Indonesia and the curse of Bambang

Side Story

The state of Israel is the one state on earth that is afraid of the prospects of peace and it will do everything to prevent the march for a peaceful settlement of the conflict in occupied Palestine. The world is today watching on live feed on Al Jazeera television and on other television networks covering Palestine, including the Internet, the hypocrisy that guides the Israeli state.

 

Related Links:

Oic should revive Saudi Arabia middle east road map

 

More Links - The Quartet is pro-Israel

Read More >>

Bambang with Ahmadinejad: supporting each other?

Indonesia is living in a state of doldrums with earthquakes and tsunamis wiping villages off the map, sectarian strife rising and unending and tension increasing with neighboring states. The country is also facing an increase in ideas of secessionism from Riau Islands to Irian Jaya. The fault lies with Bambang Susilo Yudhiyono, who like a shooting star; rose to power in a twirl but then petered with unending troubles on the home front.

Talking to Time magazine in 2004, President Bambang said his country needed a ‘shock therapy’ that would help it deal with the numerous problems it faced at that time. Aceh was still a break away province while the economy was facing a record nose diving trend in almost all sectors. Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) was scarce thus creating chaos on the job market which raised fears of an impending explosion on the streets.

In 2005 Indonesia woke up with the scars of the Tsunami that wiped out years of the military’s containment plan of the Gerakan Aceh Merdeka’s (GAM) expansion in Aceh. The tsunami of December 2004 killed many people, too many people to account for but at the same time it crippled the military operations in Aceh to the extent that there were almost no soldiers around in the worst hit areas of the province.

The GAM was the master of the day, dealing with foreign aid organizations and distributing aid to victims while its activists were helping in the securing of victims and relocating them in crisis centers set up by GAM and the foreign NGO’s.

Bambang had a shock that his army personnel had vanished with the tsunami that struck Banda Aceh, the capital city of Aceh. Some 10,000 soldiers is said to have been killed in the huge waves that hit the province. In the mean time, the GAM suffered very little damages, as it was camped in higher locations in Aceh and survived the waves.

Peace in Aceh was inevitable and then came the first missteps of the Bambang administration. It wanted to channel all the funds raised for the tsunami victims on a world wide scale to the Presidential office in Jakarta. This did not go well with most of the NGO’s on the field in the carnage that the tsunami had left behind.

This resulted into the first clashes between Malaysia and Indonesia on the distribution of funds by the Islamic Development Bank (IDB). The Bank had arranged for special funds to be directly sent to Aceh but Bambang wanted that to be via Jakarta, the center of all political decisions in Indonesia. The Malaysians disagreed – Malaysia is the Chairman of the IDB and that of the OIC indeed – and this became the first misstep that Bambang committed in his early career as President.

Indonesia however imposed conditions on the transfer of the funds from abroad to Aceh, managing to keep a tag on the entry of such funds and according to rumors, succeeding in diverting some of the funds to the government coffers, alleges a former GAM member turned businessman who spoke to WFOL. The Javanese Island had to gain something for losing so much in Aceh with the tsunami, thought the officials of the government.

The intentions were probably good, the government wanted to ensure that the GAM, a rebel movement was not to benefit from such funds. Yet translated otherwise, it looked like a hijacking of funds directed towards victims of the terrible disaster that had struck Indonesia under the reign of Bambang, said the businessman.

The Indonesian president had lost his credibility with his neighbors on the tsunami issue and until today most of Aceh is still reeling under the effects of the tsunami, with the reconstruction of housing and plantations still delayed a full 2 years after the disaster.

“Bambang is cursed. It is unthinkable that it is under his reign that the tsunami had to strike Indonesia and at such a large scale,” said Mohd Selamat, a Political Islam analyst from the Island of Riau, Indonesia.

He added to WFOL that Bambang should resign and let his deputy President Yusuf Kalla take over the helm since the former has proven that he does not have the cut to lead a country like Indonesia. He added that Kalla should also be careful not to make the same mistakes that Bambang made if he was to take over the presidency.

“The country has suffered enough disasters under Bambang. One may not want to blame the President for events that are seemingly out of human control but these are signs of a problematic presidency in a country that needs honesty, truthfulness and creativity to get out of its mess,” he said.

The airplane crash in Yogyakarta in March 2007 is precursor of what can go wrong for a President who may be on his decline and could be facing his downfall soon.

The problem is about Bambang and the nation has to decide to keep him or throw him out like they threw away the three Presidents after old man General Suharto, said a blue collar worker in Jakarta. She added that everything else will be fine if the country found the right person to be the leader and Bambang was the wrong person.

Her views echoed that of a growing number of Indonesians who believe that in 2004 there was no other choice but to rid the country of the violent presidency of Megawati – since she triggered the re-enacting of the bloody Aceh conflict and troubles in Iryan Jaya.

Had there a better personality than Bambang, there would have been a different result but the political class trusted Bambang and thought that his experience during the presidency of Megawati would help him gauge the situation rapidly, said another observer to WFOL. They were apparently wrong and they now believe Bambang is surrounded by a group “of clowns who do not know how to get the country out of the economic morass while they are pocketing the maximum they can during his reign,” See page 2