by Julia Suryakusuma and Paige Johnson Tan
It was one year ago that Megawati Sukarnoputri was instated as Indonesia’s fifth president after parliament impeached President Abdurrahman Wahid, carrying with her the high expectations of the public. As someone who had suffered at Suharto’s hands, she was expected to push forward the country’s reformasi (reform) agenda by cleaning and democratizing the country’s institutions and rectifying abuses of the past. One year into Megawati’s presidency, how can her leadership be evaluated?
In a recent book by Heifetz and Linsky, Leadership on the Line, (2002), the authors break down the challenges of leadership into two types: technical and adaptive problems. The solution for the former is within reach by virtue of past knowledge and experience. The problem may be difficult or contentious to solve, but someone in society knows how to fix it. The latter, on the other hand, requires both leaders and led to change and to give up on dearly-held assumptions and comfortable ways of doing things. Adaptive problems are harder to solve because often they are incorrectly diagnosed as merely technical problems. Also, society likely has never confronted a similar problem or set of problems in the past.
This framework is useful to examine Megawati’s leadership. In the coming days, the media will be replete with evaluations of Megawati’s first year in power from a variety of different perspectives: the economy, Aceh, terrorism, the military, and the political role of Islam will all come under scrutiny. Most observers find themselves dissatisfied with the progress made on these issues. They cite the fundamental failure of Megawati’s one year in power as betrayal of the values and aspirations of the reformasi movement, blaming it on Megawati’s conservative character, her lack of political experience, the weakness of her Muslim credentials which make her vulnerable to attack from that quarter, or the deals she was forced to make in order to come to power.
A more far-reaching evaluation, however, involves examining Megawati’s government’s definition of the country’s problems and its design of solutions to them. Megawati’s administration has taken a technical, often piecemeal approach to the definition of and solution of problems that are complex and far-reaching, to problems that are, in fact, adaptive in nature.
The government’s handling of corruption serves as an example. Coming to office, Megawati set herself and her family as paragons of cleanliness. Likewise, she encouraged her ministers to set an example for the country by living a simple lifestyle. Further, the President vowed to establish rules and enforce laws that would it more difficult to engage in corruption in the future. These are laudable steps.
However, corruption in Indonesia is a far more deeply engrained social, political, and economic problem than these steps, even with the best intentions, could hope to handle. Corruption is endemic to society from the lowest to the highest levels. It is the type of challenge which requires engaging the entire population in finding a solution. The entire society must be consulted because it will take everyone in society to kill both the demand and the supply side of the problem, to change the panoply of cultural, political, and economic circumstances which make the problem so widespread.
It is this magnitude of change which must occur in all Indonesians, including the leadership, which makes corruption an adaptive rather than a technical problem. Megawati’s government has not thus far engaged the deep and complex facets of the corruption problem, concentrating on the technical and symbolic features, nor has it engaged the population as part of the problem and part of its solution.
Examples of further adaptive changes that confront Indonesia are legion. These are, like corruption, questions that Indonesians as a whole must come to an answer. What kind of state is Indonesia? How much should Islam play a role in government? What is the proper role of the military in public life? What should be the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches? Between the center and the regions? How much of the state’s economic role should be preserved and how much privatized in the interests of growth and efficiency?
Elements of these issues have been argued on the streets and in the parliament. The president has taken positions on the issues on a piecemeal basis. Nowhere, however, has the population been engaged to explore these fundamentally important issues. A leader needs to create what in psychiatry is called a “holding environment” to allow the people to explore their problems and to come to solutions to them. Solutions cannot be imposed from above, nor can merely the technical aspects of problems be addressed. Imposed solutions (such as Suharto’s firm hand) and piecemeal solutions (such as Megawati’s as-and-when-the-problem-arises approach) only leave the problem bubbling beneath the surface, unsolved and festering until it explodes once again.
It is President Megawati who needs to start the ball rolling in leading the country through these difficult changes. By temperament, Megawati would prefer to handle issues quickly, quietly, and behind the scenes. However, a certain noisy pain must be endured in order to find sustainable answers to Indonesia’s adaptive challenges. This is part of a process by which the entire nation can become engaged in examining its role in creating the country’s problems and in finding solutions to them to create a better future.
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Suryakusuma is a social and political commentator based in Jakarta. Tan recently completed the requirements for her Ph.D. in Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia in the United States.