stripes pleased as Punch, especially after the mauling the economy received during the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, when the country virtually went bankrupt.
But not so. Almost by virtue of his administration’s economic success, the soft-spoken president known simply as SBY has come under attack as a “neo-liberal,” a free-market zealot and stooge of foreign capitalists.
His opponents have offered an alternative economic vision based on national “self reliance” and raged against the allegedly uneven exploitation of the country’s vast natural resources by foreign mining and forestry companies.
All well and good, except that no one seems to know exactly what any of the candidates are talking about when it comes to economic policy in Southeast Asia’s biggest economy.
Center for Strategic and International Studies economist Pande Raja Silalahi said attempts to paint Yudhoyono as a “neo-liberal” were no more than negative campaign tactics and populist sloganeering.
“There’s no such thing as ‘neo-liberal’ in this country. Those who rant about it don’t understand what ‘neo-liberal’ means,” he said.
Megawati’s running mate, former special forces commander Prabowo Subianto, has attacked Yudhoyono as a “neo-liberal” and jumped on the “self-reliance” bandwagon.
The third candidate in the race, Vice President Jusuf Kalla, has taken the same line, saying that if Indonesia wants to be a “big country” it has to shun outside influence and go it alone.
What that means in practice, though, is hard to fathom.
“Ideally, self reliance is possible for Indonesia but in practice it can’t work,” Silalahi said.
“There are no countries in the world that practice the economy of Robinson Crusoe. Self-reliance is a silly idea. International trade is done on the basis that nations can create better welfare for their people,” he said.
Prabowo and Kalla have not given a detailed set of proposals on how they plan to make Indonesia a self-reliant agrarian paradise.
“Don’t accept the idea that we are destined to be a poor nation forever,” Prabowo said in a recent campaign speech. “Don’t accept the verdict of the neo-liberal agents who are not honest, who are afraid to admit to themselves that they are neo-liberal.”
“As the election approaches they pretend to be nationalists but the nation’s assets are being sold one by one,” he said.
Kalla described it in even starker terms.
“Don’t let the blond-haired businessmen rule Indonesia ... we can become the masters of our own country,” he said during a televised election debate.
Yudhoyono has hardly done a better job of explaining his economic strategy, but vehemently rejects the “neo-liberal” label.
“I choose an economy of the middle-ground and will not leave everything to the market, or what you call fundamentalist capitalism or neo-liberalism,” the president said in his first campaign speech last month.
When Yudhoyono ousted Megawati in a landslide in 2004, foreign direct investment excluding oil, gas and banking was valued at US$4.57 billion. It had increased to US$10.34 billion by 2007 and US$14.87 billion last year.
Most economists believe more foreign direct investment (FDI) is needed, especially in infrastructure and energy projects.
“The rising value of FDI doesn’t mean the government is neo-liberal. Capital and labor in the globalization era are mobile and cross-border,” Standard Chartered Bank economist Fauzi Ichsan said. “Even during Megawati’s term, foreign direct investment increased,” he said. “FDI is good because it creates more job opportunities and decreases the number of poor people.”
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RIVALRY: ‘We know that these are merely symbolic investigations initiated by China, which is in fact the world’s most profligate disrupter of supply chains,’ a US official said China has started a pair of investigations into US trade practices, retaliating against similar probes by US President Donald Trump’s administration as the superpowers stake out positions before an expected presidential summit in May. The move, announced by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce on Friday, is a direct mirror of steps Trump took to revive his tariff agenda after the US Supreme Court last month struck down some of his duties. “China expresses its strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to these actions,” a ministry spokesperson said in a statement, referring to the so-called Section 301 investigations initiated on March 11.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
RSS