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| Left to right: SBY (Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono), Agus Martowardojo and Darmin Nasution |
AFTER 30 YEARS of kleptocratic dictatorship and a decade or so of wobbly democracy, Indonesia has no shortage of monuments to bad government, corruption and squandered foreign investment opportunities in a country whose 240 million population, third only to China and India in Asia, suggests it should be a regional champion. There’s the bane of any business visitor to Jakarta, the seaside tollway between downtown and a dated international airport that’s liable to disappear under a high tide. That’s after enduring a contemptuous two- to three-hour queue at arrivals simply to enter the country, often after an hour waiting to pay the $25 "improvement" fee, and all this before getting to luggage that too often goes missing. Then you plunge into several hours of chronic gridlock to get into town. Flying around the sprawling archipelago can be a crap shoot too; Indonesia has one of world aviation’s worst safety records, its aircraft only recently, and tentatively, allowed to fly into Europe’s more exacting skies. And there’s the notorious "special commissions", the "tea money" for access to government power brokers, and the disdain the nation’s businessmen, regulators and judicial system too often have for foreign investors, shareholders and bankers seeking a semblance of due process, legal protection and the most basic of corporate governance for their investments.
