three 'Asian' former presidents

china post editorial:


Three “Asian” former presidents have appeared in the news recently.

First, Taiwan's own Chen Shui-bian, already sentenced to life imprisonment for graft, bribery and money laundering, spent Christmas contemplating the new corruption charges laid against him, this time relating to monies changing hands following reforms of Taiwan's financial-holding companies during his first term in office.

Similarly in Peru, the Supreme Court upheld the 25-year prison sentence handed down to former President Alberto Fujimori. The first president of East Asian descent in the Americas — he was nicknamed El Chino, “The Chinaman,” by enemies and supporters alike — Fujimori's 1990 election success was greeted with pride not just in Japan, but throughout the continent of his parents' births.

Fujimori rode to power on the wave of public dissatisfaction with the outgoing regime of Alan Garcia, and though the “Fujishock” reform policies he implemented bore little resemblance to his election manifesto, he quickly gained further popularity by battling the leftist terrorist groups that controlled large parts of the country. And by restoring economic stability, he brought Peru back into the global economic system.

But his methods were characterized by authoritarianism and corruption and his popularity waned. In 2000, Fujimori holed up in Tokyo, from where he suffered the indignity of attempting to resign his presidency by fax, and where the Japanese authorities refused demands for his extradition. Eventually extradited from Chile in 2007, he was prosecuted for “crimes against humanity” and convicted of murder, bodily harm and kidnapping.

Fujimori was additionally found guilty of embezzlement, and the huge sums involved and the systematic nature of his administration's cynical corruption — which pocketed upward of US$600 million — make Chen look like a schoolboy caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

The third and most significant item of news was the passing of former Indonesian president Abdurrahman Wahid. Many official New Year's celebrations were canceled out of respect to the moderate Muslim politician who died on Dec. 30 at age 69 after prolonged illnesses.

More illuminating, perhaps, were the responses of ordinary Indonesians, many thousands of whom took to the streets to mark the passing of the man who led the country from 1999 to 2001 when the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation emerged from three decades of dictatorship. Admirers held vigils at mosques, churches, temples, schools and national landmarks.

These cross-community actions testify to the social cohesion sought by Wahid in the aftermath of the repression and inter-ethnic violence that characterized the Sukarno and Suharto regimes. Born into a family with moderate religious and political leanings — one grandfather had founded the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) Islamic group, the other originated education for Indonesian women; and his father, after involvement in the nationalist movement became the independent nation's first minister of religious affairs — Wahid abandoned his academic career to work first as a teacher, then as a journalist and social commentator.

He was increasingly drawn into conflict and compromise with the Suharto regime, however, and having taken up leadership of the NU, he sought to revitalize it into a brand of Islam that was open, fair and tolerant. His liberal ideas and advocacy of interfaith dialogue — he accepted an invitation to visit Israel in 1994 — meant he sometimes struggled to promote this agenda even within his own organization.

Nevertheless, the strength of his ideals prevailed, and after Suharto was forced to step down in 1998, Wahid's National Awakening Party (PKB) held the balance of power. In the election for Indonesia's fourth post-independence president the following year, he defeated rival Megawati Sukarnoputri, who through her father's legacy had made a major contribution of putting pressure on Suharto, and whose Indonesian Democratic Party-Struggle (PDI-P) had won the largest share in the legislative elections.

Continuing his spirit of pluralism, Wahid invited Megawati to be his vice president, and selected a “national unity Cabinet” that included many non-aligned politicians, members of rival parties and even of Suharto's Golkar party.

Wahid continued to push a post-dictatorship agenda, abolishing the propangandistic Ministry of Information and highly corrupt Ministry of Welfare. It was his challenges to the military and the powerful ministers of industry and trade and of state-owned enterprises, as well as accusations of corruption leveled against himself and his own regime, that sowed the seeds of his fall from power in less than two years.

By that time Indonesia was firmly on the way to democratic governance, however, and although not freed from inter-ethnic conflict and violence, their scale was greatly diminished from the frequent excesses of the dictatorial decades.

Wahid's major achievement and his greatest legacy are perhaps not merely within Indonesia's Muslim community, but within the global Muslim community and the world at large.
Throughout his life, as teacher, journalist and social commentator, then as cleric and religious activist, and finally as politician, Wahid consistently sought tolerance and inclusion rather than extremism and exclusion, and wherever he traveled he preached his mantra that “upholding democracy is one of the principles of Islam.”