Pahlawan Devisa, Pahlawan Masa Depan

Koran Tempo, 16 November 2007

Berly Martawardaya dan Joko Tirto Raharjo

Peringatan hari pahlawan di Indonesia di Indonesia di dasarkan pada persitiwa heroik di Surabaya dimana penduduk yang hanya bersenjatakan bambu runcing dan peralatan tani melawan serdadu sekutu dengan gagah berani. Mantan Dubes Amerika untuk Indonesia menuliskan dalam memoirnya (Jones, 1973: 103) bahwa peristiwa itu merubah opini masyarakat Belanda dan dunia serta memulai seri negoisasi yang berkulminasi pada Konferensi Meja Bundar di Den Haag.

Namun pada saat ini tidak banyak media untuk berjuang secara fisik demi Indonesia kalau tidak berprofesi sebagai atlit olahraga. Masih adakah pahlawan di masa kini? Bagaimana cara menjadi pahlawan Indonesia masa depan?

Saat ini yang menjadi mendapat sebuatan pahlawan di Indonesia hanyal dua pekerjaan. Yang pertama adalah pahlawan tanpa jasa alias guru dan yang kedua adalah pahlawan devisa alias tenaga kerja Indonesia di luar negeri. Guru memberikan ilmu tapi tidak devisa sedangkan TKI memberikan devisa tapi tidak ilmu.

Tidak banyak orang Indonesia seperti Nelson Tansu yang pada usia muda sudah menjadi profersor di kampus ternama Amerika dan memegang tiga hak paten. Data PBB menyatakan bahwa pada tahun 2000 hanya 2 % dari pekerja Indonesia di luar negeri yang lulus sarjana, dan hanya 434 dokter (1,3 % dari dokter di Indonesia). Beda sekali dengan Malaysia yang 10,4 % dari total disporanya lulus sarjana termasuk 2.211 dokter (11.9% dari total).

Jika dicermati dari nomor absolut maka pada tahun 2005 lebih dari 1,7 juta penduduk Indonesia mengejar nafkah di luar negeri dengan sasaran utama Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Belanda, Singapur, Amerika dan Australia. Studi ADB menunjukkan bahwa terjadi pertumbuhan drastis dari pekerja domestik (eufimisme pembantu) yang berkerja di luar negeri dari 1000 di tahun 1920 menjadi 92 000 di tahun 2005. Sekitar 75 ribu pekerja domestik di Singapur berasal dari Indonesia dan empat kali lipatnya di Malaysia (Abdul-Rahman, 2005)..

Para pahlawan Indonesia ini secara teratus mengirimkan uang ke tanah air walaupun pengeluaran mereka di negri seberang juga meningkat. Wanita mengirimkan proposi lebih besar dari gaji mereka dan. secara ata-rata lebih dari 60 % gaji yang diterima TKI yang bekerja pada sektor domestik di Singapure, Malaysia dan Hongkong di kirim ke Indonesia (Rahman, 2006).

Jumlahnya tidak dapat diabaikan, pada tahun 2005 saja melebihi USD 1,8 dollar dengan pertumbuhan sekitar sepuluh persen sejak tahun 2002. Hal ini patut di syukuri dan dapat menjadi tambahan pendanaan bagi perekonomian di Indonesia kalau saja peruasahaan Indonesia tidak menghabiskan USD 1,2 juta dollar untuk menggaji para expatriat di Indonesia walaupun jumlah mereka kurang dari 10 % dari TKI yang membanting tulang di luar negeri.

Artinya tiap expatriat di Indonesia mendapat jadi hampir 7 kali lebih tinggi. Kondisi ini tidak sepatutnya di biarkan berlanjut. Kualitas tenaga kerja yang kita kirim ke luar negeri perlu di perbaiki. Kenapa dokter Indonesia tidak mengisi rumah sakit di Eropa seperti dokter dari India dan Pakistan di Inggris.

Salah satu cara adalah untuk mendorong pelajar Indonesia di luar negeri dan akrab dengan kultur lokal untuk mencari kerja di luar negeri sehingga dengan pendidikan yang lebih tinggi maka akan lebih banyak ilmu, jaringan dan sumberdaya ekonomi yang dapat diraih untuk bangsa.

Jepang memulai kebangkitannya pada restorasi Meiji di akhir abad 19 dengan mengirimkah lebih dari 3000 pelajar ke Inggris, Amerika, Prancis dan Jerman untuk belajar hukum, ekonomi, fisika, kimia, dan kedokteran yang kemudian mendisktribusikan ilmu ke pada rekan sebangsanya setelah kembali ke tanah air mereka

Puluhan ribu mahasiswa dari India memenuhi bangku universitas di Amerika serikat pada dekade 90-an dan setelah selesai studi kebanyakan bekerja di Amerika teruama sektor teknologi informasi. Setelah mengisi posisi-posisi senior di Silicon Valley sebagian dari mereka kembali ke India dan mendirikan perusahaan dengan jaringan dan pengetahuannya dan saat ini menjadi lokomotif dari ekonomi India.

Bagaimana dengan pelajar Indonesia. Pada tahun 20006 jumlah pelajar Indonesia di Amerika tercatat 7575 orang alias 2 % dari total mahasiswa, jauh dibawah Cina dan India yang terhitung 10 % dan Jepang serta Korea yang sekitar 8 %. Di Australia tercatat lebih dari 14 ribu mahasiswa Indonesia, masih di bawah Malaysia, Hongkong, Taiwan dan Jepang. Adapun di Eropa konsentrasi pelajar Indonesia terdapat di Inggris dan Belanda dengan sisanya tersebar di berbagai negara.

