Kawan2,
Daripado mandanga dari urang, dari sek kaba ataupun TV, kan rancak mandanga
langsuang dari tangan partamo. A ikonyo.
Salam, MN
HOW IT HAPPENED: THE SWIFT TAKE OVER OF MICROPHONE BY ABDILLAH TOHA
IN THE “APPF" FIRST PLENARY SESSION IN VIENTIANE, LAOS,
JAN 12, 2009, AFTERNOON
by
Mochtar Naim
Member of Indonesian Delegation
To APPF Meeting in Vientiane
AS I was sitting next to Abdillah Toha in the front row of the plenary meeting,
the Chairman called for my name to take part in delivering the speech on behalf
of the Indonesian delegation. When I took the microphone to start delivering my
speech, in no time Abdillah Toha, head of the Indonesian delegation, grabbed
the microphone and said this is the session on the Global Financial Crisis, in
which Abdillah Toha was indeed scheduled in the Agenda but in the next Item
1.1.
Abdillah Toha might not be aware of, that the plenary was still in the
Item 1 Agenda on Economic and Trade Matter in which my name was clearly
imprinted as the third speaker after Russia and Vietnam in the Agenda
distributed in advance to all members.
As I was informed later after a turbulant face to face polemic between
Abdillah and Laode Ida outside the meeting hall, Abdillah thought that I was
ill-prepared since what he saw in front of me was a few scratching notes,
hand-written. He did not realize that right underneath the scratched paper I
had a well written and well prepared paper to be delivered for the occasion.
And the topic I raised was also discussed and agreed upon in the meeting in
Laode Ida’s room at the DPD floor of Nusantara III Hall a few days before the
departure.
Since Abdillah remained adamant and insistant I let him pursue his wish
to avoid the scandalous moment to be known by others in such a dignified forum.
And Abdillah started to deliver his speech. My opportunity to take the floor
to deliver my speech was then ‘gone with the wind,’ though my paper was already
distributed and documented by the APPF Secretariat.
Laode Ida and Abdillah met each other afterwards outside the plenary
hall. And there what happened happened. The troubled, tumultuous, fire of
conflict between Abdillah in person, but at the same time personifying the
standpoint of the feuding DPR, vis-à-vis the DPD, and with Laode Ide, also
personifying the standpoint of the DPD, came to open, and in the international
arena. In the eyes of Abdillah, DPD was not a legislative body and neither the
legitimate parliament. Thereby DPD had no right to take part in international
parliamentary meetings, as Abdillah argued.
In fact such incidence was only a casus belli. Meetings after meetings
at the international inter-parliamentary levels whereby DPD also took place,
were annoying to Abdillah in particular since he has always been head of the
DPR delegation.
I saw and experienced it myself when I participated in the previous
APPF meeting of January last year, in Oakland, New Zealand, where delegate
members from DPD were registered by Abdillah only as “advisors,” and not
“members” of the Indonesian delegation. Nevertheless, we from DPD participated
the meetings fully and took part in delivering speeches and participating in
drafting committees. I for one delivered and read a paper on ‘Poverty
Alleviation’ on behalf of the Indonesian delegation. And no one argued to my
legitimacy. So also in my active participation in the drafting committee.
Abdillah, notwithstanding, showed openly and arrogantly his disgusting
reactions.
For the public to know what I delivered in the APPF meetings, both in
Vientiane presently and in Oakland previously, I hereby reiterate the two
papers.
(I)
MARGINALIZATION OF THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLES
AMIDST THE GROWING PANGS OF DEVELOPMENT
IN SOUTHEAST ASIAN COUNTRIES
Mochtar Naim
Member of the Indonesian Senate
(Dewan Perwakilan Daerah, DPD-RI)
Delivered at the 17th APPF
(Asia Pacific Parliamentary Forum),
Vientiane, Laos, Jan 11-15, 2009
WHEN Suharto took power in the sixties, he summoned his economic advisors who
were then popularly nicknamed as “the Berkeley Mafia” -- as most of them were
graduates of the Berkeley University of California faculty of economics--, to
look for the solution how to overcome the economic dilapidation and virtual
bankcruptcy left over by Sukarno. They almost unanimously said, “give it to the
experienced,” meaning the migrant overseas Chinese, “as the indigenous were
practically all ignorant and still lived in the yester life of the
traditional-agricultural-pre-industrial world. It may take a hundred years for
the indigenous to change their lots,” they argued, “while cooperating with, and
making use of, the Chinese, the change would take place practically in no
time.”
By using the expertise and cunningness of the Chinese in trade and
business, and in industries, the situation was then rapidly changed, as
expected, and the GNP and GDP indices began to rise. Thus started the romantic
and mutually profitable cooperation between the authority in the hands of the
military and the corporate circles in the hands of the Chinese. The failure of
Sukarno by not making use of the Chinese was the success of Suharto by making
use of the Chinese. Similar cooperation between the native rulers and the
Chinese in the pre-colonial periods had indeed also taken place as the native
feudalistic rulers looked in disregard to trade and business as they thought
such activities were making them aloofed from fine esoteric lives. Trade and
thievery, according to their high transcendental values, were not very far
apart.
The present SBY-JK regime, to compare with, were keen enough to give
dole out financial aids to the poor, but has made no structural change along
the ethnic lines to improve the lots and empower the economic strength of the
indegenous as in Malaysia. The structurally demarcated dualistic economy along
the ethnic or racial lines, therefore, remain intact. The Chinese and the
multi-national corporations (MNCs) control the modern and industrial,
free-market, sector, while the indigenous who form over 90 % of the population
remain trapped in the traditional, rural and agricultural sector.
