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President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has been severely criticized — pilloried is perhaps the more accurate term — for postponing his state visit to the Netherlands.

He pushed it back at a time when the visit suddenly became inauspicious because of a last-minute court case filed by a leader of the separatist South Maluku Republic (RMS) with the District Court of The Hague, charging the president with the torture of at least 21 RMS members.

Among the fiercest of the criticisms aimed at the president were those in an opinion column by Joe Cochrane in the Jakarta Globe last weekend.

It accused the president of being unable to see the “larger picture” in deciding to postpone the visit, of being onion-skinned, of insulting Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and, implicitly, of being paranoid.

Cochrane also took the president to task for calling the behavior of The Hague District Court unethical.

As a journalist, Cochrane can criticize anybody he wants to criticize, including the president of Indonesia.

That is his right.

However, I must point out that his criticisms against the president regarding this particular issue — the postponement of the state visit — are, like those of most other critics, full of holes.

First, the president postponed the trip because, contrary to Cochrane’s assertion, he did see the “larger picture.”

If he had gone to The Hague under protection of diplomatic immunity, there would have been a fatal loss of symmetry in the host’s relationship with the guest.

The Comprehensive Partnership between the Netherlands and Indonesia would have started with the partners on unequal footing, one being the protector of the other.

That partnership would have begun under the most inauspicious circumstances.

That was the larger picture.

That, and the dignity of the presidency of the Indonesian republic.

It might be a little different if the host country involved were the United States; there would be no historical baggage involved.

But in this case there is.

And that baggage would have resurfaced if the president went through with the visit, precisely because the Netherlands was once the colonial master of Indonesia.

The equality of the Netherlands and Indonesia today must be preserved and the inconveniences of the postponement were a small price to pay for it.

That was the larger picture that the president saw and that Cochrane could not and does not see.

Did the president insult the queen of the Netherlands?

Certainly there was no intention to. The visit was not postponed for a flimsy reason. It was postponed for a thoroughly considered reason.

The queen is a reasonable person.

I don’t believe she felt insulted, no matter what some Dutch individuals and journalists might say.

There were also a few Indonesians who said they felt insulted when US President Barack Obama failed to show up on the two occasions he was scheduled to visit Indonesia.

But only a few.

We are a reasonable people with a reasonable president. Indonesia was not insulted.

The Dutch and their queen are not any less reasonable than we are.

Is Yudhoyono paranoid?

That question is irrelevant in the light of the dignity of the presidency and of the Indonesian nation.

So what if it turned out that the court, after the hearing, threw out the case?

At the time the president was deciding whether to go or not, neither the Dutch government nor the Indonesian government could tell how that independent court would decide the case.

The president took the path of caution. For that, Cochrane calls him paranoid.

I call him both prudent and mindful of the dignity of his office and of the nation he leads and represents.

And most of those who say they were sure the case would be thrown out are indulging in the political equivalent of the Monday morning quarterbacking in the United States, when fans “replay” the weekend football matches by second-guessing any wrong moves made by the losing quarterback.

In sports and politics, everybody is a genius in hindsight.

It has been proven that even historians writing about a past event tend to invest that event with inevitability.

Many — not all, but many — journalists write with the affectation that they can run a country better than the incumbent leader.

They can indulge in that luxury because most of the time they are writing on the basis of hindsight.

Was it improper for the president to call The Hague District Court unethical for the unusual timing of the filing and hearing of the case?

As president and as an individual, SBY is entitled to make an assessment of the court’s behavior and his judgment was neither baseless nor outlandish.

Certainly there was something unusual about the court’s action and the president chose not to be quiet about it.

There may be those who would debate the view that the court behaved unethically but the president is entitled to his own opinion.

The most respected court in the world is the US Supreme Court, yet Obama recently criticized one of its decisions.

Nobody is above criticism, not the courts, not presidents and certainly not journalists.

As to the president being thin-skinned, his outbursts are well recorded in the press.

If the president gave a tongue-lashing to a Telkomsel official because of a technical glitch, as Cochrane pointed out in his column, that is par for the course.

But consider also that the president does not nurse his anger for long.

And it often happens that he is contrite after furiously scolding subordinates.

And this I know: nobody has ever lost his job just because he personally displeased the president.

It was different during the time of President Suharto. When he was angry, he would say nothing.

He would stare expressionless at the air before him. But heads would roll the following day,

This means that today we have a president who is as human and as emotionally transparent as the people he serves.

This is so much better than a president who is cold and calculating and who does not show his emotions.

Cochrane also had a few things to say about Indonesian democracy and its presumed shortcomings in his column.

Of course, our democracy is far from perfect and there are many things within it that cry out for reform.

It is only about 12 years old and has much to learn.

We do need better laws on freedom of expression and freedom of worship. Let us work on these.

Let the press wage strong advocacy for better laws and against bad laws.

And let the press continue to expose the non-performers in the cabinet so that their day of reckoning will come sooner.

American democracy is more than 200 years old and it’s not perfect either.

But it is very much more mature than ours, no matter the misgivings of our speaker of the House.

We can learn from America’s experience and from other aspiring democracies.

That is what the Bali Democracy Forum is all about.

And, finally, let us give Yudhoyono some credit for the fact that our democracy works in spite of its immaturity.

That, too, is the larger picture.

 
Wim Tangkilisan is the president of Jakarta Globe Media.