Guest Speaker at ALA scholarship awardees' conference [ from Asia Pacific ]

Safira Machrusah’s speech as a guest speaker
for ALA Leadership Conference

Dear friends and colleagues,

I am honoured to stand here before you the men and women of the Australian Leadership Awardees. It gives me great pleasure to meet you all here in Canberra. Before I start, I wish to express my heartfelt thanks to AusAID officers for the warm reception and this opportunity to share my experiences. I am proud to be one of the awardees.

I know that you are all leaders of your countries. Some of you held important positions within the government structures. As leaders, I am sure that you have faced challenges in your work and career. You must have your own style in dealing with your leadership challenges. However, let me share before you my experiences and leadership challenges that I faced in the hope they contribute to enlarging our horizons. They may present excellent ways for dealing similar challenges, in other places, in similar circumstances, as well. I will also invite you to think about future challenges of our one and global world. We need to summon the will to meet together hand-in-hand these challenges.

Dear friends and colleagues,

Tonight, I will share with you two moments of my life when, I, as a leader of my community, faced difficult challenges: in front of an authoritarian regime and in front of gendered society. My involvement with a student organization called Association of Female Muslim students of Nahdlatul Ulama (IPPNU) began when I was an under graduate student at a university in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Further, mid 1996, I was elected to the head of national board of the organization which claimed over 2 million members throughout Indonesia. That year, a serious ethnic conflict broke out in Kalimantan. It was a symptom which later on revealed deeper political problems under the New Order regime. Before such ethnic conflict spread to other regions, something had to be done. Late 1996, I and other people representing several youth organizations established a new alliance called National Forum for Youth Indonesians, as we shared concern of national problems. It grouped 8 national youth organizations from different faiths such as Association of Indonesian Catholic Students, Association of Youth Indonesian Christians, Youth Organization of Hindu Dharma, Youth Buddhism Organization, and some youth Muslim movements. It was in the spirit of national unity as stipulated in our philosophy, Bhinneka Tunggal Ika (Unity in Diversity), we were inextricably bound to each other.

My leadership was really put on test a year later, when we, Indonesian people faced multi dimension crisis in 1997. The fundamentals of our economy collapsed: great inflation, huge increase of basic need prices, mass unemployment, and extreme poverty returned on the scene. The economic disaster revealed how bad impacts of the authoritarian regime were. We came to realize that Indonesian destiny was tied up with our destiny and its failure would be our sorrow. The New Order which has been established over 30 years suppressed people’s liberty, people’s imaginative faculties. People were just afraid of being different. In the midst of national turmoil, our National Forum declared publicly to defend people’s rights and to fight all forms of injustice particularly Corruption, Collusion and Nepotism. We campaigned for more democratic rules. Our endeavour had, however, to pay many consequences. We faced serious threats from members within our organizations who felt fear and distrusted our struggle, as well as threats from the authority. The peak was when the forum finally made an important statement calling on Suharto, the former President of Indonesia, not to run for the next presidential term. More serious threats from the authority were experienced: my friends were followed by secret agents; access to some important figures within the authority was blocked. However, our firm commitment to the real democracy, freedom and justice kept us out of fear. We continued to communicate and we supported each other. As I was the only female representative of the forum, I showed them that gender differences did not withdraw me from believing in right principles and struggling to advancing them even if that might endanger my life. And this commitment without any doubt generated continuous support and respect from male colleagues. Thanks God that our struggle became one part of important changes in the history of Indonesia. The world might little note or long remember what we have done, but it can never forget what the Indonesian youth as a whole made to step down a powerful authoritarian regime. Through alliance, working together and trust, we did change the course of history.

