Someone in the government must have prayed really hard, and God heard him because the threat of further economic drubbing has eased in the past week. The plunge in the rupiah's exchange rate, the clearest sign of a deeply troubled economy, has been arrested for now.
We can imagine the prayer went something like this: "Dear God, please don't let the Federal Reserve (US central bank) further taper its quantitative easing policy. Dear God, please let world oil prices stabilize, or fall a little. Dear God, please don't let the rupiah fall any further."
And someone may even have been praying that US President Barack Obama would go ahead with his plan to attack Syria, because an official believed, according to one news report withdrawn since, that it would be good for the Indonesian economy.
Governing in Indonesia appears to have come down to this: A greater reliance on the grace of God, and less on our own efforts to change our own behavior. This is true with regard to the way the government manages the economy.
And this time it seems to have worked.
If the global economy is a zero-sum game, in which the fortunes of one nation would come at the expense of another, Indonesia could rightfully claim that God has been on its side. Our prayers have been heard, and theirs (whoever they are), have not.
Our economy has been spared from further buffeting. The US central bank has refrained from further tapering its quantitative easing monetary policy, which had shocked the international financial markets. Just as the nation was bracing for even more shocks, news came that the US has decided not to continue with the tapering policy.
The "Invisible Hand" has intervened on our behalf. Our prayers answered.
The pressures are off. No more panicking and not even a sense of urgency on the part of our government. There isn't even any discussion about changing our ways to anticipate the next round of trouble, which is bound to come. And it may come sooner than we thought. Pressures are mounting on the US to resume the tapering policy.
Don't worry. With our prayers, God will come and help us. He came to our rescue once, and he surely would come again. Insya Allah.
Just two weeks ago, there was a consensus that the nation's addiction to cheap oil, which is heavily subsidized by the government, was the main culprit for Indonesia's vulnerability to external shocks. The solution would be to address that addiction, which would have meant raising domestic fuel prices closer to international levels.
This is of course politically unthinkable, not when the nation is preparing for general elections in 2014. No sane president, finance minister or any other politician would advocate raising fuel prices. That would be political suicide for anyone contemplating a run for office. But that means we continue to squander precious natural resources by burning fuel, both locally produced and imported, like there is no tomorrow.
Thanks to our politicians, the nation continues to be in denial about the need to start paying market prices for our fuel, as most of the rest of the world does. Instead, we seem to be blaming foreign oil companies for filching our natural resources.
The government would still have to fork out a larger sum of money to pay for the soaring fuel subsidy because each barrel of imported fuel would cost more in rupiah than originally calculated before the rupiah's unanticipated sharp depreciation.
With the launching this month of new models under the government's low-cost green cars (LCGCs) program, owning four-wheel vehicles has become more affordable to millions more. Like Americans, Indonesians are now being told that driving a car is a symbol of prosperity, living the Indonesian dream, and they get to enjoy the huge fuel subsidy.
When the issue of the subsidy came up for discussion in the House of Representatives this week, no one was advocating for an increase in fuel prices. Instead, both the government and the House agreed to take the easy way out: Increase the subsidy allocation.
We should probably thank the politicians from the minority Islamist parties in the coalition government. Since they claim to be closest to Allah, we should let them take credit for our national prayers being heard. What would the nation do without them?
But, as one oft-quoted Koran verse says, "God will not change the condition of people unless they change themselves." Indonesian leaders cannot simply rely on governing on a prayer. We have been lucky, or blessed, that the economic turmoil has eased, but can we seriously count on God's grace again without making our own efforts? Insya Allah.
— Endy M. Bayuni
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