President Megawati Sukarnoputri has reportedly spent a whopping $22.8 million on overseas trips during her first year in office and no one in parliament is complaining – disgraceful given that one of the excuses used to oust her predecessor Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid was that he spent too much time and money abroad.
The Alliance for New Indonesia (PIB), which is due to become a political party on September 23, on Monday revealed the amount spent by Megawati on her foreign trips. "Such extravagant expenditure is clear evidence that the Megawati government has no sense of crisis," PIB chairman Sjahrir, a prominent economist, was quoted as saying by the Jakarta Post.
Most disgusting was that the government reportedly spent $1 million on Megawati's May 20 trip to East Timor, where she spent a whole four hours begrudgingly attending the former Indonesian province's independence ceremony. Most of the $1 million was used for the deployment six warships and 2,000 soldiers, ostensibly to protect Megawati at a peaceful event that was attended by scores of world leaders. Indonesia's brazen show of force, which was criticized by East Timor, wasted a huge sum of money that could have been used to buy food for the poor, or develop infrastructure, or fund small business programs for the needy.
Part of the reason that Megawati's trips cost so much money is that she brings along members of the domestic press free of charge, effectively giving them semi-holiday junkets. This practice had actually been abolished by Wahid, but Megawati seems to have no qualms about using state funds to ensure that her foreign jaunts are well covered by the media.
According to the PIB, Megawati and her retinues spent $2.3 million on accommodation, $12.8 million on transportation, and $6.6 million on allowances for entourage members. Is Megawati unaware that children suffer malnutrition in some parts of the country because their parents can't afford to buy them nutritious meals? Does she have any idea that millions of Indonesians are struggling to make ends meet, partly because of rampant corruption? Presumably not.
In addition to wasting money on foreign trips, her government has also proposed giving more money to the military, without requiring greater transparency from the armed forces. In the details of the draft budget for 2003 announced by Megawati last Friday, routine military spending is to be raised from 9.5 trillion rupiah ($1.07 billion) to 17.8 trillion rupiah (more than $2 billion). Furthermore, the military's maintenance and procurement budget is to doubled from 2.2 trillion rupiah to 4.4 trillion rupiah. The government also intends to raise soldiers' salaries by 10% and increase their daily meal allowances from 12,500 to 15,000 rupiah.
Many analysts say Megawati is reliant on military support to ensure she stays in power, so she is therefore not averse to throwing money at the armed forces without first demanding the military publicly declare how its funds are being spent.
Megawati's hypocrisy in dealing with the military is evident when looking at her efforts to curb drug abuse. Members of the armed forces are involved in the narcotics trade, but the president has done little to tackle the root of the problem, despite launching anti-drugs campaigns. Instead she has told the military not worry about committing human rights violations. This from the same woman who once said that when she became president she would not allow any civilian blood to fall in Aceh. Try telling that to the more than 1,800 people killed in the province since last year.
Wahid's efforts to expose military corruption via the late reformist Lieutenant General Agus Wirahadikusumah, simply resulted in the general being sidelined and no doubt furthered the military's desire to see the president impeached.
A more trivial cause for concern over Megawati's excesses is that state postal service PT Pos Indonesia on Saturday released stamps featuring the president and vice president. Sure Indonesia needs postage stamps, but most genuine democracies only feature monarchs on postage stamps, while politicians and other prominent people can't get on stamps until they are deceased. Not so in Indonesia, where former president Suharto graced the country's stamps for many of his 32 years in power. Suharto's handpicked successor B.J. Habibie also appeared on stamps during his 17 months in power, whereas Wahid declined the honor.
Vanity publishing aside, it's clear there are double standards in parliament over dealing with the performance of the president. Gus Dur, who memorably referred to the House of Representatives as a kindergarten, was frequently at loggerheads with legislators. They were particularly critical of his penchant for traveling abroad and his alleged role in a financial scandal involving the misuse of funds from the National Logistics Agency (Bulog). This culminated in him being impeached in July 2001 and replaced by Megawati.
It was a different story during this month's annual session of the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR), when no one bothered to complain about Megawati's foreign trips or her prevention of an investigation into House speaker Akbar Tanjung's role in a corruption scandal.
So what of Indonesia's so-called kingmaker and kingbreaker – MPR chief Amien Rais? He was at the forefront of efforts to oust Suharto and Wahid, and as he intends to run for the presidency in 2004, he would presumably like to see Megawati under pressure. But for the moment, Rais is biding his time, well aware that his political career could suffer at the hands of wealthy rivals if he makes any major miscalculations at this early stage of the game.
In the current edition of weekly news magazine Tempo, Rais admits that he is no longer so vocal in speaking out against corruption. He told the magazine that earlier this year when he criticized the government's move to give a 10 year extension to corporate debtors to repay their obligations, Megawati sent State Intelligence Agency chief Hendropriyono over to his house late one night to seek a compromise.
Rais claimed he refused to compromise, but failed to explain why he no longer criticizes Megawati's unwillingness to get tough on corrupt tycoons. "On many matters, I see that Megawati has good intentions, but she has a leisurely leadership style. Yet, it also has some positive things about it. For one thing, there are not many protests like there were when Gus Dur was in office. That's also progress," he told Tempo.
It's no secret that many of the protests against Wahid were paid for by his political rivals and Tommy Suharto, so where's the progress? Admittedly Tommy is now in jail, but no one thought of installing a webcam in his spacious island prison cell to prove that he doesn't take some unofficial leave.
One possible sign of very slight progress is that Megawati has reportedly turned down an invitation to visit Egypt in September for talks with President Hosni Mubarak. Mubarak last week invited Megawati to visit to Egypt in the course of her planned trip to South Africa where she will attend next month's Earth Summit, but the Indonesian Embassy in Cairo said she would be unable to fit Egypt into her itinerary.
That's still small consolation for a desperately poor nation that sees its head of state spending more on foreign trips than on Jakarta's needy. Instead the president has thrown her substantial weight behind Jakarta Governor Sutiyoso, to serve a second term in office. Sutiyoso was involved in a deadly attack on Megawati's old party headquarters six years ago. His attacks on slums last year reportedly left about 50,000 poor people homeless. Megawati rose to popularity as the defender of the "little people" but many Indonesians say she has betrayed them.
Naturally, the key to staying in power is to avoid rocking the boat, even though the boat is slowly sinking. Sinking at least for the poor, whereas there are plenty of luxury lifeboats for the ruling elite. Or perhaps it's better to use the analogy of Indonesia being a river full of crocodiles, with the water being the people and the crocs being the elite. Every time the crocodiles move, whether fighting or killing, the water is muddied up and thrown into chaos, whereas the voracious reptiles remain unassailable.