Zahrain as envoy deprecates Jakarta posting

If diplomacy is the art of fishing tranquilly in troubled waters, the appointment of Zahrain Mohd Hashim as Malaysia’s envoy to Indonesia must have been done with the expectation that as an ally-turned-adversary of Anwar Ibrahim’s, he has what it takes to sway an audience whose affinity for the Pakatan Rakyat supremo is said to be deep and abiding.

Diplomatic postings to sensitive capitals are usually reserved for practitioners of the craft who are not only well versed with bilateral issues but are also equipped with the special tact that is best described as the ability to remember a woman’s birthday and not remember her age.

If he does possess such fine discretion and the aplomb to navigate in rough weather, the former chief of Penang PKR and MP for Bayan Baru has not given advance notice of it.           

By appointing Zahrain as Malaysia’s envoy to a sensitive posting like Indonesia, the government of Najib Abdul Razak is signalling that partisan political considerations outweigh other priorities when it comes to such appointments.

It is reliably learnt that former deputy minister and MP for Temerloh, Saifuddin Abdullah, was taped by Wisma Putra for the post but Zahrain beat him to it. 

Saifuddin’s ability to engage with adversarial opinion and openness to the democratising currents let loose on the world by the internet, had put him in the running for the appointment but Zahrain’s pull with powerful influences behind the scenes in the Najib administration won out in the crunch.

The post of Malaysia’s ambassador to Indonesia is laden with the importance that comes not only from the presence of some two million Indonesian workers in Malaysia and the controversies that periodically roil relations between the two countries.

There is also the matter of the different trajectories that the evolution of their polities is taking.

Keeping up with Indonesia

Indonesia is increasingly seen as having stolen a march on Malaysia in acclimatising itself the better to the winds of democratic change brought on by modernity while Malaysia appears unwilling to get out of the authoritarian groove that its bigger neighbour languished in during the Suharto era.

Not a little pride stemming from the one-upmanship that is played between the neighbours with the stakes of press freedom, free and fair elections, campaigns against graft, etc, ride in the comparative balance between the two countries.

In these comparative indicators, neither country likes to see itself as trailing the other, it being a matter of not just keeping up with the Joneses, as in the economics analogy, but, more importantly, being ahead.      

In appointing Marty Natalegawa, a highly educated career diplomat to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs four years ago, the Indonesian government was seen as attempting to render the portfolio the preserve of foreign policy professionals in their governing elite, keeping it out of the reach of merely political appointees.

From the time of appointees like Adam Malik through to Syed Ali Alatas, Jakarta’s foreign affairs portfolio has been the domain of the foreign policy professional.

Founding leader Sukarno’s decision to host the Afro-Asian Conference in Bandung in 1955 had inaugurated an era of Indonesia’s importance as a player on the world stage and of its geostrategic significance in the region.  

In tandem with this thinking, it became imperative that the foreign affairs portfolio required the ministrations of a professional with feet firmly planted on the country’s vital interests but with the ability to survey the global horizon. 

Saifuddin better choice

In Natalegawa, it is said the country has an appointee with the requisite breadth of vision which makes Wisma Putra’s choice of his Malaysian interlocutor in the Indonesian capital a matter of professional gravity and not a little delicacy.

Appointment somebody like Zahrain, who is little more than a political flunkey, to the post detracts from the significance of the ambassadorial role. 

If he has been appointed to sway Indonesian media and ruling elite opinion away from its longstanding predilection for Anwar Ibrahim as a Malaysian leader, it is unlikely to achieve that purpose:  Zahrain lacks the articulation and grasp of issues to bring it off.

The level of intellection in governing circles in Indonesia is higher than in Malaysia which partly helps to explain the high standing that Anwar, who is more cerebral than most BN leaders, enjoys among the ruling elite in Indonesia.

Saifuddin would have assayed the role of ambassador the better because he is more endowed intellectually than Zahrain and in his five years as deputy minister prior to his defeat in Election 2013 managed to shed the reflexive partisanship of the Umno flunkey.           
That was evidence of some broadness of vision that Jakarta’s media and other mavens would more readily appreciate.

Suffice diplomatic postings to sensitive capitals should not be viewed as rewards for politicians of expedient and shifting allegiances.

The receiving nation would be apt to view the emissary as soiled goods and the decision to accredit him to them as a deprecation of the recipient’s importance.  

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TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for close on four decades. He likes the occupation because it puts him in contact with the eminent without being under the necessity to admire them. It is the ideal occupation for a temperament that finds power fascinating and its exercise abhorrent.