Ada tulisan menarik dari the Economist, ---majalah paling prestige di UK, tentang Indonesia. Tampaknya secara umum cukup positif meskipun tetap kritis. Ini mungkin satu dari sedikit tulisan yang membahas Indonesia lumayan positif, apalagi ditulis oleh the Economist, meskipun tidak ada ulasan yang baru tentang Indonesia...
--- Asia Indonesia sets an example Nov 19th 2008 The largest Muslim country will stage a remarkable feat of democracy In 2009 Indonesia will mount an impressive spectacle of popular choice, in which around 174m voters across 14,000 tropical islands will choose a president and vice-president and 560 parliamentarians. The chances are good that, as in the previous national elections in 2004, polling will be mostly peaceful and that the overwhelming majority of successful candidates will be committed to a pluralistic Indonesia with freedom of both speech and religion. Once again, the world's most populous Muslim country will demonstrate that there is nothing incompatible between practising Islam and being democratic. Reuters Reuters Now where did I put my vote? This achievement will be all the more remarkable considering where Indonesia was just ten years ago: in chaos. After three decades in power, the authoritarian regime of President Suharto had collapsed amid rioting and no one knew what might take its place. Could such a huge, diverse and impoverished archipelago, with hundreds of ethnic groups, possibly hold together, given the weakness and corruption of its national institutions? Since then the country has consistently surprised on the upside, even if the pace of reform has been ploddingly slow. Indonesia's shattered finances have been repaired. It has developed a free press. The army's hands have been prised from the levers of power. And, above all, Indonesia has become a democracy in which the voters can chuck out their government. Freedom House, an American think-tank, now rates Indonesia as the only completely free country in South-East Asiaputting its richer neighbours, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, to shame. Popular wisdom The 2004 elections allowed Indonesians, for the first time, to choose their president directly. The man they selected, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a liberal ex-general, was deemed by international observers to have been the wisest choice from those on offer. Though the speculation about possible presidential candidates and governing coalitions has already begun, the parties will wait and see how they do in the legislative elections in April before entering into serious talks about the presidential vote (whose first round will be in July with a run-off, if needed, a few months later). Even so, it is quite likely that the two main presidential contenders will be the same as last time: Mr Yudhoyono and his immediate predecessor, Megawati Sukarnoputri. Mr Yudhoyono's popularity has been dented by decisions to cut fuel and electricity subsidies, so as to avert financial ruin and redirect state spending towards the poorest. Miss Megawati has been on a meet-the-people comeback tour since early 2008 and has benefited from discontent over rising living costs. Yet the election is Mr Yudhoyono's to lose. A few other candidates will run, probably including Wiranto, a former army chief indicted by a UN-backed tribunal over the violence that accompanied the breakaway of the former East Timor in 1999. Mr Wiranto will argue that an old-fashioned strongman is what the country needs but it will be surprising if he does any better than the third place he got in 2004. Golkar, the party that used to support Suharto, is now led by Vice-President Jusuf Kalla but his opinion-poll ratings are probably too weak for him to win the presidency. Thus Golkar may, as in the second round in 2004, offer him for the vice-presidential slot on Mr Yudhoyono's ticket. Whereas the presidential race will feature some very familiar personalities, the parliamentary contests will also introduce fresher faces. In recent elections for provincial governors, voters have spurned established figures. This has convinced the main parties that they will need an infusion of new blood to do well in the parliamentary races: Miss Megawati's Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) says up to 70% of its candidates will be newcomers. The country has consistently surprised on the upside At first sight the parliamentary elections look like a recipe for confusion. There will be something like 12,000 candidates from 38 parties battling for the 560 seats. This is a big increase on the numbers in 2004 but the next parliament will in fact be less fragmented than the current one. This is mainly because a new rule requires parties to get at least 2.5% of the national vote to win any seats. Of the 17 parties that won seats in 2004 only eight would have met that test. Furthermore, several mid-sized parties, such as the National Awakening Party of Abdurrahman Wahid (president in 1999-2001), are riven by splits. So the new parliament will be dominated by Golkar, the PDI-P and Mr Yudhoyono's Democratsall of which are staunchly secularistplus the mildly Islamist Prosperous Justice Party (PKS). The PKS, like the smaller Islamist parties, has found that moderating its calls for sharia and embracing pluralism is the only way to win new votes. It will be the cost of living that dominates the campaign, not theology. Peter Collins: South-East Asia correspondent, The Economist
