Senator Andrew Bartlett
Thursday, June 09, 2005
 
More impressions of Aceh & beyond
Just before leaving Aceh yesterday, our delegation was told we would probably be able to meet in the morning with the Indonesian President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. It would be a good finish to a visit focused on the enormous human impacts of the tsunami and earthquakes in the region. The twin messages I got from my time in Aceh (and from meeting Acehnese politicians) was the need for more reconstruction to be happening on the ground, but also the need for the local people to have involvement in the reconstruction. Unfortunately, these two goals are often incompatible. Proper community involvement in decision making and implementation is highly desirable and gives the best chance of successful reconstruction and maximum value for money from all those people and countries who donated. However, if it is done properly, it also takes a lot of time, particularly for a place like Aceh which has a very fraught relationship with the central government and a generally high suspicion of many outsiders. By contrast, donors – and the local people – like to see results. Given the scale of the disaster, which is very hard to fully comprehend, I think the progress has been very good and the foundations well laid for things to be able to go ahead well from here.

However, the loss of local expertise is even harder and slower to replace than bridges, houses, ports and roads. It is possible that up to a quarter of a million people were killed. Many of them were community leaders, teachers, health workers and people in the local bureaucracy. Cultural and social differences make it difficult to just fly in a stack of replacements.

Of course the thing that can never be fully repaired or replaced is the personal loss. As we walked through the local (ex)village of Deah Baro yesterday, there were pockets of people here and there building some more solid shelters. Over a half to three quarters of all the people who lived in that area have died. As we walked up what used to be a laneway in the village towards the waterfront (the laneway with its curbing is still there, but the village is wiped away), a middle aged woman was walking towards us. We said hello and that we were from Australia, but she could not speak English. However, one of the other delegation members, Catherine King, the Labor Member for Ballarat, found one of our aid officials who could interpret. As we stood on the shoreline that used to be shielded behind the harbour that was blown to pieces, this local woman who had lived on the laneway told how she had been away when the tsunami hit and had returned home to find that all five of her children and all her grandchildren had been killed. She said in her local neighbourhood of 2000 people, only around 240 had survived. It was hard enough to just listen to this, let alone imagine what it would be like. I don't know how you rebuild personally from that type of devastation. We stepped out of that world and back into the comfy chairs of our aeroplane and flew back to Jakarta to our very comfy hotel.

In the morning we got to meet President Yudhoyono. Foreign Minister Wirayuda who we met on Tuesday was also present. It went for about 30 minutes and it was undoubtedly an honour. Without revealing the specifics of what was said, such meetings inevitably have some diplomatic niceties, but there were some useful and positive things said.

The President acknowledged the security challenges that still need facing and expressed his clearly genuine thanks for Australia's prompt, large and ongoing support (at community as well as government level) in helping to rebuild areas affected by the tsunami. The sizeable tasks still ahead in addressing central problems like poverty and corruption are recognised, but I agree with a comment left on my previous post that very substantial progress, bordering on the extraordinary, has been made in implementing real democracy in Indonesia and there is reason to be optimistic about the chances of improvement in some of these key areas. Also, as with the various discussions we had in Jakarta on Tuesday, I think people who are concerned about Schapelle Corby's situation should have no concerns with what was said.

One does have to be careful not to get too rose coloured a picture on delegations like this, as inevitably the positive side of things tend to be heavily emphasised. However, I think there is a strong awareness and open acknowledgement by the Indonesians of the nature and size of the problems they face, not least of which are poverty and corruption. But when I consider the current habit amongst Australian governments, both Labor and Liberal, of denying or ignoring major problems or glossing over them with shiny rhetoric or shooting the messenger who highlights the problem, the Indonesian Government's open acknowledgement of some of their major problems seems almost refreshing by contrast.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Thursday, June 09, 2005 Permalink
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