Indonesia’s quest for maritime power :                      Vision or fantacy? Siswanto Rusdi  ;   Founder and director of The National Maritime Institute (NAMARIN)

JAKARTA POST,  03 Desember 2014

                                                                                                                       

The rise of Joko “Jokowi” Widodo to the presidency has been hailed as the dawn of maritime consciousness in this country. The “maritime fever” has involved many seminars, conferences and workshops involving those not necessarily having a relevant maritime background. All thanks to the President’s maritime vision, introduced during his election campaign. President Jokowi’s maritime orientation consists of two parts, which can be abstractly imagined as a twin-edged spearhead, namely the sea highway and the maritime axis. In maritime parlance, the two terms are unknown — the common terms are the pendulum service and the international maritime center, respectively. But, as a man dubbed an “out of the box” leader, the President might have not considered the issue of terminology. However, every term has its own intrinsic meaning than cannot be abruptly changed. In case of the pendulum service, for instance, maritime literature says it is a voyage pattern for container ships based on cargo availability at the port of call. As long as there are cargoes at the port, the ship operator will deploy their vessels regularly and punctually. Meanwhile, an international maritime center (IMC) is a port or country that provides various facilities and incentives to the foreign maritime-related companies doing business in it. The ocean highway is perceived as the development of ports in certain regions, such as Sorong in Papua and Batam in Riau Islands. There is also a plan to include Bitung in North Sulawesi in the national ports development program. Apart from the question as to whether those facilities have adequate cargo to attract vessels, industrial activity in those regions is still low. Meanwhile, the maritime axis means that Indonesia will aim to become a home of the world’s maritime culture, signified by nostalgic references to the old kingdoms of Sriwijaya and Majapahit. To implement his vision, the President established the Coordinating Ministry for Maritime Affairs, a non-portfolio post strongly lobbied for by maritime communities, observers and practitioners across the country. Compared with former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s maritime governance policy, the post is a breakthrough. However, founding president Sukarno created a similar post in the 1960s, with Ali Sadikin as its minister. The newly set up Coordinating Ministry for Maritime Affairs, headed by Indroyono Susilo, a son of the late Lt. Gen. Soesilo Soedarman, also a coordinating minister under former president Soeharto, coordinates three ministries: tourism, oil and gas and fisheries and marine affairs. However, as a non-portfolio position it has no executive power; all affairs will be the responsibility of the ministries. This means that the ocean highway and maritime axis will fall under the remits of the agencies. The problem is that those ministries have their own programs as stipulated in various regulations, starting from the 1945 Constitution down to presidential decrees. Thus, the Transportation Ministry, for example, will be mainly focusing on how to develop land-air-sea transportation. The President’s maritime orientation programs will be treated as an additional task with limited funding. The biggest portion of the state budget must go to finance the main programs. The other ministries will likely take the same approach in response to the President’s maritime vision. All this relates to the vision’s lack of clarity. The National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) is holding a series of meetings to elaborate the President’s vision in the upcoming Medium-Term Development Plan or RPJM. However, the meetings have reportedly got stuck on how to define the maritime axis, with most participants preferring to say more about fishing-related activities than about shipping or trading. The meetings also have yet to intensively discuss the key subject – the sea highway. Such an importunate condition has therefore led to questions as to whether the President understands Indonesia’s maritime situation well, or whether his maritime vision was his idea or somebody else’s. If the President understood this country’s maritime situation he would at the very least set up more a technical ministry to carry out his vision. Moreover, he would have done better to use terms more accepted in the maritime community, making efforts to realize it much easier since he only needs to copy what other maritime powers have adopted. Being “out of the box” is fine but the maritime world is the only playing field regulated massively by international regulations, demanding its players stick to them as much as possible. There is still time to adjust the deviation. The quest for maritime power is a great program and to achieve it, we need a proven chart. ●