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Ihad lunch the other day with Joop Ave, the minister for tourism, post and communications in the New Order era and a man difficult to ignore as much for his flamboyant character as for his generous physical proportions. And, of course, as someone who, if I may say so, was good at his job of promoting the country, especially when compared with his lukewarm successors.

I was enraptured listening to him speak in his graceful Bahasa Indonesia peppered with Javanese and impeccable English. In a country where boorishness seems to be on the increase at the highest level it is refreshing to listen to someone with the gift of gab.

However, it’s not just Joop’s ability to spin a tale that makes him an entertaining person and a highly effective communicator. It is also his passion and knowledge in speaking about Indonesia. Here is someone who can represent the country with confidence and who inspires confidence in others, who can move with ease and grace in international circles. When he opens his mouth one has the feeling that here is a man of substance whose words are to be taken seriously.

He spoke of the joy of promoting Indonesia to the world, of putting on performances that made other countries understand Indonesia’s diversity and uniqueness. He told a wonderful story about throwing a party for the Queen of England to show the way Indonesians welcome their guests and how she took home a traditional plate as a souvenir.

Thinking about it, these days it is rare that we promote Indonesia properly. We’re not doing it anywhere near enough and we’re certainly not capitalizing on our advantages — our ethnic diversity, our tolerance, our biodiversity, natural beauty, heritage, climate and so on — that the rest of the world largely knows nothing about.

And I wonder, why does it seem so difficult these days to promote Indonesia? After all, compared to our neighbors this country has so much to offer, and listening to Joop’s stories, it really doesn’t seem to take much to impress other people and it certainly doesn’t require anything beyond what we’re good at already.

The government always cites a lack of funds as the reason it can’t carry out a marketing campaign on the scale that our smaller neighbors have undertaken with enormous success. It says that we are lacking in promotional savvy and creativity. In other words, there is not much that we can do to polish our image internationally and we are doomed to be lumped together with countries that suffer from third-world problems of poverty, natural disasters and conflicts.

However, money can only do so much. Listening to Joop Ave, I was reminded that genuine passion and appreciation of our wealth is a much more important and less costly ingredient in making others interested in what our country has to offer.

It may be that our Australian neighbors are beginning to wake up to the fact that we’re not quite the basket case that they always thought we were. But that’s probably less because of our own efforts to improve our image and more to do with the fact that other countries are not doing as well.

Our current ministers and ambassadors may not have the eloquence of Joop Ave, but they certainly could develop that knowledge and understanding of what the country is about. After all, where we are now, a great, peaceful, democratic and independent country, is a product of a wonderful and rich history of struggling and realizing our dreams. While our future depends on how we nurture and cherish those things that are dear and important to us, mainly our cultural heritage, our diversity and our boundless creativity.

But I’m not advocating blind patriotism and emotional nationalism.

These are simply manifestations of fear and insecurity that make us suspicious and distrustful of other people’s motives and reflect our inherent inadequacy. What we need, particularly among our leaders and ambassadors, is to cultivate a sense of pride and self-confidence in our greatness because this in turn will inspire confidence in others to take us seriously as a people and for the nation to play a greater role in world affairs.

The world’s most powerful person, the president of the United States, is scheduled to visit Indonesia in June. This, in itself, is proof that Indonesia is a country to be reckoned with and taken seriously on the world stage.

The question is, are we ourselves serious and do we have the confidence to climb up on that stage?



Desi Anwar is a senior anchor and writer. She can be contacted at www.desianwar.com and www.dailyavocado.net.