Leadership

Despite the airmist-cooled mess that is the NAIA, let’s hope the hundreds of participants in last week’s World Economic Forum (WEF) on East Asia returned home with positive impressions of the Philippines.

Hosting an event of the WEF showcases the host country. The other star of the WEF show, however, was not of the Philippines. Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was the recipient of the Global Statesmanship Award from the WEF. “SBY” became only the third recipient of the award, after Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in 2010 and Mexico’s Felipe Calderon in 2012.

Like Lula in his final years in office, SBY is stepping down this year with his legacy a bit tarnished by the involvement of some of his officials in corruption scandals.

Still, considering what Indonesia has achieved, much of it under SBY’s watch in the past decade, many people will agree that he deserves the WEF award.

As Lippo Group CEO James Riady pointed out, people thought Indonesia was on the verge of being Balkanized less than 20 years ago.

Strongman Suharto was driven out in 1998, but the Indonesian people power, unlike our own, was violent. The Asian financial crisis in 1997 sent the rupiah into a free fall. Unrest erupted into rioting that targeted mostly ethnic Chinese, leaving about a thousand people dead. Chinese women were dragged out into the streets of Jakarta, Medan and Solo, stripped naked and raped.

The rioting makes Indonesia circa 2014 all the more remarkable, especially for us Pinoys when we consider Philippine progress during the same period.

Since the riots, Indonesia has become a member of the G-20. It was rated investment grade ahead of the Philippines by Moody’s and Fitch Ratings (but not Standard & Poor’s, which downgraded its outlook on Indonesia recently on concerns over the impact of high oil subsidies).

Indonesia is now the world’s 10th largest economy, rising six notches in the latest ranking by the World Bank, and accounting for 2.3 percent of global economic output. Critics, however, have pointed out that the country is behind some of its neighbors in terms of GDP per capita.

Yudhoyono will be leaving office with growth forecasts for his country at its lowest, at 5.1 to 5.5 percent this year, since the start of the global economic crisis. His country has also slid by four notches to 120th place out of 189 economies in the latest Ease of Doing Business index drawn up by the World Bank-International Finance Corp.

His overall record, however, has earned him bragging rights to leadership. The Indonesian economy is now the largest in Southeast Asia and the country attracts the biggest foreign direct investment in the region. (Guess which one is a laggard in FDI?)

As WEF founder and executive chairman Klaus Schwab told SBY at the awarding ceremonies, “Many describe the period of your leadership as Indonesia’s Golden Years.”

Yudhoyono has “reshaped” his country, Schwab said. Barred from seeking a third term, SBY’s looming departure, with none of the potential successors deemed to have his leadership qualities, is compounding economic woes from a ballooning trade deficit and weakening currency in his country.

Equally impressive, as Schwab pointed out, is that SBY “ensured that democracy remained at the center of Indonesia’s political identity.”

“You have shown, as the leader of the world’s largest Muslim democracy, that there is a strong compatibility between the tenets of such a great religion with modernity, inclusion, gender equity and education,” Schwab told SBY.

Yudhoyono acknowledged the accolade.

“We have achieved that critical point of no return in our democratic development. We have proved to ourselves and to the world that we do not have to choose between democracy and development,” he said. “We have achieved the often elusive connection between democracy and stability. We have broken the myth – the fear – that democracy will unravel national unity… We can have both political freedom and high economic growth.”

Fans of the Chinese development model, take note.

More from SBY: “We are an example that democracy, Islam and modernity can go hand in hand.”

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Schwab observed that when the Indonesian province of Aceh was devastated by the 2004 tsunami, leaving nearly 200,000 people dead or missing, SBY faced the challenge “with great statesmanship.”

No one is going to say this in describing any Philippine official’s response to Super Typhoon Yolanda. The typhoon disaster zone is an unfortunate example of weak leadership in this country.

“Leadership is entirely important to progress… Leadership can be the 2 percent to 3 percent difference in economic growth,” SBY said in his acceptance speech. “Leadership can be the difference between new peace and continuing conflict, and between development and decay.”

In our case, P-Noy’s focus on the campaign against corruption has reaped rewards on the economic front. But reforms, like the benefits of economic growth, have not trickled down to the grassroots. Corruption remains endemic. Meanwhile, P-Noy needs better managers to implement projects he can tout as achievements by 2016.

In many cases, including the Yolanda rebuilding, efforts to ensure that deals are clean are reportedly approaching nitpicking levels and paralyzing implementation.

One of the few action men in the Cabinet told us recently that time has run out for many infrastructure projects that the country badly needs; these projects will just have to wait for the next president.

“I am well aware that history will ultimately judge my presidency well after I leave office in October this year, and I hope it will be kind to me,” SBY said. “But I do stand before you now with a sense of pride for what Indonesia has become today.”

P-Noy should hope that he could say the same thing of the Philippines when he hands over power two years from now.