Robert Go, Jakarta – The vast majority of Indonesian lawmakers squashed a move to insert the racially-charged term "pribumi" – meaning indigenous or native – into economic recommendations to be made this year by the nation's top legislative assembly to the government.
Its inclusion would have amounted to instructing Jakarta to give special considerations to businesses run by non-Chinese citizens as it formulates its economic recovery programme.
The draft economic recommendations by a commission of the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) told the government to "boost and develop the economic status of the underprivileged and the pribumi".
Lawmaker Afni Ahmad, who backed the idea, said it would correct inequalities established by policies that gave advantage to ethnic Chinese cronies of former president Suharto.
He told The Straits Times: "It is a fact that the majority of pribumi Indonesians have been marginalised economically by the government. This group should enjoy the same economic privileges as those of the ethnic Chinese.
"As we abolish political discrimination against the ethnic Chinese, we also have to address the economic limits that are now in place against pribumis. Only then can we create an Indonesia where everyone is treated equally and fairly."
According to its supporters, the pribumi-first concept is similar to Malaysia's bumiputera or the United States' affirmative action policies which accord certain privileges to races lagging behind others in development.
Mr Afni admitted that only a few MPR members – from the interest group faction, Golkar and Islamic Reform factions – supported the idea. In fact, most lawmakers rejected the idea so thoroughly that there was never a vote on the use of pribumi. A lobbying process was instead used to bypass the issue.
Mr Alvin Lie, one of a handful of ethnic-Chinese lawmakers in Indonesia, said: "The idea was a dangerous one, but it was not tough to defeat it. Most legislators today realise the problems posed by using that term. It would have set us back decades.
"Although it talks about helping non-Chinese people, it in effect would make the Chinese second-class citizens once again. Our economy cannot stand it, and it would create too many social problems."
Businessmen and analysts agreed that directing Indonesia's economic programme towards helping a specific racial group over others would hurt the recovery process here. Mr Suryo Sulisto, head of The Indonesian Pribumi-Businessmen Association, said yesterday: "That kind of a programme would be counterproductive to the recovery process. The MPR cannot use racial definitions when it formulates its policies."
Instead of prioritising specifically non-Chinese business groups, the government should create programmes that support the vast number of small businesses throughout the country, he and other experts argued.
Mr Suryo said: "One of the lessons from our economic crisis is that in the past, we focused too much on a small number of big conglomerates, instead of making sure that the economy is a field in which many more people, of all races, participate."