Time to deliver

摘要

Indonesians cannot eat democracy, sniffed Singapore's Straits Times before the last of Indonesia's three elections this year. Singapore's state-controlled press may not be the most dogged defender of political freedoms, but the newspaper has a point. Over the past six years, Indonesia has undergone a remarkable transformation from near-dictatorship to vigorous democracy, culminating in the inauguration in October of Susilo Bambang Yud-hoyono, the country's first directly elected president. But ordinary Indonesians have little to show for it. Over the same period, the rapid growth in Indonesia's economy that had lifted millions out of poverty in the preceding decades slowed down dramatically, and for a time went into reverse. Unemployment has risen sharply. The new president now needs to harness his unprecedented mandate to get the economy moving again and give his com-patriots a stake in their new democracy.