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Indonesian President to visit the Netherlands

In his first  visit to Holland as President of Indonesia, Mr. Bambang Yudhoyono will visit the Netherlands this fall.. President Yudhoyono’s visit comes at a strategic moment in the evolution of the Dutch-Indonesian relationship. It will be an opportunity for the Dutch to recognize Indonesia as one of the rising powers of Asia.

In the six decades since Indonesia’s independence, Indonesia’s economy and foreign trade have exploded, and Indonesia has assumed a leadership role among Asian nations. Indonesia’s GNP stands at $816 billion, the ninth largest economy in the world. Indonesia is a member of the G-20 major world economies, and her balance of trade for the first half of 2010 stood at $580 million (USD). This is the “twenty-first century” Indonesia Holland must come to know.

A recent article in the International Herald Tribune records the independent role Indonesia has pursued in world affairs. It was in 1948 then Prime Minister Hatta articulated for the first time Indonesia’s foreign policy: “Do we Indonesians, in the struggle for the freedom of our people and our country, have only to choose between Russia and America?” No, he answered. “We must remain the subject who reserves the right to decide our own destiny and fight for our own goal, which is the independence for the whole of Indonesia.”

The policy born that day, known as “mendayung antara dua karang” (rowing between to reefs) would keep Indonesia out of the major conflicts of the twentieth century. This, indeed, was the purpose of the Bandung Conference held in Indonesia in 1955, a conference that represented one quarter of the earth’s land surface and a total population of 1.5 billion people. The Bandung conference represented the changing international environment in which the relationship between European nations and their overseas colonies was changing. In the decade after World War II, a massive rebalancing of relationships between Europe and Africa and Asia took place as former European colonies on both continents gained independence. This was the beginning of Indonesia playing a leadership role in Asia, as some twenty-nine Asian and African countries attended the 1955 Bandung conference, the first large scale Asian-African conference.

Next year, Indonesia will chair the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations. It will play a role in deciding whether the U.S. is invited to join the East Asia Summit, a group of 16 countries including Asean members and China, which addresses security issues. Indonesia represents forty-two percent of Asean’s population. Asean nations represent the ninth largest economies in the world. A new Asian-China Free Trade Area, established this past January, has boosted Asian trade by fifty percent. The chairman of Asean, Indonesia’s foreign minister Marty Natalegawa, is expecting to shape Asean policy towards creating an integrated regional trading block by 2018.

It is against this background President Yudhoyono visits the Netherlands in October. It will be to Holland’s great advantage to receive President Yudhoyono in the spirit of looking to the future of both nations rather than belabouring contentious issues of the past. It is also a chance for our youth to become familiar with one of the most significant rising powers in Asia, a nation that has played such an important role in Holland’s past.  

President Yudhoyono’s visit represents a significant opportunity for Holland and Indonesia together to set an example for all former colonial relationships, as well as to build a bridge to the future.  

Foundation “ Friends of Linggajati”
Joty ter Kulve September 2010