Does SBY fail? The Idul Fitri celebration will tell the truth

Colonel Adjie Suradji, defiant army officer, might be right about SBY, a feeble general who has no courage to make good for this country. Colonel Adjie has also a good point about courage. It is the respectful character that is praised much by one of American great president, John F Kennedy. In his Pulitzer winning book Profiles in Courage, he quoted Ernest Hemingway that courage is grace under pressure, to portray the courage of 8 US Senators in serving their country. Unfortunately SBY has no courage to solve our problem of enacting law. Apparently SBY let the evil power crush Corruption Eradication Commission by saying that he cannot interfere the police and prosecutor's duty. That's absolutely silly.

Despite courages, the downward of SBY leadership is no great vision. I fully understand that we cannot compare SBY with Pak Harto. Pak Harto has a vision because he has a lot of time to materialize his vision, whereas SBY only has 5 years to do it. However that is not an excuse for SBY because we see that he has many opportunities to show his greatness. We remember Bung Karno as a founding father, Pak Harto for Indonesia's development result, Habibie for his passion for technology. We can forgive Gus Dur and Megawati because they have too little time, but until now we will remember nothing of SBY's 10 year stint.

However the Colonel is absolutely wrong about the paragon of leadership. He took Evo Morales, Hugo Chaves, Ahmadinejad as exemplary leader. Certainly they are brave to defy the American superpower, but they have no strategic action to develop their countries which heavily depend on the wealth of natural resources. Instead of them, the Colonel should mention Deng Xiaoping, Lee Kuan Yew and Mahathir Mohammad.

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Back to the title, does SBY fail?

A friend of mine wrote his status on Facebook. He has compelling case to defend that SBY succeeds in developing this country. He said that should you go to the malls or even the traditional markets then you can see people stampede to buy everything for the Idul Fitri celebration. Without having money we cannot imagine how they can buy.

I told about this to my mother and after coming back from the near market she testified to me that my friend is right. Indonesian people, at least in my hometown do have enough money to buy food and clothes. So thanks to SBY administration people do afford Idul Fitri celebration.

Seeing this I am very upbeat of Indonesian future. We do have a lot of problems: rampant corruption, poor infrastructure, cumbersome bureaucracy, bad law enactment, etc. but until now we survive. We still have positive economic growth, and despite sometimes very disturbing, we can say have stability of democratic country.

Happy Idul Fitri 1431 H!

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