As Asia this month marks a decade since the region went into a deep financial crisis, one might well ask, what exactly has Indonesia been doing these last 10 years? The short answer is that we have been reinventing ourselves. The slightly longer answer is that this has been a difficult and painful process, and that we have had mixed results. Skeptics feel we have achieved little, but the more optimistic among us feel we have made quite significant progress. Everyone agrees however that we still have a long way to go.
If former president Soeharto was mentally fit (which he is not, according to his lawyers' claims in a court of law to spare him from criminal prosecution), he would not recognize the Indonesia that he built during his 32 years in power only to destroy at the end of his reign.
Indonesia today, for better or worse, has been dramatically transformed in the last 10 years. It is now a totally different country in many respects from the one that Soeharto left behind in May 1998, when he was forced to step down.
This is now a country where the leaders are being made accountable for their actions and must routinely seek a mandate from the people; a country where those in leadership position are constantly being watched and scrutinized by the public.
It's a country where differences of opinions are respected and where everyone is free to think and to express themselves without fear of persecution. Our basic human rights are also much more respected and guaranteed than they were before.
This is a new Indonesia where political power is no longer concentrated in the hands of one person, but instead is shared with other individuals and institutions. It's an Indonesia that has been decentralized thoroughly to the lowest levels of the administration, thus giving people in the regions more say in running their own affairs.
It's an Indonesia where the police's main job is to protect and to serve, not to intimidate or beat up the people, and where the military is confined to dealing with the nation's defense and is removed from politics, and made much more accountable. It is also a country where the economy may remain weak (especially relative to its neighbors), but is on a much more solid foundation than the one Soeharto left behind.
If you had entertained any of these notions of Indonesia during the Soeharto years, you would have been called a romantic utopian.
Indeed, Indonesia has come a long way from the days when the country spiraled into chaos after catching the Asian currency contagion that broke out in Thailand in July 1997. Indonesia came off worse than other Asian countries like Thailand, Malaysia and South Korea. The financial crisis led to a wider economic crisis that in turn caused a political earthquake that forced Soeharto out of power. In the ashes of his New Order dictatorship, we started laying down the building blocks of a new Indonesia.
Progress has been too incremental for anyone who lives in Indonesia to really feel the difference. As then US ambassador to Indonesia Ralph Boyce said in 2003 about the transformation in Indonesia, "it is moving at a glacial speed", but over the years the changes have added up to quite a lot.
Yet, in many other respects some things remain unchanged. Corruption is as rampant as it was during the Soeharto years, if not more so, even as many people have been tried, convicted and sent to jail for the crime. Some people and institutions have yet to learn to respect our differences, and prefer to settle them the only way they know how, through the use of violence.
It's still an Indonesia in which our leaders endlessly bicker over minor issues but leave the more difficult and substantial matters unresolved. It's an Indonesia where justice for many remains elusive. Though cases of human rights violations are rare these days, perpetrators of past violence still roam free, as do many of the Soeharto disciples and henchmen. Impunity remains the order of the day for the politically and economically powerful, even as we try to impose the rule of law.
For many, it is also a country where they are actually worse off in economic terms than before.
The number of people living in poverty may have declined from the peak of the economic crisis in 1998 but it is still higher than what Soeharto once achieved. More people than ever are out of work. Sending your children to school is now an expensive affair, and university is practically out of reach except for the rich.
No one ever said reform would be easy and painless, but no one warned us it was going to be this difficult, and that the price we would have to pay would be so high, especially for those who remain trapped in the vicious cycle of poverty and unemployment.
We can't turn back the clock. The Asian currency contagion 10 years ago, and the powerful tsunami that it unleashed, especially in Indonesia, have become part of our history. If we knew then what we know now, we could have handled the situation better and made the changes more palatable.
That's probably the most valuable lesson of all as we mark the first decade since the Asian financial crisis. We can't change the past, but we have the power to determine and reinvent our future. Let's move on. At least we know we are on the right track.