SBY Tells Officials and Politicians: Indonesia Needs the ‘Greatest Good to the Greatest Number’

Jakarta Globe, Wim Tangkilisan, April 15, 2010

There is a recurring theme in the recent speeches of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono before various local audiences, especially when these are made up of bureaucrats or politicians.

Sometimes the theme even floats up in his private conversations, so you can be sure this is not just a rhetorical flourish but an idea that his mind is seized with.

In various ways, he has been saying this: In a democracy the basic purpose of government is to provide the greatest good to the greatest number of people. And that this, too, should be the goal of a party that stands for democracy.

In a democracy, he is careful to stress, the law must be upheld. But at the same time, since the law alone is not enough to sustain a free society, reason must also support the system. Democracy, therefore, needs both the rule of law and the rule of reason.

That means that freedom and governance must be meaningful in peoples’ lives, especially in the form of basic social services to improve the quality of life.

In Good Company

Yudhoyono is in good company in pursuing this theme of the greatest good for the greatest number. US President John F Kennedy, in his celebrated 1961 inaugural address, intoned: “If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.”

To be sure, this message not only comes out of the mouths of political leaders. Every major religion resonates with the sentiment that one must practice charity for the poor.

“Blessed are the poor,” said Jesus Christ. “Poverty is my pride,” said the Prophet of Islam. They were not just talking of spiritual humility: both were also social reformers who responded to the physical suffering of the poor.

Governments, of course, are entirely of this world and expect no heavenly reward for the good that they do. But their success or failure is judged on how much good they do for how many people.

Moreover, governments are subject to ethics and are bound by the ethical imperative to do as much good as possible for the people within their constituency.

Where did this ethical imperative come from? It is probably imbedded in human intuition that is the product of evolution and intellectual developments, such as the French Enlightenment and the “social contract” between the governors and the governed.

Utilitarian Ethics

The intellectual who said it most eloquently was the 19th century English reformer and moral philosopher Jeremy Bentham. “It is the greatest good to the greatest number,” he wrote, “that is the measure of right and wrong.”

In this light, what makes corruption so obnoxious is that the ill-gotten gains are enjoyed by a very small number of individuals while countless others are deprived of the benefits of what should have been equitably distributed wealth.

Bentham also wrote: “The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.” For that he became widely recognized as the father of “utilitarianism,” which holds that a man is morally upright in so far as he serves the welfare of many others.

Today Bentham’s embalmed body is kept at University College in London, but his ideas on government are even better preserved in their lasting impact on the credo of public service.

Bentham’s collaborator, James Mill, had a genius of a son who was trained to carry the torch of utilitarianism. John Stuart Mill, became the father of modern theories of liberty, and a case can be made that today’s advocates of human rights are the intellectual heirs of Jeremy Bentham through John Stuart Mill.

The Big Question

So there is no denying that the idea of the “greatest good for the greatest number” that Yudhoyono is seized with has an exalted pedigree. Does he practice what he preaches? I think the answer came from the Indonesian electorate themselves, when they rewarded the president with a landslide re-election win.

At the very start of his first term, he adopted an economic policy that was unabashedly pro-business and pro-poor. It was a policy straight from Bentham’s utilitarian heart. And it is now clear not only to the World Bank and the IMF but also to the Indonesian people that the policy not only led to economic growth of over 6 percent but also to a strengthening of the country’s social safety net.

Perhaps the greatest service Yudhoyono has rendered to the Indonesian people is the successful management of the current global economic and financial crisis.

With growth of about 5 percent last year, Indonesia bore the crisis very well, becoming the third-best performer in Asia, after China and India.

And that growth was obviously equitable because it was consumer-led. It was the handiwork of millions and millions of Indonesians who bought electronic gadgets, household appliances, motorcycles and the like, many of them helped along by microcredits and microfinancing.

Sharing the Vision

Today the president envisions reducing the number of Indonesians living below the poverty line from some 20 million to 16 million by the end of the year. He is doing that by directing Rp 37 trillion ($4.1 billion) to welfare and social programs.

He has also programmed 14.3 percent of the budget “to protect the lowest segments of society.”

These programs are supposed to directly benefit the poor, but more than that, a well-rationalized budget for overall development benefits everyone. This means sufficient resources devoted to education, infrastructure and power generation. It also means the rationalization of the mining sector and the labor sector and a further push for investment incentives.

And when that necessary budget is there and wiser laws are finally in place, let us hope that there will be effective and efficient execution and policy implementation. Let us hope that corruption will be eradicated or at least drastically reduced.

And let us also hope that the president’s message that government must be directed at providing the greatest good for the greatest number will be taken to heart. It has been handed to us as a spiritual and intellectual legacy that can guide Indonesia to greatness.

The president cannot do it all alone. Others, not just his cabinet or his party, but all those in public service and politics, must heed the call.

It would be a tragedy for Indonesia if the president’s call for genuine service to the “greatest number” of our people became a voice crying in the wilderness.

Wim Tangkilisan is president and editor in chief of the Jakarta Globe.