Dear friends and colleagues,

The second challenge I would like to share is when I became an Indonesian National MP. During my short period of membership I was involved in enacting an important piece of legislation related to domestic violence. It was difficult to pass this law. The main reason was and still –though I think it also happens everywhere– the state of gender inequality in our society. Almost all strategic positions are held by men. How many are female ministers, judges, MPs, and generals? Another impact of this gender inequality was a substantial increase in the number of women being victims of domestic violence from their male partners. Since the number of women MPs was only few compared to their male counterparts, many male MPs were willing to write-off essential points of the draft. They claimed that conflict between male and female partners was a private matter. They threatened further that the parliament discussion of the draft would ruin the fundamental institution of marriage and Indonesian culture, because it supported less respect for the tradition, where men are heads of the family. In this critical phase, we, female parliamentarians gathered. I said to other female members, that for this purpose of defending an important principle of justice, we had to consolidate our efforts. We had to detach from our own political parties and to focus on the future of women and the nation. As the law was about our national agenda so, religious reasons for writing-off essential points of the draft would be unjustifiable since we knew that Indonesia is composed of multiple faiths. Nation is for nation, never mind their race, religion, ethnicity or profession. We had to unite for our nation prosperity. The alliance between female MPs from different political parties then emerged. With our patience in communication with male members, our rational approaches to the issue, our commitment to defend gender equality in every step of the legislative processes, support from almost women NGO, as well as intensive communication with mass media, Domestic Violence Act “safely” passed. Again, I learnt that cooperation, alliance, trust and everlasting efforts to defend our principles were key issues in the success.

Dear friends and colleagues,

The world, our world is different now. Globalization is a must. Not a single nation can stay away from this phenomenon. A lot of issues are global in nature such as, global warming and cross countries natural disaster, poverty (around 800 million people worldwide who still go hungry every day), wider gap between rich and poor countries, weapon racing and terrorism. All those issues become our own issues because they affect our country’s economy, politics, etc. They also affect in one or other way our own lives wherever we live. Therefore, I think, we should engage with those global issues and we should bond together to save our planet Earth from further destruction.

My personal engagement with global issues drove me to make PhD research on religious fundamentalism at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, ANU. As I am a Muslim and come from a country where years ago hit by many calamities and the suffering was added by some culprits who perpetrated acts of terrorism, I feel it is also my duty to engage in addressing part of these numerous problems. The Islamic concept of jihad goes global and fundamentalists use it for their crimes. As a Muslim, I feel betrayed by terrorists’ use of a sacred and highly respected term in Islam for their violence purposes. Because they then confront Islam that is a religion of peace for most Muslims worldwide with their criminal acts which are far from Prophet Muhammad’s teachings. To advance their political agendas, they sacrifice innocent people, while it is written in the Qur’an that killing an innocent person is equal to murdering the whole humanity. Because of them a lot of innocent people worldwide suffer. And for all those who suffer I must contribute and challenge these unfair situations. I want to promote female Muslim voice of true jihad (strive). Through alliance with men and women worldwide who respect other human being, we campaign peaceful strive to advancing equality, peace and prosperity for humankind. It is an ultimate effort using all our faculties: bodies, hearts, mind, and soul to do good deeds, to respect and love others, and to challenge our nafs, our greedy, and our negative desire. Here, I remember Mahatma Gandhi who once said, we have enough for our needs, but not enough for our greed.

It is our ultimate goal as leaders of the future to maximize our efforts and energy to create a better world, a peaceful place, a place for everyone living in harmony, justice and prosperity. When I debated a legislation concerning women’s issues of my country, I asked other MPs to orient themselves to a greater interest than their political parties. Now, it is time for us to orient ourselves to a greater interest for humanity rather than narrow national interests when dealing with global issues. We know that such issues cannot be resolved by a country alone. With this belief I am confident that we will be able to work together, to struggle together and to achieve far more precious results. Thank you to AusAID which offers us an opportunity to gather, though we did not know each other before since we come from different parts of Asia and Pacific. It is an opportunity to construct our network, to keep in touch with each other and to build a solid cooperation in the future. Let us make up our mind, seize the opportunity and work together for a brighter future of our world.

Thank you,
Safira Machrusah


A pleasant comment from my friend about the speech:

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It would be nice to swap pictures of the event and really cool to have it up on the group website. But wonder if anyone would mind if we put up pictures of others?!!! For instance i have added a picture of Safira giving her speech (just because I am really impressed with her speech).

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Cheers,
Aminath