KIDS & POLICY - NOT AN ACID-WATER MIX.

 TAKING THE FOREIGN OUT OF AFFAIRS                     

How to get the young involved in current affairs? Politicians shy from the question fearing Gen Z’s latent power could shrink their authority, so best seek an answer elsewhere. Like Indonesia?

"Now here's another point" : Dr Dino Patti Djalal, (left) versus presidential candidate Dr Anies Baswedan

         The queue was long, wide, pressing, hot and young. It spilled beyond the five-star hotel’s car park and forecourt. Waiters chatted excitedly about the day ahead, surely a Taylor Swift concert?

But the jolliness was jarred by the walk to the venue past ranks of pavement traders selling Palestine flags ready for the street protests to come.

For this was dawn on a Saturday in Jakarta this month and the masses had come to a show with the turn-off title From Non Alignments to Creative Alignments. It featured foreign affairs, international politics and fixes for an ailing world; with wars in Gaza, Ukraine and Myanmar there was no need to fossick for issues.

Why did an estimated ten thousand teens willingly spend a full Saturday getting involved in international relations with the sort of enthusiasm displayed for the Coldplay concert a fortnight  earlier? 

Here’s the formula: Hire a plush monster hall and make tickets free. Get an entrepreneur with headline acts on speed dial, then let him loose unconstrained by the fear and caution of a government department or uni admin. 

Then it supposedly becomes ‘the biggest grassroots foreign policy group in the world …determined to form a large international relations community with mature and sensitive insights on bilateral, regional, and global issues.’

The go-to guy is Dino Patti Djalal, 58.  If Indonesia used silver spoons this fella was born with a mouthful.

He entered the world in Belgrade where his father Hasjim Djalal was a diplomat - and later deputy FM. The lad was schooled in the US, Canada and the UK where he scored a PhD at the London School of Economics.

In 2010 as US ambassador he won fame by inspiring the diaspora to plug back into the nation they’d fled last century when Soeharto was president . But his ambition flew him too close to the sun; he quit Washington for a pitch at the presidency in the 2014 election.

His pedigree and qualifications failed to move the oligarchs who bankroll parties in Indonesia; they prefer clerics, business tycoons and old soldiers to intellectuals too canny to control. Indonesia’s Icarus hit the ground hard and learned a discomforting truth: Openings for used diplomats are rare. 

But he had enough money to start an enterprise, rightly reckoning that the student idealism that had driven out the autocratic Soeharto in 1998 and steered  in democracy was floundering to find the right map to power ahead.

Uni courses in politics were  pedestrian - why not make them energetic and accessible?

Together with academic and policy adviser Dewi Fortuna Anwar, who got her PhD from Monash and has a CV longer than this story, they started the Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia. 

FPCI calls itself a ‘non-politic and independent foreign policy organisation to discuss and introduce international relations issues’ to diplomats, government officials, academics and students, business people and journalists.

Sounds good - but impotent without the clout of the Republic’s Foreign Affairs Department.  Despite this handicap the FPCI seems to have captured interest by running workshops and seminars.  

The presenters wear T-shirts and don’t peer down their spectacles at uppity students.   Lecturers are engaging, locals but overseas trained.

In an earlier interview with this writer he said: “Our mission is to promote peace and bring foreign policy to the public.That means finding out how to talk to ordinary people about these issues.  They may not seem interested but that changes when, for example, the price of imports rise.”

At the annual conference this month the bill-toppers included two of the three presidential candidates - former governors Anies Baswedan (Jakarta) and Ganjar Pranowo (Central Java). Cashiered former general and alleged human rights abuser Prabowo Subianto was invited, agreed, and then pulled out.

Dino asked the polis to address issues but not to campaign,  which is like urging a fish not to swim.

Ganjar appeared online from West Papua but Anies turned up and was mobbed by fans. Unlike the average plodding politician  he cracked jokes, exhausted the local media with his availability and avoided the booby-trap question which could have exploded his hopes on the spot.

Who’s his most admired figure? A magazine editor who once published a readers’ poll that put the Prophet in seventh place spent five years in jail for blasphemy. Anies got his sequence right, then added Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi. 

