This is interesting....and comical..and entertaing... and sad. ;-) cheers, yudanta Indonesia's Wahid Hires Consultant To Help Boost His Tarnished Image By JEREMY WAGSTAFF Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL JAKARTA, Indonesia -- President Abdurrahman Wahid is fighting back against his critics in Parliament, the media and even political coalition partners who helped him get his job with an unlikely secret weapon. Members of the president's inner circle of relatives and advisers have hired a British political consultant named Nigel Oakes to burnish the leader's tarnished image. The decision to hire Mr. Oakes is a sign of how desperate Mr. Wahid and his entourage have become. Since becoming president on a wave of reformist sentiment late last year, Mr. Wahid has seen popular support slip away, and he has alienated many one-time backers among Indonesia's political elite. Last month, he angered parliamentarians by refusing to explain why he had fired two cabinet ministers in April. Tough Months Ahead Now, Mr. Wahid faces a new confrontation at this month's session of the Peoples Consultative Assembly, where some members threaten to begin proceedings to remove the president. While his ouster is unlikely, the next few months look crucial for Mr. Wahid's future. At first glance, 38-year-old Mr. Oakes appears to be just the man to help. Educated at Eton -- Britain's most prestigious private school -- Mr. Oakes boasts a resume that includes lecturing at Harvard University and starting a company that pumps consumer-enticing fragrances into shops. His main business, Strategic Communications Laboratories, describes itself as helping governments "manage sensitive communications issues" using "the world's most advanced services for managing public opinion." That is what Mr. Wahid seems to need right now. Since President Suharto's fall two years ago, Indonesia has eased media restrictions and nearly 800 print and electronic media ventures have sprouted -- five times greater than the number that existed during Mr. Suharto's rule. Few of them are sympathetic to Mr. Wahid. While Mr. Wahid's decision last year to dissolve Indonesia's Ministry of Information was widely applauded, the move also eliminated an important vehicle for promoting his government's point of view. A Questionable Record But whether Mr. Oakes will be able to solve Mr. Wahid's image problem is open to question. The British consultant had made several efforts to win media contracts from the Indonesian government and political parties in the past, none of them successful. A similar venture in Thailand ended badly. And critics of Mr. Oakes' work on behalf of Mr. Wahid claim, among other things, that Mr. Oakes' team has misrepresented a purported U.S. government grant, attempted to plant concocted information in the Indonesian press and covertly promoted a student group critical of one of Mr. Wahid's political rivals. Whatever Mr. Oakes' past, Mr. Wahid's entourage was quick to ex press interest in retaining the consult ant when he offered his services. In early June, several members of Mr. Wahid's immediate family attended a late-night meeting hosted by Mr. Oakes at the office of local public relations company PT Ellipse. Mr. Oakes offered to help turn back the wave of negative news coverage plaguing Mr. Wahid. Members of the presidential entourage were enthusiastic, according to people familiar with the meeting. A few days later, one presidential insider paid Mr. Oakes' team $300,000 cash for a two-month media campaign, they said. A government spokesman confirmed the arrangement, but said he didn't know where the money came from. Presidential Secretary Djoko Mulyono also confirmed the existence of an agreement with Ellipse. But he referred questions about it to other members of Mr. Wahid's inner circle, none of whom could be reached for comment. Consulting Fees In an interview, Mr. Oakes said he wasn't familiar with the financial aspects of the deal, but added that consulting fees can sometimes reach $1 million for such projects. Within days after the Ellipse meeting, Mr. Oakes' team created a media-monitoring center on the fourth floor of an office block in downtown Jakarta. With its banks of computers, televisions and giant screens, the high-tech setup bears a strong resemblance to the operations centers described in author Tom Clancy's "Op-Center" spy novels. While employees -- most of them students working six-hour shifts -- enter through an unmarked side entrance, VIP guests are shepherded through glass doors, past potted palms and a briefing room to a gallery overlooking the center, where they're shielded from view by a one-way mirror. So far, the center's only public output is a thick daily digest of news reports, along with a chart categorizing each story as neutral, positive or negative toward Mr. Wahid. Controversial Actions But Mr. Oakes' team has also taken initiatives that could stir controversy. In June, Mr. Oakes gave a small nongovernment organization -- the Foundation of Independent Journalists -- several thousand dollars, explaining that the money came from the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, according to members of the foundation and others familiar with the arrangement. The logo of the foundation -- which owned nothing more than one computer -- was then used on a series of TV advertisements praising religious and ethnic tolerance. Mr. Oakes, in the interview, denied ever claiming the money came from USAID, but said he told foundation members that future funds could come from a grant that he said was in the process of being disbursed to the administrative arm of the presidential palace by USAID. But a spokesman for the U.S. embassy said neither USAID nor related