World needs to see Indonesia as normal country-report
By James Grubel
CANBERRA, May 27 (Reuters) - The world needs to update its image of Indonesia and start treating it as a "normal" country, similar to middle-income developing nations Brazil, India and Mexico, an Australian strategic think-tank said on Tuesday.
The influential Australian Strategic Policy Institute said in the 10 years since the end of former President Suharto's authoritarian rule, Indonesia had become a strong democracy, with solid economic growth and competent leadership.
"Indonesia today is a stable, competitive democracy, playing a constructive role in world affairs. It is no longer in a state of profound flux and turmoil," analysts Andrew MacIntyre and Douglas Ramage said.
Their report on Indonesia, titled "Seeing Indonesia as a Normal Country", said concerns Indonesia would be engulfed by radical Islam after the 2002 bomb attacks in Bali, or the nation would break up under democracy, had proven unfounded.
Instead, Indonesia has emerged as the world's third-largest democracy behind the United States and India, with a strong record in fighting terrorism, and where mainstream secular parties have dominated in elections.
The Indonesian island chain, home to about 225 million people and the country with the world's largest Muslim population, has a consistently high voter turnout, but where Islamist parties regularly win only 5 to 8 percent of the vote.
"Seeing Indonesia as a normal country involves recognising just how much progress it has achieved since the fall of Suharto, while maintaining a clear-eyed realism about what's likely to be possible," the analysts said.
MacIntyre and Ramage said the Indonesia government had taken strong steps to fight corruption and to reform its police force, which has had strong success in fighting militants and drug traffickers.
At the same time Indonesia's military, which had a central role during the 32 years of Suharto's rule, has been marginalised from key political debates, in a move MacIntyre and Ramage say is one of the "standout" reforms of the past decade.
"The military was removed from many of its most powerful, formal political roles in Indonesia with alacrity that many observers haven't yet fully appreciated," the report said.
"The Indonesian armed forces' departure from politics in the new democracy was more swift, and more thorough-going, than has occurred in neighbouring Thailand or the Philippines."
The report said poverty would continue to be a problem for Indonesia for some time, with 49 percent of the population living on less than $2 a day and with maternal mortality rates three times higher than in Vietnam and six times higher than in China.
The report comes as a government hike in fuel prices triggered recent street protests from students and workers, although some analysts say the almost 30 percent increase was moderate and unlikely to spark widespread social unrest.
It also said Indonesia faced ongoing problems in securing basic education for its young people. (Editing by Michael Perry and Valerie Lee)