Others on stage during the day included a pondering of international professors telling of their fears and hopes for relations with China. All spoke in English as did many in the audience, students using the show as a chance to dazzle friends.

Ten embassies have caught on to the opportunities running stands promoting their unis. Australia sells quality and proximity, its rivals add scholarships and accommodation. Academic life used to be marketed as austere and sober, Now it’s offered as intoxicating.

To lighten the mood between sessions on the failure of diplomacy to keep fighters in hangars and drones unarmed, a try-hard lady filled in with stand-up comedy. Hopefully, she’ll refine her act before next year’s event.

By then there’ll be a fresh president and government.  The new mob may not be so tolerant of Dr Dino and his bid to poke the noses of the people into the affairs of the State.

First published in Independent Australia, 18 December 2023: 

https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/getting-younger-generations-involved-in-politics-,18184

 

IF WESTERNERS ARE IGNORANT, SO ARE EASTERNERS

 TRY TOLERANCE - IT'S MORE HEALTHY

 

On 10 November The Jakarta Post published an opinion by Dr Dino Patti-Djalal with the title What the West needs to understand about the cartoon protests.  Apart from condemning ‘the West’ for its culture of tolerance and free speech I thought this read as an acceptance of extreme reactions to the cartoons.  My rebuttal has been ignored by the newspaper.

So here it is: 

Dr Dino needs to prescribe choice              

It was disappointing to read Dr Dino Patti Djalal’s attempts to rationalise angry protests following the publication of cartoons in Europe that slandered the Prophet Muhammad. (JP 10 Nov.)

The former ambassador to the US and onetime presidential hopeful says that mocking and caricaturing the Prophet is regarded as a direct assault on Islam and an enormous offence to Muslims.

Those like Dr Dino who’ve had a liberal Western education understand that though this emotion can be heartfelt, it doesn’t mean all respond the same way or that a violent response is acceptable.

Muslims don’t have to be offended by cartoons that are neither clever nor funny – they can treat them with contempt and move on.  Some Christians are regularly distressed by the way their beliefs are ridiculed (check Australian musician Tim Minchin’s videos for examples), but have to remember their leader’s exhortation to ‘turn the other cheek’. 

Similarly, I’ve been moved by the stress on forgiveness and rejection of anger through my limited reading (in English) of Al-Quran.

One of the many tragedies encountered by Australian police is the meaningless deaths of young men in pub brawls, usually triggered by macho guys responding to the insults of drunks.   Senior cops urge those caught in such situations  to walk away, but that needs maturity.

Like flag burning, boycotting French products is another immature response.  The trampling of real or faux Louis Vuitton bags won’t lower sales among the show-off rich who buy such products.  Even if sales slumped, the sacked would most likely be ordinary workers in the supply chain – and many could be Muslims.

When Muslims denounce the beheading of French teacher Samuel Paty and other outrages with the same huge crowds of men who condemn the cartoons, then the image of moderate Islam will be restored.

The original offensive pictures wouldn’t have spread beyond a limited group of European consumers of satire if some idle political agitators hadn’t spotted them and seen a chance to foment strife.

From his comments it appears Dr Dino doesn’t follow Islam from conviction after studying the world’s religions with an open mind, but because he was born into a Muslim family.  Presumably, he didn’t choose to be sent to a madrasah. As a child, he had to obey his parents.

Going to the London School of Economics, established in the 19^th century ‘for the betterment of society’ by the democratic socialists of the Fabian Society with links to the Quakers, was the decision of an adult.

Although his overseas education would have taught him ideas evolve and old beliefs need regular scrutiny, his LSE supervisors would have had problems with his current curious reasoning.  He writes that although French President Emmanuel Macron argues for freedom of speech while respecting Islam, Muslims hear something different:

“What the Islamic world hears is, ‘we will continue to abuse your religion, no matter what you feel about it’. It’s probably not what he meant, but that’s how Muslims interpret it.”

So if this contrived outrage is to be dampened down before more harm is done, perhaps Dr Dino can urge people to hear what Macron said, abandon malicious interpretations and accept his words as genuine.  He leads a nation where nine per cent of the population is Muslim, the largest in the Western world, and has to govern for all.

