ANALYSIS: Obama could bring change for Indonesia too

November could see the election of the United States’ first African-American president. Although some American voters view his upbringing in the predominately Muslim Indonesia as a dark side to his past, many Indonesians hope that Barack Obama can bring them change, as Ayden Fabien Férdeline discusses.

Barack Obama is everyone’s son in the bustling streets of Jakarta. In this teeming metropolis of 23 million, many people – young and old, male and female, rich and poor – want to share in the pride of having a neighbour become the world’s most powerful person, even if they had no knowledge of the boy when he lived here forty years ago.

Jakarta is an unusual city. With poverty, corruption, sleaze and injustice so tightly woven into the city’s tapestry, optimism is often low, and politics can be restricted to the elite. Politicians are despised. But Indonesians want change. They want more opportunities. They want Obama.

The United States of America, if anything, is synonymous with influence. Political decisions made in the U.S.A. have an incredible impact on other nations, particularly those developing in South East Asia. With Obama at the helm of the White House, Indonesians are confident that change will transpire, not just in the U.S.A., but abroad also.

Overall, Indonesians sincerely believe Obama will bring world peace. Kompas, the most widely-read publication in the nation, the newspaper of the poor and working classes, published an editorial in June this year outlining how “the nightmare under George W. Bush will pass as bitter history never to be repeated”, and how Obama “means peace.”

Many Indonesians forget that, as an American senator, Obama has always supported those policies of most benefit to the United States, and will no doubt continue to do so. Inevitably, his interests may run counter to Indonesia’s. But he is still the ‘son’ of a nation struggling to recover from the damage inflicted by dictator Suharto. In the years since his presidency, attempts to recover the $35 billion Suharto embezzled have failed. Charges of corruption and genocide did not proceed. The current Indonesian administration has made little effort to improve labour conditions, end discrimination, or improve the standard of living for the majority of its citizens. Obama, who represents the Democratic Party, will be more focussed upon repairing international issues of human rights, labour and trade than the Republicans – and Indonesians know this.

“Our country has been led by the nose by the United States. It won't happen anymore if he becomes the U.S. president,” said Sonny Imam Sukarso, an elementary school classmate of Obama’s in Jakarta in the 1960s, speaking to Agence France-Presse just hours after Obama declared victory in becoming the Democratic Party’s nominee.

Obama has distanced himself from Indonesia in recent months, having considered the negative repercussions he could suffer from having ties to the world’s most populous Muslim nation. However, he has not apologised for his active relationship with the country. He has not said anything negative towards the country. Rather, his campaign recognises that middle-class America can be – albeit perhaps unintentionally – bigoted. The average American does not want international change, but improvements on the domestic front – even if the latter is intrinsically intertwined with the former. For now, if he is to bring the world change, he must first convince Americans that he will not.

In his memoir Dreams from My Father, Obama characterised his upbringing in the archipelagic state as the “bounty of a young man’s life.” Amid paranoia and unfounded misconceptions regarding Islam in the United States, Obama will enter the White House with a more neutral position on the religion. Republican presidential candidate John McCain, on the other hand, is widely perceived as being ignorant of and, indeed, hostile towards Islam.

Obama represents hope not just for Indonesians and, of course, Americans, but also for Africa. In Kenya, where Obama also has ties, he will inevitably become a role model for minority groups and the underprivileged.

It remains to be seen whether Obama will become the 45th President of the United States of America. Ordinary Indonesians have no real knowledge of the U.S. elections. All they have is hope. Hope that Obama can bring them the changes that their government has failed to implement. The mere fact that someone who lived in Jakarta could emerge as such a powerful figure is an endless source of pride for most Indonesians. Whether or not it becomes a reality is, momentarily at least, irrelevant.