THE AGE A language of leadership Howard will never learn By MORAG FRASER Sunday 5 March 2000 HERE is one kind of leadership, the kind understood and demonstrated by East Timorese resistance leader Xanana Gusmao in his just-published autobiography, To Resist is to Win: "I have learned on the job. My writings show that I have often struggled in my leadership to find new ways and forms to assert the rights of my people in a journey that has demanded of all of us so much patience, empathy, flexibility and innovation." By "innovation", Xanana Gusmao does not mean a new tax regime. And, by "empathy", he does not, I think, have in mind what Aged Care Minister Bronwyn Bishop is having rapidly to acquire, or at least give the appearance of acquiring. What about "flexibility"? Peter Reith uses the word a lot. But I do not think he means by it what Gusmao does. Mostly, it is not Reith's own personal flexibility he is talking about. He wants flexibility from you and me. Political strongmen do not bend and flex. They dominate. And patience? That's what the Prime Minister wants us all to have over the reconciliation process. Put it off for a little longer. Softly, softly. Take another century and maybe by then we won't remember what we meant by it and the problems that follow from the dispossession of an entire people will have gone away. They won't, of course. Any more than America will have rid itself of the scars of slavery. The Indonesian President, Abdurrahman Wahid, was not being John Howard's kind of patient when he joined Xanana Gusmao in the Santa Cruz cemetery in Dili last Tuesday and said, "I would like to apologise for the things that have happened in the past." Mr Wahid also sprinkled petals on the graves of Indonesian soldiers buried in the cemetery, soldiers who died during the 24-year occupation of East Timor. The two gestures - a public apology to the East Timorese and a ritual tribute to the loyalty and endeavors of Wahid's fellow Indonesians - coupled two tragedies in a way that signalled something new, the beginning of a reconciliation process. Who would have believed it possible 12 months ago when Australia was still hedging its bets about East Timor and Mr Habibie was stumbling his way towards "allowing" the East Timorese independence vote? Who would have predicted then that an Indonesian leader - forget the rest of the world leaders: easy for them - would be in Dili, standing at the site of the Santa Cruz massacre and telling some of the truth about it, letting savagery and misery be acknowledged and laid to rest, along with the lives of the East Timorese and Indonesians who died there. But that is what leadership is sometimes about - flexibility and innovation as Xanana Gusmao understands the words. It's about the flexibility to push beyond encrusted positions, the imagination to do something unprecedented but necessary. Something that makes a difference not just to the way a nation's wheels are oiled (read GST) but to the way a nation conceives itself and its future. I will bet Mr Wahid did not consult his polls and focus groups back in Jakarta before he decided to make his historical move forward into a new kind of political space for two countries once implacably opposed. Last week, while Australia was blustering away about not giving in to any UN human-rights pressure on mandatory sentencing (and sounding exactly like China), what the world saw was an elderly man, half blind, wearing a traditional scarf, standing beside another man, still young but greying, who had until very recently been imprisoned in an Indonesian jail. Between them, they have changed something, forever. Neither of them is naive - I'd back the seasoned Wahid against any New South Wales political hardman. Both of them have "learned on the job" and both know that politics is a tough game, but one best played by wily leaders who are occasionally strong enough, or inspired enough, to ignore the rule book. Roosevelt did it. Curtin did it. So did Menzies, with education. We saw it happen under Nelson Mandela in South Africa in the setting up of the truth and reconciliation proceedings. We see it in some individuals in Australia. But not in the current leadership. The news of the postponement of the Australian reconciliation deadline this week elicited a response from the former chairperson of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, Patrick Dodson. Mr Dodson displayed his own version of patience when he said that he no longer expected an apology from the Prime Minister, at least not from this one and not in the immediate future. But there was still vital work to be done and he would be getting on with it. Dodson, like Mr Wahid, is a savvy politician and a man with his sights on the future and his political muscle set for the long haul. He speaks a language that Xanana Gusmao would understand. Pity that it's one to which the Prime Minister of Australia is so resolutely tone deaf. Morag Fraser is the editor of Eureka Street. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Xanana Gusmao's To Resist is to Win, The Autobiography of Xanana Gusmao, edited by Sarah Niner, is published this month by Aurora Books/David Lovell. -- ********************************* Make the Hunger Site your homepage! http://www.thehungersite.com/index.html ********************************* ------------------------------------------------------- RecOzNet2 has a page @ http://www.green.net.au/recoznet2 and is archived at http://www.mail-archive.com/ To unsubscribe from this list, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED], and in the body of the message, include the words: unsubscribe announce or click here mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20announce This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use." 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