In his long career in foreign affairs Dr Dino has encountered limitless numbers of Westerners who understand why some Muslims are outraged by the cartoons issue.  His hyperbole claiming otherwise is unfitting. We don’t all have biased viewpoints.

 

I’ve met, interviewed and enjoyed the hospitality of Dr Dino and don’t believe mockery of the Prophet is trivial.   I would never rubbish what feeds another’s soul, though I might try to suggest they sample other fare if their diet’s harmful.

I was raised a Protestant (no choice), went to church schools and at one stage had ambitions of a career in the church.  So I have some knowledge of the contradictions and vile verses of the Bible, and as a journalist seen the hypocrisy and evil doings of many who claim to follow the teachings of Jesus.

I hope Dr Dino has similar concerns at the way his faith is being misinterpreted and speaks out against intolerance without adding qualifications.  That might help ease the ‘longstanding squabble’.  Peace be upon us all.

##

 

NOT ALL EYES ON THE US

 

 

               While the US flounders, China plants

Of all the corroded clichés used in reporting the US election, the most rusty claimed ‘the whole world was watching.’

It wasn’t in the Indonesian streets where the concerns were more parochial:  Rooves springing wet-season leaks, the lack of imported fruit (there are allegedly some rotten deals involving licences and preferred traders starving suppliers), and problems with the government’s health insurance policy under assault by the industry.

But nor was Trump v Biden on the agenda at the top end of town, even on poll eve. While the Anglosphere focussed on the US chaos which purports to be democracy in action, China was busy squirreling away, building   its influence in Southeast Asia.

On 2 November the Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia ran a two-hour Virtual Jakarta Forum on ASEAN-China Relations 2020.  The plan was to ‘map a way forward for ASEAN-China economic cooperation towards a sustainable, innovative, and resilient growth in the region.’ 

That’s normally the job of sequestered diplomats, not an NGO driving policy, but the FPCI is becoming Indonesia’s de-facto Kemlu - the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – led by the pedestrian Retno Marsudi, a former ambassador to the Netherlands.

Dr Dino (left) and FM Retno (pic Erlinawati Graham).  

 

There were a couple of offhand comments about the US at the forum, but otherwise the focus was on a near future where China is deeply involved in the region’s trade, aid, finance – and almost every other facet of society.  This included paying with rupiah and renminbi rather than US dollars.

On 14 November the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership is expected to be signed. This is a proposed free trade agreement between ASEAN’s ten members with five of their FTA partners—Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea.

The world’s largest democracy was originally involved but pulled out last November over fears the ‘Made in India’ programme would be neutered by the deal, and its generic medicine manufactures hit by copyright rules. Despite this absence, the remaining 15 countries carry 30 per cent of the world's population and close to 30 per cent of its GDP.

It was clear from comments at the FPCI forum that China sees the RCEP as a major opportunity to expand and bed-down its interests in Southeast Asia, while other speakers seemed resigned.  The pragmatists recognise Indonesia’s trade and aid ties with Beijing are pushing the world’s third-largest democracy away from Washington.  According to Indonesia’s Finance Ministry, the nation’s debt to China is AUD 25.2 billion.

Although negotiations have dragged on for eight years the RCEP has rarely featured in the Australian mainstream media. The Asian press has been reporting ‘some key players...especially Japan and Australia (have) nagging concerns about a pact in which China's presence looms ever larger.’

Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has been quoted as saying worsening diplomatic ties between China and Australia would not get in the way of the progress of the RCEP.

Among the 200 plus participants and onlookers at the FPCI forum were diplomats and scholars from Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam.  Australia was not represented. 

Deng Xijun, China’s Ambassador to ASEAN effused about the shift from ‘pandemic control to economic recovery’, the ‘stability of the region’ and the roles his country would take if and when Covid-19 retreats.

These included the manufacture and distribution of a Chinese vaccine should one become available, the extension of the Belt and Road programme of road, rail and port expansion, and improvements in the supply chain, including more direct flights from Chinese cities to the archipelago.

‘We share the Asian values of solidarity and collaboration,’ he said.  Decoded this means the Chinese have the language, deep contacts and subtle skills in handling obstructive bureaucrats that Westerners lack or can’t access.

