Emulate Jokowi for a better Malaysian future

 

Somebody from Singapore recently wrote a very flattering piece on President Jokowi of Indonesia.

Perhaps unknown to many Malaysians who still look at Indonesia as an exporter of maids and factory workers, the country has made huge strides in its economic and social development.

Jokowi is clearly a key reason for their success.

We always thrash leaders when things go badly, and it’s only fair we credit them when things go well. Jokowi certainly deserves much credit.

Indonesia started its life as a modern nation the hard way. They fought a war of independence against the Dutch that lasted for years, and they paid heavily for it with their blood.

When somebody in Indonesia claims to be a freedom fighter, it means more than him having gone to Amsterdam to have some independence discussions over herring and cheese. It means he was in a shooting war.

After independence Indonesians had a strongman president – Sukarno – who actually carried out an armed confrontation, called Konfrontasi (possibly from confrontatie in Dutch) to stop the formation of Malaysia in 1963.

It was a low-intensity conflict rather than an open war. But hundreds died in the few years while it lasted, low intensity or not.

Surprisingly many Malaysians, the youth especially, don’t know much of this critical period in our history. They probably didn’t learn about it in school, or they don’t care about our own history. Or because of one, the other.

Indonesia took a hard tumble in the mid-1960s. After a failed coup attempt, the country went on a killing spree, with the winners eliminating any real or perceived threats, and as it often happens in such cases, creating much collateral damage too.

This was followed by relative stability under President Suharto who came out on top after the turbulent period. Over the next 30 years Indonesia made much progress, but was also much hobbled by the usual disease of corruption.

It went through another big upheaval in 1998, when the Asian Financial Crisis created economic hardships exacerbated by the decades of looting and corruption by Suharto and his family and cronies.

After Suharto was forced to resign, there was a massive outflow of wealth by both natives and investors as well as the kleptocrats who moved their ill-gotten money to safer havens.

Fun fact: Among the major neighbouring nations, Malaysia’s the only one never to be run by a general! Of course, Singapore’s Lee Hsien Loong, a brigadier-general himself, became PM but through the normal political process; even so, he was still a general!

Jokowi won the presidential election in 2014, and again in 2019. Since then, Indonesia has remained out of the top league of dysfunctional and corrupt nations, and has successfully walked the tightropes of race, religion and the military.

Indonesia is clearly the economic behemoth of Southeast Asia, with a huge domestic market to power economic growth and a stable and sensible political environment needed for progress.

This is reflected here in Malaysia by the tightening supply of Indonesian foreign workers. While there are still many Indonesians here, legal and illegal, they’re not as driven to come to Malaysia as they used to be.

Actually, while we still import a lot of Indonesian brawns to power our industry and households, we seem to be exporting a lot of our brains to them.

Indonesia is now an attractive destination for Malaysian talent. Malaysia’s head start in economic development means we’re respected for our skills and knowledge. Similarities in culture and language are a help too.

The days of looking down at Indonesians are over. They used to admire Malaysia, including, would you believe it, our politicians! Now I doubt they’d want any of our political leaders, even those who proudly proclaim their Indonesian ancestry.

Seriously, Indonesia, feel free to take them back. We’ll happily put them in boats and launch them across the Straits of Malacca towards their ancestral homes.

Indonesia is proving to be more progressive and resilient than we are. We’ve become softened by our earlier success, and like lazy second and third generations, refuse to put in the work needed to keep the lead.

Indonesia has caught up and is now pulling ahead.

Many Filipinos may argue the Philippines are joining Malaysia in the race to failed statehood. Myanmar is also struggling to match the progress of some of its neighbours. But it’s not a league we want to be in.

I have some personal memories of Indonesia. Ten years ago, in the pre-Jokowi days, I lived and worked in Jakarta and got to know its people well.

I noticed while Indonesia was messier and more corrupt than Malaysia, its people believed things were getting better. While many were looting pieces of the economic pie, they also seemed to believe the pie was growing.

There was optimism that tomorrow would be better than today, and certainly better than yesterday.

Whereas when I looked at Malaysia, I sensed a lot of pessimism, that things had peaked and were becoming harsher and gloomier and more unfair, and that our best days were probably behind us.

That was then. Now it’s even worse. We seem to be having a terminal case of brain drain and economic hara-kiri and political opportunism.

The worst is the desperate feeling that, given things aren’t getting better, and the economic pie isn’t growing as it could and should, the only thing left to do is to steal everything while you still can.

At some point, the gravy train will stop, and you don’t want to be left empty-handed. So, loot everything lootable, stash your wealth somewhere far away, and the only generation’s future you should care about is your own.

Semua Saya Sapu became the operative mindset of our business and especially political elites. There really should be a political party named that, or perhaps a renaming of some of our current ones. That will at least bring some honesty back into politics.

I must admit it’s very embarrassing to wish we had a leader like Jokowi.

A Malaysian admiring an Indonesian politician and wishing we had somebody like that to run our country? My, how things have changed. - FMT

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.