[Kabar-indonesia] Australia-Indonesia relationship hostage to public perception

[Joyo at aol.com]

The Courier-Mail (Brisbane, Australia) 
Monday, July 3, 2006

Australia-Indonesia relationship hostage to public perception

By Michael Wesley
[director of the Griffith Asia Institute at Griffith
University]

IN MID-1998, officials in Foreign Minister Alexander
Downer's office began to discuss using the opportunity
created by the Asian financial crisis and President
Suharto's resignation to push for a change in East
Timor's status. At that stage, no one was talking
about independence.

It was thought that if Indonesia could be persuaded to
grant East Timor a form of autonomy, it would remove a
key recurring irritant from the Canberra-Jakarta
relationship. But what developed into East Timor's
traumatic passage to independence has set off
dangerous dynamics that continue to trouble the
Australia-Indonesia relationship.

Australia-Indonesia ties since 1999 have been a tale
of two very different trajectories. One trajectory,
traced by popular perceptions in both Australia and
Indonesia, has been decidedly negative.

Public perceptions on both sides have progressively
soured, driven initially by mutual disgust and
resentment over the East Timor crisis and then carried
on a downward spiral by the Tampa crisis, the Bali
bombing and its aftermath, Australia's participation
in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and, most
recently, the Papuan asylum seekers and the release of
Abu Bakar Bashir.

There is a strange symmetry in the negative
perceptions held by the Australian and Indonesian
publics about each other. Each is concerned about
issues of sovereignty.

Many Indonesians are convinced that Australia intends
to break it up, province by province. They refuse to
believe Canberra's assurances that it respects
Indonesia's sovereignty and that East Timor was a
"special case".

Some Indonesian commentators argue that Papua, the
province most recently included in the Republic of
Indonesia, could also be argued to be a "special
case".

On the Australian side, concerns are not about
territory but values: Many in the Australian community
believe the Howard Government is trying to "appease"
Jakarta by changing immigration laws.

There is also a kind of symmetry in concerns about
Indonesia's judicial processes. The various drug
trials on Bali have raised Australian public ire about
the perceived corruption of the Indonesian judicial
system.

Australian and US protests about the trials,
sentencing and release of Jemaah Islamiyah figures
have prompted public perceptions in Indonesia that the
justice system simply does the bidding of foreign
powers, turning figures such as Bashir into nativist
heroes.

In Australia's old democracy and Indonesia's new one,
politicians are discovering there is political capital
to be made in accusing their government of craven
capitulation to the unreasonable demands of the other
country.

But there is another trajectory, a
government-to-government one, that has been more
positive. The Australia-Indonesia security pact
currently under negotiation is the most recent of a
long line of initiatives that seek to build
bureaucratic shock-absorbers into the bilateral
relationship.

There has been a steady movement of Australian
officials northwards to work side by side with their
counterparts on counter-terrorism, immigration, health
and education issues, legal reform, customs and
organised crime. These enduring, coalface links have
provided substantial ballast to the relationship.

Prime Minister John Howard has found in President
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono a pragmatic and highly
effective counterpart.

Yudhoyono has been more effective than his
predecessors in preventing nationalist elements in the
Indonesian parliament and bureaucracy gaining carriage
of issues affecting the Australian-Indonesian
relationship. But Howard and Yudhoyono have recently
found that no amount of personal rapport and
commitment to positive relations can forestall new
turbulence from disturbing ties.

Yudhoyono's personal request to Howard not to grant
asylum to the 43 Papuans raised the stakes for both
leaders; that he did so, and his angry reaction after
Howard was unable to meet his request, shows how
sensitive he is to the demands of nationalists in the
Indonesian political system.

The lesson of recent months is that no amount of
bureaucratic bridge-building will reverse the negative
spiral of popular perceptions in both countries.
Improving government-to-government links is important,
but the hard work comes in arresting the decline in
public perceptions. Too little is being done by either
Government on this front.

Both need to acknowledge negative public perceptions
are a shared problem and to begin a co-ordinated
program to address these trends.

Without such efforts, relations are destined to remain
hostage to fortune and volatile public moods.

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Joyo Indonesia News Service
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