LOL, it makes me laugh to read some of the Australian comments made here. It is clear Australians had next to zero knowledge about Indonesia, which is not surprising since Aussies generally know nothing about foreign countries other than their idol USA and their true homeland UK.

I think SBY is "decisive" enough given the system he works in, as can be seen in his policies to cut-off the crippling fuel subsidy, implement social security nets, create tough foreign policies, and force the surrender of GAM in Aceh.

SBY is a directly-elected president in a democratic system. By definition, a president in a democracy cannot do everything as he pleased like Suharto, but must compromise with powerful parties in Parliament that got elected there by the people as well. I would've thought the author, being one of the so-called Australians who always brag about being "democratic people" would've understand this fundamental property of democracies.

I do agree that SBY need to clean his cabinet from ministers who hailed from parties who are unfriendly to SBY's programs such as PKS, PKB, and PAN.

As for the paranoid allegations against the TNI, it is clear that it was the fall of Suharto and withdrawal of TNI's internal spy network that allows Islamic terrorists to establish their network in Indonesia. There were too much freedom, and it required the two Bali bombings and two Jakarta bombings to make the people realised there freedom must have limitations, ie strong law-enforcement agencies and good internal spy network to prevent crazy terrorists from murdering people and disrupting security in the country.

BTW, English is spoken by millions of people in Indonesia. Indeed it is true Indonesians have better world-view than the insular and hill-billy Aussies.

Chris: your point is most apt about East Timor's main resource issue and the distractions of personalities cast around it in our media. I believe one subtler, more challenging but potentially very enlightening avenue of inquiry would be how recent elections there fell into Dullesian fantasies and corruption from Canberra.

PTBI: please give it a rest. I check several Indonesian chat sites, including some with aggressive flag-waving, anti-Western sentiment and your (crypto-racist?) performance just doesn't cut it. Even linguistic angles show me that you do a very questionable imitation of a chauvinist 'Indonesian' (much smooth, casual English idiom and colloquial abbreviations mixed with basic but inconsistent errors of tense and other grammar! Hmmm). I'm not OLO's first commentator to identify your pseudo-Borat schtick, conceivably bearable if infused with Cohen's ironical flair (Tony Kevin well sussed it at http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=5162#63159).

Maybe PTBI tells his corporate mates he's doing 'info ops'? Methinks PTBI's post rather reveals subtle elements of spectacular failure in Australian "analysis" of Indonesian politics; many in the general public find it hard to believe, but lack of language skill is actually one major policy drawback. Note PTBI's caricatured rehash of a most superficial treatment of SBY and TNI interests in GWOT.

Note too the timely absence of any mention of Australian Government policy farce in East Timor. Yet when talking with politically inclined Indonesians lately, especially the nationalist 'red and white' variety, Australian resource grabs and muddling in East Timor are a serious and relevant scandal; first cab off the rank (yes, PTBI grasps that expression too!). We'll see whether the establishment gains from a silk's call for war crimes prosecution and cop harassment theatrics in a Sydney hotel ("A car's waiting outside the Jakarta Lobby"!). Although I fear the bored East Timorese reaction...

Perhaps without PTBI's cover and failed schtick there'd be other embarrassment for the establishment when Joe Public sees what can pass for an Australian "academic analyst" of regional politics (oh, and "leftist", etc.) nowadays?

So what's next "Proud": hire some desperate visiting Indon student to discreetly take the rap?

Well said mil,you are on the money.
Bruce Haigh

mil and Bruce

I wouldn't go down too hard on PTBI. He seems to have a certain sort of TNI related outlook but the concepts he brings up of a balance between democratic freedom and security body control is quite apt.

Many in Indonesia would see violent jihad as a legitimate and nationalistic goal. To keep the potential violence in check a closer watch is probably required there than here. The TNI is the largest disciplined body in Indonesia so running down its watching (surveillance) role after Suharto was obviously premature. In contrast reducing the TNI's corruption and its coercive tendencies after Suharto was laudable.

As PTBI said 2 bombings in Bali and 2 in Jakarta led to an expansion of surveillance. This phenomenon has been repeated after 9/11 in every major country including Australia.

So I think PTBI is frank but not a fascist - and I like Borat very much ;-)

Pete

Pete
Who watches the watcher,who oversights the policeman in Indonesia.
We are not above this problem in Australia with respect to the AFP.
In Indonesia the TNI runs a very large informer network. They have a pretty good idea of what is going on,they have to, that is their mandate, that is the reason for their existence, that is one feature of their continued pre-eminance at the centre of the political system.
I agree the so called JI is amorphous, analysis of which is beyond Sidney Jones.Parts of the 'JI' may be controlled and run by the TNI.
Watch in the wash up from Glebe what the Generals do to save face and to hit back.
Bruce Haigh

You've bugged my lounge room, Bruce!? Exactly what I was speaking this morning in a separate chat on the issue. ;-) Watch the disaster unfold, as if in slow motion.

The blast and open gang war in Dili (just yesterday I understand) is one aspect suggesting how this scenario is hardly a surprise run from Canberra. Circumstances around Sutiyoso's visit also need some clarification.

Make no mistake viewers: our brothers in Tebet, South Jakarta and Batujajar, Bogor are quite under-rated here - which suits them fine.

I've been telling these guys for years, long before being harassed out of the system, but instead they brand me as the traitor or at least crank.

Meanwhile, our 'experts' go on about E. Timor as "liberated" as though it was Paris '44. A lawyer re-writes history to save Australian faces and they think it's Nuremberg, but without so much as a warrant issued. From my personal encounters with these people, many of them are actually about as "left" as J-M. Le Pen.

I'm not the only Australian who'll dance and spit on their political graves.