SBY and Warren Harding Error

SBY is under fire. Every day he must overcome unrelenting criticism over his feeble leadership.

The last one lashed out at him coming from Anies Baswedan, rector of Paramadina University. In his much-praised article (Kompas, 25/7/2011) entitled “Warning To Leader”, he criticized SBY’s negligence, indecisiveness, sluggishness, doubtfulness. At one point, SBY has ammunition of people’s support in presidential election, but it seems he never exercises this power. SBY doesn’t back his words with deeds. As matter of fact, there is nothing new with these.

Given his poor leadership, is SBY to blame?

Tantric Yoga Spirit and Masterpiece

In 1977, the late Muchtar Lubis, our crusading journalist, put forward Indonesians’ traits covering, among others, spendthrift, impatient and lazy. Nowadays, it turns out the very behaviors are still relevant and rampant.

Like it or not, Gayus Tambunan, the wealthy tax officer, and M. Nazaruddin, the wealthy ruling party treasurer, can be regarded as typical Indonesians rush for money or power, that the end justifies the means. Gayus’s malfeasance and Nazarudin’s collusion inevitably represent Indonesians who like to earn easy money, quick win, through corruption, rent-seeking, hanky-panky, rather than sparing no effort to do something great.

Petronas Towers

Malaysia would never be the same, when Petronas Towers was completed. The then-Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad’s brainchild including Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) really changed Malaysia. The glowing towers not only epitomized success story of Malaysia development, but gave the new identity of Malaysia in the world map as well.

The 451.9 m tall including antenna spire twin towers was built in 1992 through 1998 and recorded as the tallest building in the world, until Taipei 101 tower surpassed it in 2004. The building cost to the tune of USD 1.6 billion.

Blame His Men, Does Pak SBY Learn It from Sun Tzu?

In the last Cabinet meeting, President SBY publicly criticized its Minister for their low performances. He lamented that less than 50% of instructions haven’t been carried out without further accounts of neglected instructions. And he gives them 3 months to shape up.

Some thought this was the blame game covering his own weakness and abdication of responsibility.

However, I guessed Pak SBY learns it from Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese thinker, who wrote Art of War about 2300 years ago. As the China’s oldest military literature, Art of War was at first to serve military strategy. But somehow now it is widely used in business.

God Bless Still-In-Trouble America

America is undoubtedly the world’s only superpower with great achievement ranging from politics, economy, science & technology to culture. Their remarkable string of successes makes us believe what is good for America will be good for the world.


In 1992, after the fall of Uni Soviet, Japanese American thinker, Francis Fukuyama, bragged about that human civilization had come to the end of history and liberal democracy prevails.

Well, not so fast.