Pertarungan masa depan adalah pertarungan ide dan sumber daya manusia. Apakah Indonesia akan tertinggal sekali lagi? Pahlawan devisa dan pahlawan tanda jasa dapat muncul di satu sosok bila semakin banyak tenaga kerja indonesia di luar negeri adalah sosok terdidik yang dapat membagikan ilmu tepat guna selain mengirimkah sumberdaya ekonomi bagi bangsa Indonesia

Penulis pertama adalah sekjen Perhimpunan Pelajar Indonesia (PPI) Italia dan kandidat doktor ekonomi di Universiy of Siena – Italy. Penulis kedua adalah alumnus master ekonomi Rijk Universiteit Groningen –Belanda dan mantan ketua PPI Groningehn

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A Noble Strategy for Lasting Peace in Aceh Province

The Jakarta Post - November 10, 2005

Machiavelli once said that a prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise.

But the knowledge that a particular prince often breaks his promise undermines most of its worth. This will put the prince in a dilemma since he needs the peasants and nobles to sufficiently believe his promises in order to benefit when breaking them.

The idea that one's gain depends on the actions and the acceptance of other people has been examined in the last 50 years in economics using the analytical tools of game theory. The theory was acknowledged with a Noble Prize in 1994 for three of its principal founders. One of them is John F. Nash Jr whose life has been immortalized in a book and movie entitled A Beautiful Mind.

The Noble Prize committee this year awarded another prize to game theory, this time to those who advanced the concept once the foundations were laid. This time, Thomas C. Schelling, who taught at the University of Maryland and Harvard, shared the Nobel Prize for economics with Robert Aumann from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

In his influential book, The Strategy of Conflict (1960), Prof. Schelling outlines some concepts that could be used to analyze the current conditions in Aceh and the way ahead.

Threats make one's actions conditional on what the other player does, thus limiting one's choices of behavior. Threats need to be communicated to the other party to be effective and they need to be credible to be believed.

Someone who wants to go on a diet but is not sure of his ability to reduce temptation may accept a bet with other people so that he is not free to change his mind at later time. The bet become a commitment device that is costly to break in the future.

The government would find it beneficial to break its promise once GAM has surrendered its weapons to crush the movement and GAM would benefit if it launched a fresh attack once the non-local military forces had withdrawn from Aceh. Both sides have been known to breach promises before, so what makes the Helsinki MOU different?

The highest threat that GAM could deal the peace is a proclamation of independence while the government has the ability to declare and resume all-out war against separatists. But neither move is intelligent since either would likely cause the international community to freeze tsunami reconstruction aid. The side that made the first move to break the peace would be seen as extremely immoral and selfish and find it very difficult to gain domestic and international support for its action.

Keeping this reconstruction aid flowing and one's reputation as a humanitarian nation or group in the eyes of the world have proved to be commitment devices too costly to break.

However, one side could still accuse the other of making the first move and say it was only acting in legitimate retaliation to a pre-announced threat. This is where the need for enforcement of a peace arises. An enforcement body needs the ability to distinguish a violations and the authority to punish or coerce dealbreakers. Furthermore the party involved needs to perceive the enforcer as impartial.

Therefore a third-party entity that is sufficiently accepted by both sides and is well-equipped to identify who conducts the first violations is indispensable. The Aceh Monitoring Mission must strife for this much-needed credibility. The only punishment available is a credible and public announcement that one party has conducted violation with valid evidence.

That might not sound like much but the establishment of peace is only the first stage of a two-stage process. The next is the local elections of executive and legislative councils; both institutions, which are projected to hold considerable power in the Helsinki MOU. The government does not want GAM to win a majority in these elections as much as GAM needs a strong showing in order to advance its agenda. Violations by any sides at this stage would very likely result in poor electoral results later on.

Of course there will be shortsighted radicals on both sides that do not abide by the rational calculations above. Peace loving majority from both sides and ordinary people should act as constraints, they must neither be intimidated nor emotionally sway to the beat of the drums of war.

In peacetime local elections will be repeated every five years. The time will come when the fate of Aceh will be determined by the ballot and not the bullet. This mechanism should ensure that the interests of the Acehnese are always in the minds of the elected representatives. Whoever holds the presidency or the majority in the national legislature cannot afford to have Aceh declare independence under their watch since it would likely lead to their downfall.

On the other hand, a local party founded by GAM has every incentive to point to neglect by national government as a reason to vote for them as the defenders of Acehnese interests and identity. The commitment device of reconstruction aid may not exist indefinitely and as long as GAM holds a majority in the Aceh DPRD, the threat of independence is still there. Local elections therefore will serve as a substitute commitment device.

Germany, Spain and Canada are examples of countries that have regions with strong identities and histories of independence movements and violence. Germany has Bavaria; Spain has Catalan and Basque while Canada has Quebec. All three have largely pacified the renegade regions with economic incentives, increased national prestige and allowed them to express their identity in an acceptable political way.

Munich, the capital of Bavaria, is more affluent than most parts of Germany and stands tall as the country's manufacturing center with the BMW and Mercedes Benz factories as its crown jewels.

Like Germany, all these Western countries pour money into independent-minded regions to appease their constituents and all of them have hosted events of international prestige such as the Olympic or Winter Games.

Thus, the regions feel they are an important asset. Bavaria, Catalan and Quebec are also known for strong local sports teams that serve as a vent for deep-seated emotions of repressed identity.

All three countries also allow local parties that champion regional identity and their local elections are fought as ferociously as their sports games.


The writer holds a Masters Degree in Economics from the Free University Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and is currently a PhD student in the School of Politics and Economics at the University of Siena, Italy.