Beyond the White Hous by Jimmy Carter

Author:Jimmy Carter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

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A polling official announces each vote, one by one, to assembled citizens, then shows them the marked ballot, as votes are tallied in a Jakarta polling station during Indonesia’s 2004 elections. (JOSHUA ESTEY )

Before leaving Jakarta, I received Habibie’s permission to meet with Xanana Gusmão, the imprisoned leader from East Timor. He had been held incommunicado, but when I later visited the president, he agreed to permit Gusmão to meet with the two East Timorese Catholic bishops, some expatriates, and a half dozen others from the province to decide how best to prepare for a referendum to determine whether East Timor would be independent or remain a part of Indonesia. Habibie also approved the participation of The Carter Center, the United Nations, and perhaps other international observers to help ensure a safe and free decision on this question. We participated for several months in East Timor’s successful move to independence.

We returned home uncertain about the presidential election process but convinced that the Indonesians had made a commitment to freedom and democracy, and would soon become the third-largest democracy in the world.

In November 1999, the parliament chose a respected religious leader, Abdurrahman Wahid (Gus Dur), as president and Megawati Sukarnoputri as vice president. Wahid’s policies aroused intense opposition, and in July 2001 he ordered Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (known as SBY), minister for politics and security, to declare a state of emergency. Yudhoyono refused, and Wahid removed him from his position. The parliament voted to impeach Wahid and replace him with Megawati. During her term in office, the election laws were changed to permit a direct vote for president.

Once again, in 2004, Rosalynn and I headed The Carter Center monitoring team under the direction of David Carroll (Democracy Program director), and Yudhoyono defeated President Megawati and other candidates in another honest, fair, and peaceful process. We congratulated him and paid our respects to Mrs. Megawati on July 7, which happened to be our fifty-eighth wedding anniversary.

On the way home we stopped to spend six days fishing for rainbow trout in the pristine Zhupanova River in the Kamchatka Peninsula of Russia. (It was interesting to note that we were closer to New York than to Moscow.)

In Washington and in the U.S. news media there is an obsession with violence and terrorism, and a pervasive derogation of Muslims. The people of Indonesia are providing a dramatic example of peaceful political change and firmly negating the claim that Muslim societies are averse to democratic governments. Of the world’s three largest democracies, the overwhelming majority of their populations have different religious faiths: Hindus in India, Christians in the United States, and Muslims in Indonesia. This is a good message for the world to absorb.

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