Through such collaboration between the ruling indigenous elites and the
clever Chinese merchants in most Southeast Asian nations developed their
economies and social welfares. Now, however, they reaped the whirlwind. While
the GDP and GNP constantly rose, the gaps between the two, the Chinese and the
men in power on the one hand and the natives on the other, became ever
widening. The overwhelming majority of the natives who are the rightful owner
of the land remain ever poor and the Chinese minority in collaboration with the
MNCs and indigenous authority became ever rich. As the situation in Indonesia
shows, the proportion of the Indonesian natives and the migrant Chinese in the
demographic and economic terms became lopsided. The Chinese who make less than
5 % of the total population control 95 % of the Indonesian economy, while the
native Indonesians the reverse. Practically little has changed structurally
since the proclamation of independence 63
years ago where dualistic economy persists along ethnic lines, namely between
the Chinese and the native Indonesians.
Similar pictures can then be widened to most Southeast Asian countries
with a few exceptions. Singapore miraculously has been turned to practically
all Chinese with native Malays who inherited the island from their ancestors
became second class citizens. So also the natives of the Philipines, including
the Tagalogs, the Bisayans, the Malays and the Moros, have had similar fates.
They were marginalized in all walks of life and cornered in remote hinterlands
and lower lands with subsistent rural economy. The Chinese in turn were in the
upper hands and took over most political, economic, military, educational and
socio-cultural strings of the country and controled the urban lives, and
practically the whole country.
The Thais, the Vietnamese, the Lao and Cambodians and other countries
in the mainland though in similar fate but are now struggling hard to solve
such imbalanced ethnic problems. They are aware that such lopsided situation is
not healthy. Formally it was with the Eurpean rulers, and now with the Chinese
who have been part of the whole population but segregated structurally by
economic and even social demarcation. The segregated dualistic economic system
as in the colonial period turns out to be continuing persistently up to the
present.
The Malays in Malaysia, nevertheless, were notably in the exceptions.
They found the solution, and the picture has been brightening ever since
Mahathir changed the course since the early seventies. Now the Malays, the
Chinese and the Indians can work hand in hand, as well as separately, with a
simple policy that no ethnic groups could ever be excluded in economic and
social welfare terms, as the source of the problem is the malicious policy of
disregarding the indigenous and giving privileges to the ethnic Chinese to run
the economy of the country. And all for the sake of rapid growth and
development, nation-wise, but by disregarding humanitarian considerations.
The Malaysian example could be used as a prototype and copied by other
Southeast Asian countries in steering and normalizing the course of development
that benefiting all citizens in more humanitarian and just bases without
regard, for the sake of the future generations and democracy. ***
(II)
STATEMENT OF INDONESIAN DELEGATION
ON POVERTY ALLEVIATION
Delivered by
Mochtar Naim
Member of The Indonesian House of Regional Representatives
At the Asia-Pacific Parliamentary Forum
January 23, 2008
Auckland, New Zealand
Mr Chairman,
Honorable Delegates,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Assalamu ‘alaikum w.w.
Peace be upon you and us all.
Sholom,
Poverty is still amidst us. Born out of political, economic and social
factors, poverty has become a serious and pressing challenge facing our world
today. And the problem grows worse in an irrational international political and
economic order amidst unbalanced development. Therefore poverty alleviation is
not only a term in economics, but a comprehensive issue that has
multidimensional aspects which necessitate concerted cooperation.
Poverty in many developing Asian and Pacific countries sprang from the
colonial past which created a dual and dualistic economies, by which the small
ruling and enterprising non-indegenous elites control the modern and
industrialized sectors whereas the great majority of the people and mostly
indegenous remain poor in rural areas with traditional and subsistent
agricultural economy. Such trend as a whole remain steadfast until now. Little
opportunities given to the rural poor to bridge the gap and enter the modern
and industrialized sector.
As we might be aware of, it has been 8 years since the adoption of the
Millenium Declaration at the Millenium Summit in 2000; Countries around the
world have made efforts for the elimination of poverty. However, poverty is
still one of the biggest problems facing the region. And for that reason
poverty alleviation is imperative for economic and social development and it is
also essential for sustainable human development. The solution lies in
coordination of individual countries anti-poverty programs and also conforming
these programs to international community programs.
For that purpose, some measures should be undertaken such as utilizing and
developing potentials of regional cooperation for the attainment of social
development goals, in particular the eradication of poverty.
We therefore should support all relevant stakeholders to encourage
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs, i.e., to behave ethically and
contribute to economic development in order to improve the quality of life of
the workforce and their families as well as of the local community and society
at large.
Corporate Social Responsibility Programs, if need be, shall be instituted as
part and parcel of the larger national poverty elimination programs by which
corporate institutions shall set aside certain percentage in their profit and
revenues for the poverty eradication programs controled and coordinated by
national governments concerned.
Furthermore, to bridge the poor and the rich, the poor must have shares in
corporate and private enterprises aside from labor and land that they chip in.
Their offsprings with sufficient education and training must have equal
opportunity to enter technical dan managerial levels of the corporate and
private enterprises. As initiated by countries such as Malaysia, there shall be
a long term plan to uplift the economy and welfare of the indegeneous to be on
a par with the non-indegenous minority economic elites. Only then dual economy
in the long run can be eradicated.
Ladies and gentlemen,
In addition, we should also urge our respective governments to carry
out a number of tangible proverty alleviation programs that are directly
addressed to the grass-root level. The efforts may include providing
opportunities for income generation, education, training, access to credit and
basic needs (health care, nutrition, housing and sanitation).
To conclude, it is necessary that APPF parliamentarians urge their
respective governments to implement good and transparent governance, boost
economic growth, provide adequate social services and ensure that public
expenditure reaches the poor.
Thank you Mr Chairman.
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