agencies had any knowledge of grants being made directly or indirectly to the journalists' foundation or Ellipse. Moreover, since Mr. Wahid's presidency began, no U.S. financial assistance has been given to the palace's administrative agency, the State Secretariat, a U.S. official said. While the foundation-sponsored TV message was not an overtly political one, it was in keeping with the message Mr. Oakes' team seeks to convey, according to those familiar with the public relations program. The message: Only Mr. Wahid has the credibility to hold Indonesia together. An Ethics Seminar The team went further, helping the foundation stage a seminar on journalistic ethics at a five-star hotel, flying in journalists from as far as India to speak on the importance of not allowing the media to be influenced by political or financial concerns. Mr. Wahid opened the seminar, which is unusual for such a small gathering. Mr. Oakes conceded it was ironic that a seminar on journalistic independence was being covertly funded by the government, but he denied the conference was politically motivated. "It is a bit paradoxical, but I don't think it's unethical," he said. A spokesman for the foundation said members were unaware the money came from the presidential palace. "If we had known that we would have rejected it, since we're nonpartisan," the spokesman said. The work for Mr. Wahid isn't Mr. Oakes' first brush with controversy. His name appeared in British tabloids in the 1980s when he was briefly linked romantically to then Lady Helen Windsor, daughter of Queen Elizabeth's first cousin. He was once arrested for a unsettled traffic violation while attending a party hosted by the queen at Windsor Castle, and was accused by at least one British news paper of trying to sell the story of his royal romance to a down-market daily. Mr. Oakes said his arrest was the result of a misunderstanding, and he denied he tried to sell any material to the media. 'It Was Crazy' Mr. Oakes has attempted other Southeast Asian media projects without apparent success. In 1998 and 1999, he made at least two bids to work for former President B.J. Habibie's government and the then-ruling Golongan Karya Party. "They just wanted too much money. It was crazy," said Hariman Siregar, a confidante of Mr. Habibie who was involved in negotiations. In June 1999, Mr. Oakes switched his attention to Thailand, where a new constitution had paved the way for direct elections of the country's Senate in March 2000. A team headed by Mr. Oakes worked for the government in the election campaign, analyzing the media for a body called the International Organization for Electoral Reform. A media center almost identical to the one now in Jakarta was set up in a Bangkok hotel. Mr. Oakes describes the organization as a privately funded election advisory group, based in Switzerland and "close to the United Nations community." But it is hard to find any public reference to the organization. Election specialists in Indonesia, Switzerland and Thailand said they had no recollection of such a group, and it wasn't possible to find any reference to it on the Internet, apart from the project in Thailand. A Web site, ioer.org, was registered in July 1999, with its administrator listed as Alex Oakes of London, Nigel's brother. The Web site is no longer active and the domain name is for sale. Mr. Oakes denied the organization was created to win the Thai contract. "It is extremely unfair to suggest that in any way it was some sort of thing to boost credibility," he said. An Abrupt Ending The Thai operation ended suddenly in December, under circumstances that remain unclear. Thai government officials couldn't recall why it closed and Thai news reports at the time said Mr. Oakes had violated immigration laws. Mr. Oakes said the operation closed because of a dispute with his intermediaries with the Thai government. He alleged the intermediaries, whom he declined to name, had sold material gathered by the Oakes team to a rival party. So far, Mr. Oakes' efforts in Indonesia have borne little obvious fruit. The journalism ethics seminar was poorly attended, as was a news conference hosted last week by a student group called the Struggle Front for Indonesian Youth. According to people involved in the planning, invitations to the discussion were drawn up and faxed by members of Mr. Oakes' team, since the student group has no telephone, computer, printer or fax machine. The conference focused on a document, apparently a fake, which purported to detail recent meetings by politicians plotting to topple Mr. Wahid. Mr. Oakes said that the student group had approached his team for help, but had been turned down. A spokesman for the student group said it had prepared the conference without outside help. In another instance, members of Mr. Oakes' team attempted to place an upbeat article on Mr. Wahid on the front page of an Indonesian daily newspaper, according to people familiar with the incident. A draft of the article was prepared by the Oakes team and e-mailed to an editor at the newspaper. It quoted a "top secret, high-level intelligence report" that concluded Mr. Wahid "must be kept in power if the country wishes to avoid a second, disastrous, multidimensional crisis." When the editor refused to run the article without seeing the original report, he was given a three-page document purporting to be an intelligence report from an unidentified security agency, people familiar with the incident said. However, the three pages don't include any reference to the conclusion reached in the draft article sent to the paper. Mr. Oakes denied knowledge of the incident. "It's absolute rubbish," he said. -- Montira Narkvichien in Bangkok contributed to this article.