China is Indonesia’s top trading partner, taking raw materials, mainly coal.  Former Indonesian trade minister Gita Wirjawan, who was educated at Harvard, told the forum that the US had been ‘disingenuous and disrespectful’ in its approach to global warming concerns.

These exports may suffer if China goes ahead with its emissions-reduction programme, leaving Indonesia with limited markets for its low-grade coal.  About 80 per cent of production is exported.
 
As an NGO the FPCI is rapidly becoming the leading initiator of accessible and informed comment on international affairs.  It’s already eclipsing the Centre for Strategic and International Studies which claims to be Indonesia’s leading think tank on social, international, political and economical issues.

The CSIS was founded in 1971 by a group of mainly Catholic fervent anti-Communist Chinese businessmen and generals and advised the despotic second president Soeharto on foreign affairs until the 1980s.  It has since tried to reshape itself as mildly liberal and inclusive, though still tainted by its partisan past.

So far the FPCI does not appear to be in any party’s pockets, though its founder, former Ambassador to the US Dr Dino Patti Djalal, made a lukewarm bid for the presidency as an independent in 2014.  He was educated at the left-leaning London School of Economics and was spokesman for the nation’s sixth president (2004-2014), former General Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, leader of Partai Demokrat.

The FPCI’s 14 ‘partners’ includes the embassies of Australia, Denmark, the EU, Netherlands and Japan and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

Foreign Affairs has long been seen as an esoteric discipline accessible only to high-born Francophones.  (Djalal’s dad Hasjim Djalal is a former Indonesian Ambassador to Germany, Canada and the UN.)  The FPCI is making it more democratic, and before the pandemic drew hundreds of young people to its big free events.

It says its ‘mission is to promote and shape positive Indonesian internationalism throughout the nation and to the world.

‘We want to bring foreign policy to the grassroots, and to provide a dynamic meeting point where everyone interact as equals. We aim to be an independent, credible voice for Indonesia’s foreign policy.’  It’s certainly seen by Beijing as the place to plant ideas knowing they’ll get propagated.  .

 First published in Pearls and Irritations 6 November 2020:  https://johnmenadue.com/while-the-us-flounders-china-plants/

MAN IN A HURRY

 Running down Track II    

Djalal (left) and FM Retno Marsudi  (Photo Erlinawati Graham)

                                               

Before losing base support and plunging to earth, Dr Dino Patti Djalal was Indonesia’s highflier.

The cosmopolitan ambassador to the US with a professional wife and three little kids sparkled as the new face of the world’s third largest democracy, a welcome offset to the image of past authoritarian rule.

The Republic ranked as a middle power emerging from a chaotic turn-of-the-century revolution but Djalal pushed the positives.

Not through bellicosity but by promoting the archipelago’s rich culture and the policy of its sixth president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY), ‘to have a million friends and zero enemies.’

Appointed to the most coveted job in foreign affairs at just 45 after a six-year apprenticeship as presidential spokesman, Djalal knew citizens back home were bored by their overseas reps’ talkfests on arcane topics. So he played showman and in 2011 staged the world’s largest angklung performance at the Washington Memorial.

With more than 5,000 people rattling the bamboo tubes to the tune of We Are the World, the diplomat startled – and probably annoyed - his staid US colleagues, but delighted compatriots.  ‘This recognises our multiculturalism,’ he said at the time,

Another initiative was to encourage talented Indonesians who’d prospered abroad to help recover their nation’s mana, as they say in New Zealand, meaning honor, respect and status.  Much had been trashed during 32 years of despotic rule under second president and army general Soeharto.

In 2012 Djalal set up the world’s first Congress of Indonesian Diasporas in Los Angeles, recognising citizens who’ve quit their nation to better their lives.

In an elite profession where maintaining stern-faced reticence has been as essential as multilingualism, Djalal was a self-promoter, adding authorship to his CV. Among his nine titles is Nationalism Unggul: Bukan Hanya Slogan (Excellence in nationalism is more than a slogan.)

This pocketbook is more snack than meal, a gallery of selfies with past world leaders, lightened with some self-deprecation: ‘I used to be a frog until Rosa kissed me.’ (Rosa is his wife and a dentist.)

