---------------------------------------------------------- FREE Subscribe/UNsubscribe Indonesia Daily News Online go to: http://www.indo-news.com/subscribe.html - FREE - FREE - FREE - FREE - FREE - FREE - Please Visit Our Sponsor http://www.indo-news.com/cgi-bin/ads1 -0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0 Free Email @KotakPos.com visit: http://my.kotakpos.com/ ---------------------------------------------------------- Bung Redaktur, ini ada artikel kok seperti menunjuk Barat dan Australia memang sengaja mau memecah RI dalam kasus Timtim. Bagaiamana tanggapan para ahli pers? Tono Paris, Friday, January 28, 2000 Help Wahid by Seeing the Benefits of Tolerance -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Philip Bowring International Herald Tribune. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- HONG KONG - No other head of a major country faces such daunting tasks as President Abdurrahman Wahid of Indonesia. Nor is any as deserving of support, on account both of the importance of the tasks and of the character of this most unusual of presidents. Beset with separatist movements, communal violence, some restless soldiers, religious tensions, a static economy and heavy debt, and with an ineffective vice president in Megawati Sukarnoputri, he needs all the help he can get. Can outsiders help? International backers range from Western countries fearful of Islamic extremism and a resurgence of the debt crisis to China, which is happy with a weak Indonesia but not with a chaotic one where Chinese are massacred. Neighbors fear the knock-on effectsof prolonged instability. By and large, Mr. Wahid has spoken well to all these constituencies. Official discrimination against the Chinese language and other aspects of ethnic identity is being removed. He has been nonpartisan in addressing religious conflicts in the Moluccas and elsewhere. He has followed IMF and World Bank prescriptions for the economy. If he is to succeed, he has to keep a delicate balance between crime and punishment. The businessmen who ransacked the banks and the military who abused the human rights of Timorese, Acehnese or Javanese are under scrutiny and may be punished. But this is a government which recognizes that it must treat with a military which, however badly it has behaved, is badly needed. Hence it is easier to sideline General Wiranto than to risk the backlash that would come from prosecuting senior officers. Likewise, this government has to deal with some big business interests that will not bring back flight capital, needed if the economic recovery is not to stall, if their past behavior is examined too closely. There is a fine line to follow between ignoring crime and undermining prospects for national stability. Critics, especially those overseas, see this as evidence of weakness. But Mr. Wahid's political strength is that he is a tolerant man. One aspect is his liberal attitude toward religion, a deep-rooted aversion to rigid confessional politics reflected in his years of quiet effort to reassure non-Muslims and promote multi-religious civil society. Another aspect of tolerance is acceptance of human frailties, for example, those of the Suharto clan. The more moralistic see this as letting evil go unpunished. But tolerance leads toa willingness to forgive and to make pragmatic and unheroic compromises. That is something that South Africans, Chileans and Northern Irish may find easier to comprehend than most. There are those (including noisy groups in the West and Australia) who want the nation to break up. Others, mostly at home, want it to become a fervently Islamic republic. Others would prefer to find a new military leader, who in all likelihood would be harsher than former President Suharto. But if the goal is, at it seems to befor most Indonesians, to hold the nation together, keep regional and religious tensions within bounds and enjoy some fruits of both liberalism and democracy, the blind pursuit of ''justice'' becomes self-defeating. One man's justice is perceived as another's vendetta - as in Pakistan for 20 years. Foreign friends will best serve Indonesia by keeping money flowing and retaining ties with the military on the assumption that it is necessary for internal security and will keep its distance from the elected government. The more lectures Indonesians receive from the West about prosecuting civil rights abusers, the more public ''warnings'' from Washington to the military whenever there are coup rumors, the more attempts by foreign Christians to internationalize the problems of Christians in eastern Indonesia, the harder it will be for the president to keep at bay the Islamists or the army, or the relics of the old regime interested in stirring up trouble in the name of national dignity. The persistence of communal killings cannot be blamed on the military's lack of determination to restore order. It is often not appreciated how thinly spread the army is. Military morale is important if ethnic and religious tensions, which exist under the surface in many parts of this complex nation, are not to spread. So long as they are confined to far-flung regions they can, like the problems in southern Philippines, be viewed as localized tragedies. But they are a mortal danger if a combination of military and Islamic forces encourages the issues of the Moluccas to be brought to the streets of Jakarta. At every level, Indonesia needs tolerance and compromise. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Didistribusikan tgl. 31 Jan 2000 jam 05:21:21 GMT+1 oleh: Indonesia Daily News Online <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.Indo-News.com/ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
