JAKARTA, 18 April 2005 — Fifty years after the first Asian-African conference was held in the Indonesian city of Bandung amid the rising tensions of the Cold War, the country is preparing to host leaders from the two continents yet again. The conference, billed as “Reinvigorating the Bandung Spirit”, is being held in a drastically different geopolitical climate since the so-called Bandung Conference in 1955, which is credited with providing the impetus for the Non-Aligned Movement and many southern hemisphere countries to cast off the shackles of colonialism and fight for independence.
The change in times has caused non-government organizations and analysts to question the relevance of the upcoming Asian-African summit, and ask whether it will strengthen the two continents’ ability to tackle similar problems of development or will prove to be just an expensive piece of nostalgia. “There is a real need to renew the spirit of anti-colonialism and imperialism at Bandung as we confront so many problems from globalization,” said Bonnie Setiawan, executive director of the Institute for Global Justice in Indonesia. “But the substance of the summit should benefit the struggle of the people of developing countries.”
Skepticism about the summit is compounded by the legacy of one of the first conference’s strongest supporters — former President Sukarno. Although Sukarno is known among his countrymen as the founder of independent Indonesia, he is just as well known outside Indonesia for his lavish spending on statues, monuments and infrastructure projects to bring international prestige to the country while many Indonesians were going hungry.
The advent of a another summit has drawn criticism that the event is merely a relic of those days, and is continuing to promote false myths of past grandeur at a time when Indonesia is finally breaking from its past and leading the region in its embrace of democracy. “The myth of the Bandung spirit is dead,” said Soedjati Djiwandono, a political analyst with Indonesia’s Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), in an opinion article published in the Jakarta Post. “To convene another grandiose African-Asian summit with doubtful aims and purposes is just a waste of resources in the midst of appalling poverty in Indonesia, besides other urgent and serious problems faced by the nation,” he said. Djiwandono accused Sukarno of using the first conference as a means to support for his own struggle against the Dutch in the far eastern province of West Irian.
The total cost of this year’s summit is unknown, but the expense has drawn attention with reports that the government disbursed some 206 billion rupiah ($22 million) for the event, including funds to buy 60 luxury sedans for the participants.
Summit supporters say the summit will still strengthen an alliance that will help fight oppression in its modern forms, such as poverty, corruption and HIV/AIDS, and further independence from foreign governments, international economic institutions, and international development agencies. Supporters also say the conference will encourage the two continents to look inward instead of to the West for solutions to their problems, with Africa being able to look to countries in Asia for lessons on economic development, and many countries in Asia being able to look to Africa for lessons on democratization.
But supporters of such an alliance are still skeptical such a partnership between the two continents can be achieved. Djiwandono points to the impotence and cohesion problems of ASEAN in questioning whether a larger alliance would be able to avoid the same pitfalls. “ASEAN as a whole has yet to prove its will and ability to bring pressure to bear on Myanmar to prove its worthiness to remain a member of the association by taking steps toward democracy,” Djiwandono said. “Given the circumstances, it is unrealistic and pretentious to envisage a wider and more complex African-Asian framework of cooperation,” he said. “Such thoughts are no more than an expression of either megalomaniac nostalgia or nostalgic megalomania.”
Non-government organizations also say there is a need for an Asian African alliance, but that the improbability of the summit to bring this about has been underlined by the sidelining of NGOs during the conference. As a result of the government’s refusal to allow them to participate, they plan to hold a rival conference and demonstrations of their own with the hope that some of the problems will still be heard. “This conference has a big budget,” Bonnie Setiawan said. “We regret very much that we are not going to be included, but we are still going to ask them to be accountable to the people.”