His maxims don’t strain the brain: ‘The worst thing that can happen to 21^st Century Indonesians is to live in a strong democracy with weak ideals, or to live in a rich country with poor people, or to achieve progress but lose our soul.’ 

Djalal started life as the son of Soeharto-era diplomat Hasyim Djalal and well up the pyramid. 

First degrees in Canada, then a doctorate from the left-leaning London School of Economics.  He spent 27 years in government service and was a confidante of the last president; the final assault on the summit just needed the clouds to lift.

Then Djalal made the wrong call.  Too sure of his ability and appeal he made a pitch to be a candidate for the 2014 Presidential election.

Joko ’Jokowi’ Widodo, the former Governor of Jakarta and one-time furniture trader with no military background or family ties to the oligarchy but backed by another party, became president.

His priorities were local. He appointed the little-known Ambassador to the Netherlands, Retno Marsudi, as Foreign Minister.

Although Djalal claimed he never joined SBY’s Democratic Party, like Icarus he’d flown too close to the sun of party politics. The wax on his wings melted and he fell far.  

“The experience was a cold shower,” Djalal told Strategic Review in his Jakarta-based NGO where he’s trying to develop a new persona.  “I got a sudden sense of my limitations, of what could be done.”

Too young to retire to a golf course and too energetic to settle into an academic life, Djalal faced a dilemma: How to get back into foreign affairs when the big game is played by governments on Track I?

How about Track II, the unofficial ‘backdoor diplomacy’ used by NGOs, companies and altruistic individuals?  Unable to threaten sanctions or bombs their only tools are trust and words.

He also had to move at speed.  Fame perishes fast - ‘former’ is a giveaway adjective in the top line of a resume.  In 2012 he’d won a Marketeer of the Year award.  Two years later the last product on the shelf was himself.

Djalal opened the Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia (FPCI) at a Jakarta suburban address so drab he cooked up excuses to meet contacts elsewhere. 

The shame-days have gone.  A supporter offered space in a South Jakarta high-rise with a towering Salvador Dali bronze Homage to Newton in the marble lobby – grand enough to comfort VIPs.

Officially opened by FM Marsudi in May, the FPCI’s ‘School of Diplomacy’ offers modules in speech writing and public speaking, workshops on geopolitics, global trends and other issues parked under the international relations umbrella.

“I used my own money,” Djalal said.  Like pensioned generals he hangs on to his previous title.  When it was suggested the FPCI might have a hidden financier he kept his diplomatic cool:  “There are no big entrepreneurs behind me – I’m beholden to no-one.

“This is a non-profit, non political and non religious foundation. The rent is about Rp 2 billion (USD 142,000) a year and staff wages a similar amount.  We get our money from our courses, workshops and sponsors.  We can create space and do things that governments can’t do.  I’m far more effective now than before.

“Our mission is to promote peace and bring foreign policy to the public.  That means finding out how to talk to ordinary people about these issues.  They may not seem interested but that changes when, for example, the price of imports rise.

“We want to develop understanding between nations.  Our youth exchange program with China should help reduce Sinophobia”.

The Institute’s researchers have set up overseas study tours including one to North Korea, returning just before the North and South leaders’ Panmunjom summit in April.

The next ambition is to run backgrounders in Indonesian current affairs for incoming diplomats.

Djalal claims more than 6,000 came to one of his events; many participants are students of international relations. There are 18 ‘FPCI chapters’ on tertiary campuses.  The mailing list has 40,000 subscribers.  He says there’s nothing quite like the FPCI anywhere in the world.

If true this reflects either his entrepreneurial skills - or reveals great gaps in the universities where low pay and lower prestige deter top talents.

Djalal has been in Perth this month (May).  Freed of diplomatic gags he talks bluntly:

“I’m dying to kill the idea that Australia has a hidden agenda on Papua.  I think that’s rubbish.  (NGOs in Australasia, though not governments, have been supporting independence.)

“Australia should not be part of ASEAN which is geographically apart, though China is now working to redefine Southeast Asia.

“Australia is supposed to understand Indonesia best because it’s next door but in fact only a very small group understands us, while we don’t understand you.  There are stereotypes on both sides that need to change.”

(First published in Strategic Review 6 June 2018 - http://sr.sgpp.ac.id/read/Running-down-track-2